To bag or not to bag, that is the question. What gives plastic bags such a bad wrap?
Not ever having been accused of practicing science, I wanted to find an easy way to figure if using re-usable bags is safe.
My shopping habits probably are like most people’s. One day I will go to the store to purchase food. The next day I may go to the hardware store for some product to try and control those pesky snails in my yard.
In the past when plastic bags were paramount, I never would reuse a plastic bag for anything other than a garbage container.
Food bag.
Poison box transport device.
It made no difference. It ended its useful service to me as a trash bag.
Think back to the last time you shopped. When you packed your own bag, did you put the laundry detergent box in the same bag as the fruit you purchased? Did that flat of uncooked chicken thighs wrapped in shrinkwrap plastic ride home in the same bag as your fresh grapes?
Separation Anxiety
I can honestly tell you I separated items like these. Having suffered through a full blown case of Campylobacter a number of years ago, I will attest to the idea of playing it safe.
Now onto the scientific part. I have been using those cheap “cloth-like” bags that the stores sell and that we can get free at other venues .
I have four such bags. Two are printed with a car wax company’s logo; the other two are blank. I never have washed any of these re-useable bags. All of them seem “clean.” Usually they reside in the trunk of my car or motorcycle.
I decided to find out for myself whether the bags were carriers of more than just the contents I put inside of them. Recently I had purchased some brie and wound up with a half-inch slice four inches square.
I cut that slice into four almost equal pieces and put each one in its own plastic container with a snap-on lid.
I foraged through my home first-aid kit for four sealed 4×4 gauze pads. Each one came from its own sealed bag.
Control Cheese Survives Nicely
I went out to my car with one of the pads and randomly grabbed the closest bag. Taking a few swipes of the inside of the bag with the 4×4 gauze, I used the same pad to wipe the top of a piece of cheese, snapping the lid back on the container before putting it in the fridge.
I did the same with two other pieces of cheese with different re-usable bags. The forth piece of brie, the control, was swabbed with a virgin pad, just sealed in the container and refrigerated with the others.
Two weeks passed.
It became quite apparent that the “control” cheese looked almost the same way it did the day it was sealed in the plastic container.
The other three pieces of brie looked “painted” on top, right where I had swabbed them.
A scientific test?
I think not.
I did not test one-use bags.
(I did not care about any latent bugs on them because I only used them for trash.)
I did not follow a strict scientific protocol. However, the results are telling.
I am not going to delve into the economic issues of a plastic bag ban.
But I would like to know if the business selling them for 10 cents each gets to keep the dime or does it go to the city as a tax.
I suggest some discussion on the part of those parties considering a plastic bag ban about letting stores that primarily sell food stuffs to continue to offer one use plastic bags.
This idea, I believe, would be safer for the public as a whole and for those of us who want to use re-usable plastic bags so we can continue as we do now.
Mr. Corlin, a former Mayor and two-term former City Councilman, may be contacted at ad747@lafn.org
