Upworthy's book GOOD PEOPLE, now available - take a look!

Shop
 Explore 

plastic bags

Planet

Greenpeace just named the best and worst grocery stores for the planet.

Since plastic was first invented in 1907, over 8.3 billion tons has been produced, of which 79% has either wound up in a landfill or the natural environment.

About a third of this plastic are single-use products such as straws, cutlery, and shopping bags. Plastic bags now kill over 1000,000 marine animals a year and the Great Pacific garbage patch has grown past 1.6 million square kilometers.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch. (a thread) pic.twitter.com/YY1ns7Phkj
— samantha ✰ (@_sammy_wilson_) June 18, 2019

Unfortunately, plastic production on Earth is showing no signs of slowing. According to The Guardian, plastic production is set to skyrocket over the next 10 to 15 years, with over 360 million tons produced in 2018 alone.

One way we can work to decrease the amount of plastic produced is to change how and where we shop. Greenpeace has taken the lead by ranking 20 of America's top supermarket chains in terms of how they're fighting the plastic crisis.

Unfortunately the news hasn't been positive. Across the board, "U.S. supermarkets are failing to adequately address the plastic pollution crisis they are contributing to," Greenpeace said in a statement.

"Grocery retailers across the country sell obscene amounts of products in throwaway plastics every single day, yet none of them are acting with the urgency needed to address the pollution crisis they're causing," Greenpeace Plastics Campaigner David Pinsky said in a statement.

"Not only do these companies have the resources to reimagine their stores with refill and reuse systems, they can use their buying power to pressure consumer goods companies like Nestlé, Coca-Cola, and Unilever to act as well," Pinsky continued. "The question is whether retailers will take responsibility for this mess, and act."

The supermarkets were ranked on a scale of 1 to 100, and the top performer, Aldi, received just a 34.6. Aldi achieved a top score by instituting several initiatives that most others do not: a specific plastic reduction target, a more comprehensive plastic reduction plan, greater transparency, and commitments to implement reuse and refill systems.

Here are the top and bottom 5 supermarkets according to Greenpeace.

Top 5:

1. Aldi

2. Kroger

3. Albertsons

4. Trader Joe's

5. Sprouts

Bottom 5:

16. Giant Eagle

17. WinCo Foods

18: Meijer

19. Wakefern

20. H.E.B.

Greenpeace doesn't just want to prompt supermarkets into taking action, it believes that's our job as well.

After learning about your local store's record, it asks you to take the scorecard to your supermarket to show the store's ranking to the store manager. Greenpeace also asks you tell the manager that "customers want to see less single-use plastics and more refill and reuse options."

Greenpeace also suggests you take photos of ridiculous single-use plastic packaging and post it on social media at #BreakFreeFromPlastic.

We really need to do something about this NOW!!! Also: can we all just fucking boycott coffee pods? #breakfreefromplastic #nospaceforwaste https://t.co/PZWLo2hIpy
— E (@AvalosLiz) June 20, 2019

.@Nestle you have created a #plasticmonster, end your reliance on throwaway plastic packaging and immediately phase out single-use plastics across your supply chains. #breakfreefromplastic
— ZairaLu (@ZairaLuVi) June 19, 2019

Everyone should have access to fresh food that is not stored in toxic packaging! No community should be polluted or exposed to toxic chemicals because of cheap packaging. Help us unwrap the myths about the "safety" of food packaging! #UNWRAPPED #breakfreefromplastic pic.twitter.com/AmoCSeIjAQ
— Plastic Pollutes (@PlasticPollutes) June 13, 2019

Even if our local supermarket isn't doing all it can to reduce its plastic footprint, we can all improve by shopping with reusable bags, purchasing loose fruit and vegetables, and shopping at farmers' markets when possible.

From Your Site Articles

This store's hilarious plastic bag designs will ensure you never forget your reusable tote at home.

Brilliant!

East/West Market on Facebook

I'm going to take a second to tell you something about me, a stranger you have never met before: I am literally melting right now. In San Francisco, where I live, there has been no fog for days. Only sweltering, record-breaking heat that makes me want to lie down and not talk to anyone until the rains have come.

Perhaps you're in the same situation. Or maybe it's cool where you are now but you've read a recent paper that outlines the loss of life that will occur if we continue on our collision course with catastrophic climate change. Either way, you're looking at the situation and thinking: This is not normal.

One thing to consider is how plastic consumption contributes to pollution and warming. According to the organizers of Earth Day, Americans buy 1,000,000 plastic bottles every minute. We toss trillions of plastic bags every year. And all that plastic ends up polluting waterways, hurting animals, and releasing greenhouse gases as it breaks down.

While we could speak about the problem with plastics until the earth is covered in it, the only way to take this issue on is through direct action. That's why East/West Market in Vancouver, British Columbia decided to have a little fun with customers who don't bring reusable bags to the store. They've foregone the usual "thank you" bag with something...a little more exotic. You want a plastic bag with your purchase? You're going to have to sport one that announces that you've just bought wart ointment wholesale or are fresh from a deep and hydrating colonic.

That's one way to bring our environmental issues into stark relief. The only problem, Boing Boing reports, is that the bags have become too popular for their own good. Well, maybe just print these designs on reusable bags and sell them. No one will forget them at home and we'll be one step closer to a healthier environment. Win-win.

