One of the more unsightly types of litter that we often see blowing around our streets and parks on a windy day is the collection of old plastic shopping bags.  They get caught in trees, tangle in hedges and get trapped in gutters looking seedy and tacky.  What’s more, even though many supermarkets are starting to use recycled plastic in their specially printed shopping bags, these bags aren’t made out of 100% recycled plastic, so they’re still using up a valuable fossil-fuel based resource.

What ever happened to the paper shopping bags that I remember the groceries coming home in when I was growing up?  Why did we switch to tacky, tatty plastic bags?  And before you wonder if this writer is yet another baby boomer having a moment of nostalgia for a childhood in the 1950s, I’m not.  I’m Generation-X and my childhood was in the 1980s.  OK, maybe where I grew up was a little backward, as I lived in a small country town in New Zealand.  And I know that plastic shopping bags must have existed (I found a few of my grandmother’s hoarded ones which must have dated back to the 1980s) but I don’t remember them as being very common.

But if people really want to do something about reducing waste, conserving resources and turning to more biodegradable and sustainable packaging and so forth then the old-fashioned paper shopping bag has a lot to recommend it (many fast food chains still use them).  When I think about all the advantages of brown paper bags (and the more upmarket ones that came from Ballantyne’s, an upmarket department store that is the New Zealand equivalent of Harrods), I wonder why we ever stopped using them.  Was it because they tore easily?  Can’t be – I seem to rip a plastic shopping bag every week, usually with the corner of a big box of laundry powder.

So what advantages do paper bags have and why are they better than plastic bags for the environment?

Firstly, paper bags are made from a renewable resource – trees.  We used to hear people encouraging us to “save a tree” by not using paper.  However, using paper encourages more people to plant more trees in managed and maintained plantations.  Increasing the number of managed commercial plantations is no bad thing for the environment.  Yes, the forest will eventually be logged, but while it is standing, it will act as a “carbon sink” and help reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.  And once it is harvested, the forest will be replanted.  Commercial forests also provide a safe environment for wildlife – to them, a commercially managed forest is not much different from a wild forest.  And even when the forest is logged, the wildlife will still have a home, as commercial forestry managers usually have several “blocks” within a forest at different stages of growth – the whole lot isn’t cut down at once.

And don’t forget that paper bags can be made out of recycled paper…

Brown paper bags are unbleached, so manufacturing paper bags does not involve adding chlorine to waterways.  And even when it comes to the bleached paper bags – the posh sort – it is possible to bleach paper without using polluting chlorine.

Paper bags are fully recyclable and biodegradable.  They’re also reusable.  Not that an old paper bag has to be used as a bag.  You can cut it open and make use of the paper – for writing shopping lists or taking phone messages, for children to draw pictures on.  Really big paper bags were great for opening out and using for drafting dressmaking patterns.  And when you’d finished doing this with them, the paper bags can go into the compost heap or be used as firestarters or torn up for bedding in a rabbit hutch (and then put into the compost heap in the form of ash, or enriched with manure.  And old paper bags had their uses even when they were kept intact.  Paper bags never needed a safety warning on them to remind you not to stick your head in a paper bag (this is supposed to be a cure for hiccups) or keep them away from small children.  Small children can quite safely put their heads into paper bags to play peek-a-boo – and older ones can have fun making paper bag masks.  Small pets like mice, rats, rabbits and guinea pigs can also enjoy running in and out of them.  And stoutly build paper bags made great water bombs or, if you blew them up and hit them hard, a satisfying and safe loud noise (remember the Mr Bean episode in the aeroplane?).

And paper bags can still be printed with a supermarket’s logo easily enough, so they’re still good for promoting brand-names or whatever supermarkets think they achieve by printing plastic bags with logos and making them in signature colours. 

So there’s my challenge to help the environment.  Not a challenge to individuals but to companies.  Bring back the paper shopping bag.  Maybe we ought to get together and start campaigning!