Kroger gives reliable (but polluting) plastic the sack
“Paper or plastic?”
It was one of the things that grocery clerks used to ask about bag preference back in the day when we had choices … and grocery clerks.
Oh, sure, there are still some clerks out there. And there’s still some paper out there. But these days, many of us do self-checkout and throw everything in those handy, I mean, planet-destroying plastic bags. Sometimes we even double-bagged our groceries in those wonderful, I mean, wasteful bags.
Not anymore. At least not at Kroger. At least not after 2025.
Last week the Kroger Co. — which estimates it serves 9 million customers daily at its 2,779 stores (which includes Kroger, obviously, and several other chains like Ralphs and Harris Teeter) in 35 states and Washington — announced it is gradually putting an end to pollution-causing plastic.
Which we guess means that biodegradable bags made of paper — which we loathed in the first place because they’re leaky and not that durable — and reusable totes — which we always forget to tote with us — will become the norm.
Said Mike Donnelly, Kroger’s chief operating officer, in a news release, “We listen very closely to our customers and our communities, and we agree with their growing concerns.” Not to mention the growing list of states and cities that are banning plastic bags or charging fees for them.
In the release, Kroger’s Chairman and CEO Rodney McMullen said, “We are phasing out use-once, throwit-away plastic bags and transitioning to reusable bags in our stores by 2025.
“It’s a bold move that will better protect our planet for future generations.”
A bold move indeed, and one that will certainly affect my children for sure. Um, exactly what am I going to use now to scoop after cats Kate and Pippa?
At least we have seven years (which is not fast enough for some; said one user on Twitter: “Seven years for a corporation to implement its own single-use plastic bag ban is not a victory. It is a public relations scheme to create an *illusion of corporate responsibility* which #Kroger will leverage *against* the rising tide of legislative remedies”). That’s plenty of time to think about it and stockpile.
It’s the environmental stockpiling that is essentially the problem.
“Some estimates suggest that 100 billion single-use plastic bags are thrown away in the U.S. every year,” the release said. “Currently, less than five percent of plastic bags are recycled annually in America, and single-use plastic bags are the fifth-most common single-use plastic found in the environment by magnitude.”
I get all that. Admittedly, I’ve never recycled a plastic bag in my life; the city won’t accept them and I have not managed to remember to recycle bags at the grocery store — it’s victory enough to actually get to the store.
Still, single-use bags have never had a single-use in my household. When not used for pets, they’ve transported everything from lunches to work to magazines to friends in the hospital. Those cheap, plastic bags — at least when when they don’t have several holes in the bottom, as is the norm — have served as everything from small trashcan liners to kitchen scrap catchers as well as makeshift shower caps during my days of home hair color.
And like with environmentally unfriendly plastic straws that also have fallen out of favor, I’m going to miss them.
But I’m not worried about me.
I’m worried about pop singer Katy Perry. In a few years, her 2010 “Firework” song will be all the more dated. Lyrics:
Do you ever feel like a plastic bag
Drifting through the wind Wanting to start again Same for the lyrics to another piece of music, a 2015 rap song:
Get a plastic bag
Go ahead and pick up all the cash
Go ahead and pick up all the cash
You danced all night, girl, you deserve it.
Like the rest of the plastic bags out there, Drake and Future’s “Plastic Bag” has no future. Email this windbag: jchristman@arkansasonline.com What’s in a Dame is a weekly report from the woman ’hood.