Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair

Andy Keller became an anti-plastic bag crusader and eco-entrepreneur after a 2004 visit to his local landfill. At the landfill he saw plastic bags blowing everywhere, indistinguishable from the birds that were picking at them. Recently unemployed and hoping to start his own enterprise, he decided to create an alternative product. Plastic bag alternatives did exist, but Keller says they were derided by shoppers because of their bulk and poor design. Keller’s bag would be better—people would want to use it. After sewing a prototype that folded neatly into itself, he formed ChicoBag and financed the company with a line of credit on his house and a maxed-out credit card. After initial success, he expanded into other bag types, like duffel bags and mesh produce bags, all made from 97% recycled, reusable, and sustainable materials. He claims that one of his bags replaces at least 500 single-use plastic bags per year.

To market his reusable bag company, Keller waged a public relations war against single-use plastic bags and the plastic bag industry. He visits schools and educates children on plastic bag waste and performs publicly as the villain Bag Monster. In 2010 Bag Monster went on a 20-city tour to cities considering single-use plastic bag bans, culminating in a Bag Monster extravaganza in San Francisco. This publicity stunt drew the ire of three plastic bag manufacturers, who sued Keller and began a public relations campaign of their own to ruin ChicoBag.

Single-use plastic bags became prominent in the 1980s after a Swiss company lost the patent on its design, machinery to produce 500 bags per minute was invented, and cheap natural gas became available to use in constructing the bags. People disliked plastic bags, preferring the sturdier paper bags, but after the plastics industry flooded the market, people slowly became accustomed to them. By the end of the decade, single-use plastic bags had increased in market share from 4% to 50%. Paper companies and plastic bag companies waged public relations battles for market share into the 1990s, when Suffolk County, New York, and the state of Maine both attempted unsuccessfully to ban plastic bags. Both bans were overturned as anticompetitive (they weren’t based on environmental concerns, but rather industry protection and protection of family business interests), and “[a]fter that debacle, the paper-plastic war pretty much went plastic’s way for the next fifteen years” (219). By the new millennium, single-use plastic bags comprised 90% of the market. Modern plastic bag bans have hurt the industry somewhat, but single-use plastic bags remain common in the United States.

Recycling plastic bags is difficult, and few are recycled (5%). They can’t be continuously recycled—only “down-cycled” once into another product. The common single-use alternative, paper bags, are environmentally harmful also: They require more energy and water to produce, increasing their carbon footprint, but if “clean” can be recycled endlessly.

Ireland was the first country to attack plastic bags in 2002, with a 15-euro cent bag tax. The country’s rationale was as follows:

Plastic bags are a great product, but they have been used and disposed of in a profligate and wasteful way. This is because the bags have been viewed as ‘free’ by consumers, when in fact they cost quite a bit in terms of the burden they impose on the environment and on taxpayers (221).

Within weeks, plastic bag use had declined 90%. Grocery stores even became supportive of the ban because it saved them money and increased profits. After Ireland’s success, other countries joined in. In 2005 San Francisco waged into the plastic bag war by attempting to adopt a 17-cent fee for plastic bags. The plastics industry lobbied against the fee at the state level and successfully blocked it. Instead of instituting a fee, the ensuing legislation banned plastic bag fees throughout California. In response, San Francisco banned single-use plastic bags. Though the ban wasn’t as successful at curtailing waste as Ireland’s tax, communities throughout the United States began enacting similar proposals. The plastics industry sued cities, towns, and states to prevent bans. It also lobbied the public heavily, stressing the environmental impact of paper alternatives, and prevented many communities from instituting bag bans and taxes. A 2011 California Supreme Court ruling rejected the plastics industry’s legal claims and provided a template for communities to use when pursuing a plastic bag ban without fear of being sued.

In 2001 Tom Szaky and Jon Beyer, two Princeton University freshmen, founded TerraCycle as an entry to a business contest. TerraCycle used a worm farm to turn university dining hall food scraps into fertilizer. They didn’t win the contest, but the company grew into a perceived threat to The Scotts Company, maker of Miracle-Gro. Miracle-Gro sued TerraCycle under the Lanham Act, a law frequently used by large companies to bully small companies, claiming TerraCycle made false claims about Scotts’s products in its advertising and copied Scotts’s “trade dress”—the color of its packaging. Environmentalists had been decrying Scotts’s products for years, and the suit was motivated more from a desire to quash criticism than by competitive fear. TerraCycle overextended itself on legal fees but utilized the court of public opinion by taking its case to the internet, where it was seen by masses. In six months the company settled out of court with Scotts, but in that time TerraCycle grew into a much larger company with increased demand for its products because of the publicity of the lawsuit, and became a more formidable marketplace foe to Scotts. The company expanded its product offerings, engineered upcycling techniques for environmentally damaging products like chip bags and yogurt cups, and by 2011 was operating in 14 countries.

