Washington - US supermarkets have a way of confirming preconceptions about Americans and their environmental sins. Cashiers at US supermarket chains seem to see no limit to the number of plastic bags they use to pack groceries, a job the cashiers themselves perform for customers.
Indeed, those customers are the undisputed world champions in the use of plastic bags. About 100 billion plastic bags are used annually in the US, authorities say. That's about 300 bags each year per US resident, including infants, prison inmates and environmentalists.
Concern about the impact on the environment has caused US residents to rethink the use of plastic bags. But the measures they are taking are unusual and don't always produce a satisfactory result.
The bags, often made of petroleum-based plastics, are hard to recycle, the anti-plastic bag faction says, and are blamed for killing fish, birds and turtles if they end up in waterways. The light-weight bags also cause litter when they blow into trees, hedges and fence rows.
A few US supermarket chains have reacted to growing environmental consciousness.
To encourage customers to reuse their grocery bags, the fashionable supermarket chain Whole Foods, which targets affluent shoppers, gives 5 cents off the grocery bill for every bag customers bring for packing their own purchase. Giant, a larger, more conventional grocery store chain, refunds 3 cents for every bag reused.
A few city councils are moving to ban plastic bags altogether. First among them was San Francisco, which has forbidden the use of plastic bags in supermarkets beginning in autumn and in pharmacies starting next year. The city ordinance sponsored by San Francisco Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi was passed earlier this year.
"I am astounded and surprised by the worldwide attention," Mirkarimi told the San Francisco Chronicle in March. "Hopefully, other cities and other states will follow suit."
The Maryland cities of Annapolis and Baltimore, which are located on the major waterway of the Chesapeake Bay, have shown interest in following San Francisco's lead.
Sam Shropshire, a member of the Annapolis City Council, has introduced legislation that would ban distribution of plastic bags in the city limits. But so far San Francisco is alone among major cities in implementing a ban.
San Francisco first tried to reach a voluntarily deal two years ago with the California Grocers Association to reduce the use of plastic bags. The agreement called on large supermarkets to give out 10 million fewer plastic bags in 2006.
The grocers association said its members cut back by 7.6 million bags, but city officials said the data were unreliable. An estimated 180 million bags were still being given out annually in the city of 750,000 residents.
The statistics led to renewed interest in banning plastic bags, which just a few decades ago were a welcomed change from then commonly used paper grocery bags because they made it easier to carry groceries and were seen as a way to combat deforestation.
Now, the new ban on plastic is seen as a way to save 1.7 million litres of oil annually used in the production of plastic bags while reducing waste that ends up in landfills or as litter in the environment.
But the San Francisco grocers association has warned that the new law will lead to higher prices and frustrate recycling efforts. Each bag costs supermarkets 2 to 3 cents, compared with anywhere from 5 to 10 cents for a paper or biodegradable bag.
The fight against plastic bags also creates a dilemma for US environmentalists whose concern over the environmental friendliness of paper bags has again been aroused.
Franklin Associates, a Kansas consulting company that specializes in environmental issues, estimates that the production of paper bags requires twice as much energy as the production of plastic bags.
Plastic bags also prove better ecologically if they are recycled, the company said.
Environmentalists, therefore, want to change US consumer habits from the ground up. Society should instead completely rethink the use of plastic bags, Shropshire said.
"Plastic in the water, it looks like jellyfish. Animals in the water go after it. They swallow it. They get intestinal blockage. They die," Shropshire was quoted by Washington's local NBC television affiliate as saying. " We need to stop this. We need to clean up our act."
The goal should be for US residents to begin reusing their plastic bags, he said, but admits this will take a long time. The plastic is very thin and tears easily, raising questions about whether reusing the bags makes sense at all.
The United States status as world champion in the use of plastic shopping bags is not likely to change for a long time.
