Praise for the Plastic Bag

Praise for the Plastic Bag. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Line On Agriculture.

When was the last time you heard, Paper or Plastic? Most stores don’t even ask these days. Many cities and states have been looking at banning the plastic grocery bag but Mark Daniels, Vice President of Sustainability and Environmental Policy for Hilex Poly company says there is a lot of misinformation out there.

DANIELS: Fortunately, Greg, when we have the opportunity to speak with legislators in the State of Washington and throughout other states that have brought up this kind of legislation to ban a uniquely American based product that is highly reused and highly recyclable, 100% recyclable, we’re able to basically correct some misinformation and then speak about the environmental attributes of our product.

He says they believe that recycling and consumer education are the keys to handling plastic bags.

DANIELS: Because not only do we recycle used plastic bags but we also want to get the word out that we’re going to recycle the home newspaper plastic bags, bread bags, dry cleaning bags, produce bags plus all the plastic overwrap that you’ll find on towels and tissues and bottles and cans. All of that material can be brought back to our retail partners throughout the United States. We purchase that material which helps keep grocery costs down and then we reprocess that material into post-consumer polyethylene and we remanufacture new bags with post-consumer resin in it.

Other companies are using this material to make wood decking and park benches among other products. He discusses some of the misconceptions.

DANIELS: The fact that it’s sanitary, it’s 100% recyclable, the fact that 9 out of every 10 Americans reuse their bags for home conveniences; lining your trash cans or using it for packaging material or using it as a lunch bag, following after your pet and picking up after them. It has high utility and high reuse rates. And then we’re just asking the public to bring back those bags and wraps to the store and we recycle it. And as we’re doing that and getting that message out the vast majority of legislators no matter what side of the aisle you are on are like, this is really progressive, this is really the right way for us to grow a green industry in the United States.

Daniels says that there are 10-thousand American jobs tied to the manufacture and recycling of plastic bags. He says that the reusable bags you buy need to be washed often or they can breed bacteria while paper bags just have a much larger foot print.

DANIELS: But we certainly believe in consumer choice and each individual should make their decision on how to carry out their retail products based on the best information available to them.

That’s today’s Line On Agriculture. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.