EDITORIAL: Choose to reuse: bag it in fabric

It’s time for more Minnesotans to become more European about their grocery shopping habits. Yes, it’s OK to bring your own bag to the grocery store and reuse it again and again.

All three of Hutchinson’s grocery stores now sell fabric reusable grocery bags for about $1. There’s no longer the need to ponder whether paper or plastic is the right choice. There is no right choice other than the reusable bag.

Europeans have been shopping this way for as long as anyone can remember. How Americans ever picked up the paper or plastic habit is beyond our comprehension. We only know this for sure: paper and plastic bags waste precious natural resources, and consume a lot energy to make them.

The new resuable fabric bags available at Hutchinson grocery stores are made mostly from recycled materials and are recyclable themselves. A label on a bag from one of the stores explains that the bag is made from approximately four plastic soda bottles and can replace 50 plastic shopping bags. It can carry the same weight as two to three shopping bags.

Product packaging
While you’re at the grocery store, also pay attention to product packaging. Another huge waste. That’s why we were pleased to learn that the world’s largest retailer, Wal-Mart, is pushing for more “green” manufacturing, which means less packaging. When Wal-Mart pushes an agenda, others listen and many follow.

Wal-Mart, Cash Wise, EconoFoods and other retailers know that to keep their prices low, they need to eliminate unnecessary costs. Those unnecessary costs include sending thousands of truckloads of over-packaged products from the warehouse to stores. Just imagine how much money can be saved if retailers could reduce packaging so they can squeeze an additional 5 percent or 10 percent of items onto a truck. Some retailers are keeping score on how well product manufacturers do.

While you’re in the grocery aisle, take notice of the packaging yourself. It’s long been obvious in the cereal aisle that some manufacturers have been slipping their cereals into a simple plastic bag, while other cereals are packed in bags within boxes. The unit price on many of the bagged cereals is almost half the price of the boxed cereals. Packaging costs obviously are a major factor.

Walk down the snack aisle and you’ll notice that snack makers are packaging more products in individual servings. That might help keep your snack fresh and help you control your carb intake, but before purchasing it, consider what it does for the landfill.

Walk down another aisle and you’ll likely notice products packed in blister packs or clamshells made from PVC plastic. Opening one of these packages can drive consumers nuts. Fortunately, PVC is becoming a bad word in the packaging industry and more manufacturers are using a new biodegradable product known as PLA, or polylactic acid. It’s more expensive than PVC, but with time, packaging experts hope to bring the price down.

“Going green” at the grocery store is not just a trend. If retailers can show that it can save money as well as the environment, our planet and consumers will benefit.

Editorials are written by Publisher Matt McMillan and Editor Doug Hanneman. They can be reached at mcmillan@hutchinsonleader.com, or hanneman@hutchinsonleader.com.