The plastic bag industry’s next attack was against Keller and ChicoBag. Three plastic bag manufacturers accused ChicoBag of engineering “a continuous and systematic campaign of false advertising and unfair competition” (234). Their contention was with ChicoBag’s “Learn the Facts” website, which published disparaging yet verifiably accurate claims against plastic bag manufacturers. Like the TerraCycle suit, the suit against Keller and ChicoBag was meant to quiet critics of the plastic bag industry. Many states have laws prohibiting this type of frivolous lawsuit, but the bag manufacturers sued Keller in South Carolina, one of the only states without such laws. Keller provided support and scientific research to buttress his claims. He settled with one plaintiff bag company, and the other two dropped out of the case. The result allowed all parties to claim victory, but as in the TerraCycle suit, ChicoBag benefitted from free public relations during litigation, and Keller’s company ended the conflict larger and better-known than it had been before the bag manufacturers attacked him.

Plastic bags are a ubiquitous symbol of our waste, but Humes notes they are a small part of our waste stream. They pollute oceans, but it is unclear how much compared to other pollutants; they litter landfills but comprise a small portion of a landfill’s waste. Keller argues that while they don’t have a huge effect, plastic bags are an important symbol—a clear and obvious example of unnecessary waste. He claims that abandoning single-use plastic bags is the gateway to living more environmentally responsibly. Incremental change is the most reliable way to shape a renewable economy.

Portland, Oregon, consistently tops other cities on metrics measuring recycling, sustainability, and eco-friendliness. As green as the city is, it creates more trash than the average American city at a rate of half a pound per person per day. Portland diverts much of its trash from landfills and waterways by recycling, composting, and creating energy from almost 60%—36% more than the national average. In 2011 the city began planning for a more sustainable future, with projections of increased recycling, reduction in consumption of disposable products, responsible stewardship regulations for manufacturers, and plasma gasification—“a technology that vaporizes garbage with arcs of electrical energy that heat matter inside their beam to 25,000 degrees” and “reduces trash volume by 99 percent” (250-51). As of 2011 this process was prohibitively expensive, but hope remains for its future use. Humes lauds Portland’s green efforts but wonders how such an eco-conscious city produces so much waste.

Humes compares Portland to Copenhagen, Denmark. Copenhagen sends 3-5% of its waste to landfills. The city produces less waste than the average American city, and it converts most of what it does produce into energy in a series of small-scale waste-to-energy plants organized as community-owned cooperatives. The local aspect of the plants reduces transportation costs and permits the plants to provide heat for local houses and businesses through cogeneration—a network of underground pipes flowing from the waste-to-energy power plants to local buildings. Denmark began its sustainability and alternative energy projects during the oil crisis of the 1970s. After the crisis subsided, Denmark continued to prioritize conservation while other countries returned to their wasteful ways. In the 1970s Denmark purchased 90% of its energy from foreign suppliers. It is now energy independent and the world’s wind energy leader. As of Garbology’s publication, Denmark sourced 19% of its energy from wind and even more from trash.

Nickolas Themelis, a Columbia University professor, researcher, and engineer, says waste-to-energy technology now poses no public health or environmental hazards, as it did in the 1950s, when cities began outlawing the practice. He frets, though, that industry interests mean that the same outdated and incorrect arguments used in the 1980s to prevent the technology from being implemented in the United States are still being used today. The entire country only had 87 waste-to-energy plants at the time of Garbology’s publication, most constructed before 1990 with outdated technology. Humes admits, though, that compared to recycling, waste-to-energy is a more expensive and less profitable endeavor: Even small facilities are very expensive to construct, and waste is not as economical of a fuel as alternatives; the environmental impact of recycling is better than waste-to-energy, and it saves more energy than burning.

The problem, though, is that recycling gains have limits, whereas waste-to-energy does not. Humes explains:

[…] theoretical energy savings are often not realized because recycling some materials still costs more than using new raw materials […] Transportation costs, manpower for sorting recyclables from garbage and contamination problems make recycling a lot of common items of trash too costly or too difficult (260-61).

