Dear Bagboy,

I want to commend you on your effort to create less trash. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that Americans generate about 4.6pounds of trash per person—every day. There are nearly 300 million people in the United States; this means as a society we create about 1.38 billion pounds of trash – every day. We all have to produce less trash and trash that won’t stick around so long.

Most Americans still trap their trash in a plastic bag that itself takes somewhere between 90-500 years to breakdown. Nobody really knows for sure how long a regular plastic bag takes to totally degrade because we have only been using plastic commercially for about 50 years. So, my first thought is go bagless. Bagless may be gross at times, but will not be as much of an issue if you continue to reduce the amount of trash that you and your family produce. Buying in bulk, composting all raw materials (so easy), buying items with little-to-no packaging or packaged in recyclable containers (be choosey), and eating less meat are all ways to reduce your family’s trash production. By taking a few steps in this direction a family of 4 should be able to reduce their household trash to one bag of solid waste per week!

If you still need to use a bag you have several options to choose from when looking for an alternative to the traditional “virgin” plastic bag. I suggest you use trash bags designed to return to the biological cycle, use a bag that can literally be consumed by microorganisms in the landfill. The Lockwood Landfill is anaerobic, meaning little-to-no air reaches the waste, and it is very near impossible for anything to bio-degrade there. There are bags made from plant starches , or those that meet biodegradable standards and or look for bags that are made with recycled materials, even though recycled plastic does not degrade any faster than virgin plastic (at least it is being reused). All of these are options e conomical (priced the same as the national brands) – about .25 cents per bag.

Ultimately the solution is comprehensive – we must all make less trash, support manufacturers that are designing biodegradable packaging, carry cloth bags to the store, reuse bags and containers that we already have, and urge our local City Council to support the development of a more inclusive recycling program. Ultimately we should all be looking to eliminate waste completely – rethinking the way we make products from the design stage to repurposing or biological decomposition all the way to the end of its use. Waste is a concept that we could eliminate one day!

Keep working towards smart solutions,

In Solidarity,

-Econista

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