From Your Site Articles

An artist saw hundreds of plastic bags stuck on a barbed wire fence. It gave him an idea.

Corban Lundborg has tagged old rail yards in Minneapolis, drawn tattoos in South Korea, and traveled to over 50 countries taking photos for the U.S. military.

In all of Lundborg's adventures, there's been one constant: plastic litter.

The reality hit the artist hard during a stint in Cape Town, South Africa, where he shared a home with his girlfriend, two roommates, and a small mini-fridge. On frequent trips to the supermarket, he noticed clerks would often bag each item individually, resulting in an explosion of plastic.

Much of it wound up on the sidewalks and streets.

"The wind picks it up and blows the plastic all into the barbed wire fences," he recalls. "And then it just blows in the wind and you have these like plastic barbed wire flags just waving everywhere you look around the city."

Back home in Los Angeles, he set about incorporating that stark, disquieting image into his art.

Originally conceived as a physical installation, he ultimately settled on a painting project. With a series of colorful brushstrokes, the pieces depict wild animals, their faces melding into the plastic as it consumes them.

All images by Corban Lundborg.

The images are playful, but the implications are serious.

"Part of me wonders why so many people are so against trying to better our environment," Lundborg says. "This is our home. This is where we live. This is where we raise our children. This is where we work, live. This is the air we breathe. Why would you be against trying to do our best to take care of that?"

He hopes his art helps call attention to the proliferation of plastic waste, much of which, ultimately, winds up in our oceans.

"Single-use" packaging, like shopping bags, is the largest category of such trash found in or around bodies of water, according to an April 27, 2017 Huffington Post report.

Lundborg believes everyone has the capacity to contribute something to the clean-up effort — particularly governments and businesses.

He's been encouraged by the proliferation of plastic bag bans, though he'd like to see more investing in alternatives to plastic.

For individuals, it may be as simple as bringing reusable bags to the supermarket, as he and his girlfriend started doing in Cape Town.

"If we could just start small, I think we could see progress," he says.

You can check out more of Lundborg's art and photography here.

Heroes

Because of a plastic bag surcharge, British beaches are suddenly a lot cleaner.

Good news for fans of foggy, damp British beaches!

A beautiful day on the beach in Hastings, Sussex. Photo by Peter Trimming/geograph.org.uk.

Thanks to the efforts of local policymakers and environmental activists, it appears those beaches are a lot less plastic-baggy then they were just five years ago.

In 2011, Wales became the first country in the United Kingdom to require customers at supermarkets and retail stores who want a single-use plastic bag to pay a 5-pence surcharge.

Basically, anyone who wanted to take their items home in a plastic bag had to pay about 5 cents per bag.

An old Sainsbury's bag. Photo by Mark Tristan/Flickr.

Northern Ireland, Scotland, and England followed suit just a few years later. Fast-forward to 2016, and it turns out the new rules have actually been making a noticeable difference, at least in terms of how many of the unsightly, bird-intestine-cloggers wash up on shore, according to a BBC report:

"The number of plastic carrier bags found on UK beaches has dropped by almost half, the Marine Conservation Society (MCS) has said.

The charity's Great British Beach Clean report found just under seven bags per 100 metres of coastline cleaned.

That is a 40% drop from the average 11 bags found in 2015 and is the lowest number in 10 years."

The study wasn't all good news — it also found an increase in plastic bottles and balloon-related litter, and plastic bag trash increased slightly in some regions of England — but overall, the trend seems to be heading in a positive direction.

This is good news for hey-maybe-using-so-much-plastic-just-one-time-is-not-so-good advocates in the United States, who have already won a few key victories in recent years.

A Ralph's supermarket in Hollywood, California. Photo by Yebo420/Wikimedia Commons.

Plastic trash has a nasty habit of poisoning birds, sneaking into the food chain, and winding up in places like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, where it hangs out for hundreds of years, breaking down bit by bit without truly biodegrading. As a result, U.S. states and cities have fought back against our propensity to dispense them willy-nilly.

California banned single-use plastic bags at large retailers in 2014 (a ballot measure affirming the ban was approved this year). Though the prohibition measures are fairly new and the effects are difficult to study comprehensively, data on similar measures is largely encouraging.

Cities like Seattle; Austin, Texas; and Cambridge, Massachusetts, have approved similar bans, while New York City and Washington, D.C., have passed surcharge ordinances similar to those in the U.K.

While plastic bag taxes and bans can seem like a small thing, they can help limit fossil fuel use and promote the health and welfare of marine life, two steps that are crucial for creating a less litter-filled planet.

A bag on the beach at Red Wharf Bay in Wales. Photo by John S. Turner/geograph.org.uk.

A plastic bag surcharge may not be the Paris Agreement, but the fact that data is starting to show that incentivizing customers to reuse shopping bags can be effective environmental policy is good news.

What's better? It's the kind of effective environmental policy supported by data you can see right in front of your face every time you lay out on the beach for a tan.

In the grand scheme of saving the planet, less cluttered beaches are a little thing.

But if it's going to take a sea change to save our planet, it can't hurt to start by cleaning the beach.