Even in San Francisco, the US city with the highest recycling rate, two-thirds of what the city landfills is theoretically recyclable. Waste-to-energy proponents argue that the practice diminishes landfilling, not recycling, by utilizing excess material that is theoretically recyclable but not actually recycled to create energy. Most sustainability advocates argue we need both recycling and waste-to-energy. For now, we need landfills, but hopefully not for long.

Bea Johnson enacted a no-waste lifestyle for her family after downsizing into a smaller apartment and observing “[a]ll the packaging and boxes and shopping bags and money that went with it […] was gone, and instead of missing it all, she discovered that she reveled in its absence” (269). Now, Johnson and her family practice and preach a no-waste lifestyle. They fit a year’s worth of trash into a mason jar and reduced their family budget by 40%. Johnson helps others de-clutter with her small business Be Simple, and her husband Scott runs a sustainability consultancy. Johnson preaches that living waste-free is not denying oneself anything, but rather freeing oneself from the prison of consumerism. She adds “refuse” to the traditional eco-conscious three R’s. She advocates refusing “crap”—disposable goods, processed foods, clutter items, items that will obsolesce, and other wasteful expenditures. She explains, “every time you say yes, you are inviting more to be made. You have created demand for more waste” (275).

There are limitations to Johnson’s lifestyle. Junk mail arrives whether the recipient wants it or not, and school picture marketing prints arrive home in folders to be immediately disposed of, but the simple act of refusing needless “crap” that clutters her life eliminates a high percentage of the family’s waste. In the past, people would save and sacrifice to purchase something important that would last and possibly become an heirloom. Johnson laments that now not buying something is a sacrifice and extending oneself on consumer credit to impulse purchase disposable or fad items is the norm.

Johnson believes individual choices can profoundly impact the world’s environmental problems and that the important changes are those made by individuals in their purchasing habits, not those of Fortune 500 companies, Wall Street firms, and politicians. She places blame and responsibility for solving our environmental problems on individuals, not those who hold power over society, its production, and marketplaces. She says the American Dream is freedom, and individuals deny themselves freedom by enslaving themselves to the disposable consumer economy.

Other sustainable living advocates tackle problems head-on: Crowley chartered a vessel and commissioned an inventor to design oceanic garbage removal devices; Rob Gogan holds one of the United States’ largest yard sales yearly with items Harvard undergrads leave behind; Kim Masoner organizes California beach cleanups and crochets single-use plastic bags into bedrolls she distributes to homeless; Keller, Szaky, Beyer, and others form companies to challenge wasteful competitors in the marketplace and provide alternative products for green-minded individuals to purchase. Johnson, from the perch of a wealthy family in an urban location with lots of options for sustainable and package-free purchasing, scolds people for not living as waste-free as her family. Humes does not understand why the others are perceived positively but Johnson is derided. 

Given the “102-ton leviathan of trash” (288), it is easy to believe individuals are powerless in the quest for waste reduction and sustainability. Humes disagrees, advocating that individuals’ daily choices create our disposable economy. Humes argues that it is our decision to purchase shampoo in plastic bottles, food in non-recyclable packaging, and appliances that cease to work after a short time that fills the waste stream. To Humes, the disposable economy was borne of decisions by individual people to live and consume more wastefully, and it is individuals’ responsibility to correct course. He offers five actions that individuals can take to rid the country of its wasteful practices: Refuse wasteful and unnecessary things; buy pre-owned to save the environmental cost of manufacturing, distribution, and disposal of an old item; don’t buy bottled water; stop using single-use plastic bags; and think of the “cost of ownership,” asking whether a particular purchase is something we will want in our lives long-term.

In 2012 the Los Angeles City Council voted 13-1 to ban plastic shopping bags, becoming the largest city at the time to do so. After the meeting, councilman Bill Rosendahl proclaimed that plastic bottles would be next (as of March 2020, the city had not banned them). After the first year of the ban, Los Angeles saw a 75% reduction in single-use plastic bags. Grocers and residents have not suffered during the ban. States, cities, and towns have been enacting similar eco-friendly measures for the past decade. Every level of action, from the individual to business interests to the federal government, has worked to enact eco-friendly sustainable change. Still, waste continues to rise, landfills continue to be filled, plastic continues to journey to the ocean, and global carbon dioxide levels continue to rise. Individuals, select communities, and some businesses are doing what they can to combat the disposable economy, but it seems the disposable economy is winning.