“All that effort [to recycle] has only succeeded in postponing the usual fate of products by a life cycle or two. It’s is still on its way to a landfill; it’s just stopping off in your house en route.”

The hardest part about “bringing your own bag” is remembering to bring it. I have bags in my trunk, bags at home, bags at the office. Yet somehow I’ll manage to leave them from time to time.

We all know the problem with bags. To refresh your memory: there’s a giant wasteland of plastic trash floating in the Pacific ocean. It’s twice the size of Texas. Plastic doesn’t biodegrade — “Almost every bit of plastic ever made still exists”.

There are some quick fixes. Some have taken to canvas or other reusable bags. Others reuse their plastic and paper grocery bags, usually as a substitute for buying garbage bags. In the end, the future of these bags are the the same: they go to the landfill.

The book Cradle to Cradle by William McDonough & Michael Braungart explains the problem with relying on recycling:

“You care about the environment. In fact, when you went shopping for a carpet recently, you deliberately chose one made from recycled polyester soda bottles. Recycled? Perhaps it would be more accurate to say downcycled. Good intentions aside, your rug is made of things that were never designed with this further use in mind, and wrestling them into this form has required as much energy — and generated as much waste — as producing a new carpet. And all that effort has only succeeded in postponing the usual fate of products by a life cycle or two. The rug is still on its way to a landfill; it’s just stopping off in your house en route.”

Puma has a better solution. They’re planning to switch out their plastic shopping bags for the “Clever Little Shopper,” a biodegradable bag made of cornstarch. The bag can be dissolved in water in about three minutes into a non-toxic reddish liquid. Clever.

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