By the Numbers: Can America give up its addiction to paper and plastic shopping bags?

4.52 million

Tons of plastic bags and wrap and paper bags that ended up in landfills or in incinerators in 2007, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The breakdown is 3.8 million tons of plastic bags and wrap and 720,000 tons of paper bags.

(The image, entitled "Paper Bags," is by photographer Chris Jordan. The second photo is a detail from the 2007 work. The 60x80-inch photograph is part of the Seattle artist's compelling Running the Numbers series, which, writes Brown, "looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics." The photographs depicts the 1.14 million brown-paper supermarket bags used every hour in this country, according to Jordan. Find out about Jordan's upcoming exhibitions and books.)

One reason all those bags end up as trash is that ,any Americans don't take reusable bags when they shop—61 percent of respondents to a nationally representative survey of 1,000 households by the Consumer Reports National Research Center said they use only grocery-supplied bags. Our survey also found that 80 percent of respondents use grocery-supplied plastic bags at least occasionally; 34 percent, grocery paper bags. Almost half of all respondents use more than one type of bag.

The good news is that about 40 percent of respondents use their own, cloth, string, or laminated bags; among those respondents who don't use their own bags, about a third would consider doing so; and 94 percent who use grocer-supplied paper or plastic bags reuse them, say in their wastebaskets or to pick up after a pet.

The easiest way to cut back on that waste is to bring your own when you shop. We recently rested eight reusable eight bags sold at national chains and regional stores, most of which cost $1 or less. Get all the details on these bags, including analysis of how they did in our strength, size, leaking, and washing tests, in "Paper or Plastic? How About a Tote" (available to subscribers).—Steven H. Saltzman | e-mail | Twitter

Comments

[Jim]

From your survey it sounds like less than 5% of the population throws grocery bags directly in the trash. Everybody else either avoids them or reuses them. Can we declare victory on this alleged landfill-filler and move on now?

[Lawrence Walton]

Retailers have to do this. They have to quit offering the free bags and charge for reusable bags. It only took about three trips to the grocer while I lived in Germany, where free bags are the exception, to get me into the habit of taking my own bag.

[eric]

Who even has plastic bags anymore??