Kroger goes green

The era of plastic grocery bags may be wrapping up

We know that convenient plastic grocery bags have to end. They poison the earth.

Although plastic breaks down into ever tinier fragments, it doesn’t biodegrade like cloth and paper. It remains in the soil or water almost indefinitely. Future generations may identify our era by a layer of indestructible plastic in the rock.

The Kroger Co. has acknowledged all this and started down the path to change.

Anyone who has bought groceries on the West Coast of our country knows that, in those places, change is already here — plastic bags are not free. And, in some places, they are not available at all.

California banned single-use plastic bags in 2016. Eventually that’s going to happen throughout the nation.

Kroger has said it will phase out single-use plastic bags and transition to reusable bags at its 2,779 food stores nationwide by 2025. It’s the right thing to do. Industry analyst David Livingston of DJL Research in Milwaukee has said Kroger is “just jumping ahead” of inevitable changes in the law. But 2025is also a long time from now.

There have been attempts to defend the lowly grocery bag. An exhaustive study of grocery bags by the Ministry of Environment and Food in Denmark somewhat unexpectedly found that the total environmental impact of the typical LDPE grocery store bag (counting the impact of its manufacture and allowing for at least some recycling) is far less than the impact of reusable bags.

The problem is that plastic bags are not recycled enough. By some estimates, some 100 billion plastic bags are thrown away every year.

Few things are as convenient as the free plastic grocery bag. It serves to carry our groceries. It is “re-purposed” as waste-basket liners. We pick up pet waste with it. We use it to bag our used gym clothes and take our lunch to work.

The “replacement” is going to be a reusable bag that you’ll have to pay Kroger for if you forgot to bring your own bags from home — every time you forget.

Enjoy the plastic grocery bag while you can. It is an endangered species.