The utility and burden of supermarket shopping bags

Author Al Marshall Published 25 January 2010

In many countries around the world retailer-provided plastic bags have become the subject of serious environmental debate. There is no doubting that a collective environmental consciousness has emerged in recent years, and reusable shopping bags are proliferating in huge numbers. But is it the government's or an individual's responsibility to decide how we take home our shopping?

Plastic shopping bags are at the forefront of this question. They are expensive to produce in terms of materials and energy inputs, they contribute to surface and sea pollution, they take many years to biodegrade and are increasingly considered a waste of resources because they are only designed for single use.

But retailers have a vested interest in shopping bags. Many carry corporate branding that has become instantly recognisable to the general public. They are also lucrative advertising surfaces in the same way as disposable coffee cups, t-shirts and billboards on cars, trains and buses.

Retailer-provided shopping bags are also an integral part of shopping culture because they enable impulsive retail visits: when you shop you know that you will get a carry bag to transport your purchases. This enhances the convenience and efficiency of people’s shopping behaviour, meaning that you can and will shop when the desire arises.

But the negative impacts of shopping bags have outweighed the positives in recent years. Governments are being lobbied to ban single-use shopping bags – particularly the high-volume users such as supermarkets and convenience stores.

Some retailers have responded by providing more environmentally friendly shopping bags made out of materials other than plastic – such as recycled paper, unbleached paper and polypropylene. Some supermarkets now stock thinner plastic bags so that they can break down more easily when discarded.

The supermarkets offering polypropylene reusable bags charge approximately $1 per bag; the environmental incentive being that shoppers will naturally reduce their plastic bag consumption if they have to pay for them. But many people have engrained patterns of behaviour that are difficult to break. Not everyone remembers to carry shopping bags, many others don’t even think about the amount of unnecessary packaging they purchase.

The polypropylene 'green bag' is now ubiquitous in Australia, having proliferated at a huge rate since their introduction in 2007. There were approximately three million of these reusable shopping bags sold in 2007; the Age reported on Sunday 24 January 2010 that just over 20 million were sold in 2009. Consumption of single-use plastic bags, on the other hand, has decreased by about a third to just under four billion over the same period.

For retailers, the polypropylene 'green bag' is a great solution in the need to 'go green'. Shoppers pay for their bags, and the retailer retains – and in some cases gains – their advertising surface. But Clean Up Australia Day founder Ian Kiernan has accused Australian supermarket chains of profiteering because demand (and its associated profit) is stimulating an increasing supply – even though the rationale behind the introduction of the 'green bag' was to reduce shopping bag consumption.

The situation highlights the utility of shopping bags and their centrality to Australian shopping behaviour. While shoppers may feel they are making a difference to the environment by buying a 'green bag', the jury is certainly still out on whether they are actually making any kind of difference as supply and consumption of shopping bags continues to increase.

While Australian household surveys indicate a high commitment to household recycling – with the majority of households separating their rubbish for waste and recycling collection – the commitment to bringing their own carry bags on shopping trips is significantly less. This suggests that government intervention – such as bans on plastic bags that have been imposed in numerous Australian towns – is the only effective means of influencing people’s plastic bag consumption and increasing their environmental awareness.

But how are we to reduce the ongoing consumption of 'green bags'? While purchasing a 'green bag' might make you feel like you're making a difference, if you're not reusing them you're creating more harm than good.

What responsibility, if any, does the retailer have in this issue?