Starting Friday, Rhode Islanders who take the trouble to return used plastic shopping bags to their local grocery stores can rest assured they are making a solid contribution to the environment. Very solid.
Starting Friday, Rhode Islanders who take the trouble to return used plastic shopping bags to their local grocery stores can rest assured they are making a solid contribution to the environment. Very solid.
The stores and the state are collaborating on what appears to be the first statewide program to collect plastic grocery bags and to recycle them - in this case at a very memorable destination.
To assure the bags are recycled usefully, the state has made arrangements to sell them to Trex Co., a fast-growing, Virginia-based firm that combines recycled plastic and wood to make decking and railings sold across the country.
The campaign, dubbed ReStore, begins Friday, with brightly marked blue boxes installed at the front of 61 grocery stores throughout the state.
Rhode Islanders use a lot of plastic shopping bags -- an estimated 192 million a year.
But in manufacturing plants around the country, Trex consumes a lot more plastic bags -- 1.5 billion a year.
It takes 140 bags to make just one foot of the two-by-four decking. It takes 140,000 bags to make an average 500-square-foot deck.
Through polls, conversations with grocers and reports from the public, Sherry Mulhearn, executive director of the Rhode Island Resource Recovery Corporation, said she is convinced the public will embrace the new program and help reduce plastic bags being discarded at the state's Central Landfill.
"I truly believe people want to know where their bags are going," Mulhearn said.
A state law passed 16 years ago required retailers to offer paper bags to patrons if they offer plastic. It was never enforced and, since then, plastic bags have become the convenient choice for much of the public, and a key component of litter statewide.
Last winter, Mulhearn launched her first campaign to clean up plastic bag litter that was overrunning the Central Landfill in Johnston operated by the Resource Recovery Corporation.
Although some stores had poorly marked boxes to collect bags returned by customers, Mulhearn contended that most of the bags invariably ended up at the landfill, where they flew out of discarded refuse and adorned the surrounding streets and trees.
Mulhearn concluded it cost the corporation $1 million a year to clean up those bags. So working with the RDW Group Inc. public relations firm, Mulhearn launched a $250,000 advertising campaign to encourage people to tie their bags into knots before throwing them away.
The campaign included striking images of small animals made out of knotted plastic bags.
Mulhearn said last week she cannot yet show that the program reduced litter cleanup costs at the landfill, but she said it looks like there is less.
What's more, when she compared a survey of 500 Rhode Islanders last month with one taken before the ad campaign, some 80 percent recalled some element of the ad campaign, such as bags stuck in trees.
The number of people who said they believe paper is better than plastic rose from 31 percent to 81 percent.
More than 50 percent said they tie bags together more than they used to, or saw an ad advising them to do so.
The number of people who said they preferred paper bags increased from 23 percent to 31 percent, but more people continued to say they preferred plastic.
Mulhearn said the responses convinced her the public wanted to do more.
In other parts of the country, and in other nations, governments have been imposing taxes and fees to discourage use of plastic bags.
At the same time, Mulhearn said she believes Rhode Islanders would never start shopping daily as do many Europeans who carry canvas bags. Rhode Islanders like to shop once a week, and that requires an average of 20 plastic bags.
Mulhearn said the resource recovery commissioners believed it would be wrong to impose a tax without first giving Rhode Islanders an opportunity to try a more cooperative approach. And that meant having her agency work with local markets to initiate a program to collect plastic bags and find some way to get them reused.
"We are the recycling facility, so it was clear we should be doing this," Mulhearn said.
Mulhearn approached the Rhode Island Food Dealers Association, which represents most of the larger grocers, and got an enthusiastic response.
"It was like, let's do it," said Anita San Antonio, president of the association. "We do produce a lot of bags and this is a good solution. It works on all angles. It's good for us, good for the customers and good for the state. It's the best program we've ever come up with."
The corporation had previously worked with Trex to recycle shrink-wrap used to protect thousands of boats in Rhode Island each winter. Last spring Trex collected more than 40,000 pounds of shrink-wrap used on 1,500 boats in 15 marinas.
Trex grinds pallets and wood scraps from the furniture industry into a flour and mixes that with plastic. Other companies produce similar products, but spokeswoman Maureen Murray says Trex has the largest market share.
The decking doesn't shrink, rot or splinter.
She agrees with Mulhearn that the certainty of knowing the destination of used plastic bags could spur more recycling efforts by the public.
"I think consumers don't trust that their recyclables are being properly used," she said. "If they know it's going to decking, they'll do it."
Murray hopes to find a deck built with Trex decking in Rhode Island so people here can see the product first hand. She said if there isn't one already in place, Trex will build it.
The Resource Recovery Corporation recently retrofitted a paper baler in its recycling plant so it could bale plastic into 2,000 pound blocks.
Mulhearn has budgeted $250,000 to work with RDW on the new campaign.
RDW designed bright blue boxes that will be placed in front of each of the participating grocery stores.
Signs over each box will show the familiar birds and rabbits made with plastic bags. People will be encouraged in Spanish and English to recycle.
One million announcements have been printed to slip into shoppers' bags.
Mulhearn will be visiting groceries throughout the state Friday to make public service announcements with local officials.
Participating grocers include 24 Stop & Shop Supermarkets, 15 Shaw's supermarkets, 7 Dave's Marketplace stores, 3 A&J Seabra Supermarkets, 3 Brigido's IGA Marketplace stores, as well as Andreoni's Market in Lincoln, Belmont Market in Wakefield, Carcieri's Supermarket in Providence, Clement's Market in Portsmouth, Dino's Park n' Shop in Chepachet, Dunn's Corners Market, Eastside Marketplace and Shore's Fresh Food Market in Providence, and Tom's Market in Coventry.
To see more of the The Providence Journal, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.projo.com.
Source: Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
