The plastic Bag's New Year's Resolution

Start on the outside and work your way in.

I can sympathise with Sam H's previous post of self-reflection. The CC live project seems to have entailed a self cirque of us all, so I am glad in learning of such renegade resolutions. Refusing a carrier bag is not just a reduction in your quantitative consumption, but also signifies a re-positioning in the ways in which we consume. The simple action of bringing an alternative (reusable) method of packing and carrying your goods with you to the shop, shows a sense of preparative responsibility and innovation.

The larger supermarkets are in on it too. Many now offer reusable textile bags and branded crates at a small cost, but such initiatives appear overshadowed by the constant attention to their general over-packaging of everyday commodities in the daily newspapers. For instance, The Independent recently dedicated its front page (as it does) to the fact that Morrisons sell turnips wrapped in a 'protective plastic film',[1] even though it has its own 'natural wrapper', just like a banana.
With the promise of bio-degradable 'half life' plastic bags to be rapidly introduced into the system, why is the retailer response an attempt to limit the damage, rather than cut the supply? Is this evidence our habits are perceived as too firmly rooted to support such 'radical change'?
In retaliation, The UK Women's Environmental Network deployed the “Wrapping is a Rip Off” campaign, urging its participants to dump their packaging at the checkout and return the responsibility of its disposal back to the producer. It is presumed a large scale participation could incur new costs for the supermarket and an eventual change in it's packaging policies.
This 'de-design' of purchases seems to recognise that we are buying an actual commodity of function and purpose, and that we are perhaps no longer interested in it's external aesthetics. Such 'false values' are usually associated with brand identity. The purchasing of a lifestyle embedded within the product as a sort of 'hyper-reality' is not a new concept, but these values are now all to often appearing in the product's packaging as part of the design. Costas also acknowledged such over-valuations in suggesting human consumer trends are subject to fluctuate between the ideal models of self definition. However, choosing 'not at all', rather than 'something else' could potentially lead to a new direction, away from the usual cycle of social repositioning.

Is the plastic bag not then, the most outer layer of a product's packaging, and thus the first layer to be renounced in the slimming of consumer goods, and a retreat to the primary purposes of acquisition? This in turn may lead to a greater respect and indulgence in the 'truer forms'; that is the commodity purchased under no aesthetic illusion. It is the lack of this consumer/product relationship that creates our “throw away culture”[2] and fuels the production of disposable, singular life objects.

Victor Papanek suggests that the continued expansion of a disposable mentality may soon affect the way we view the integrity of our social relations[3], which in turn may lead to a further disregard for ones neighbour and a failure to recognise the planet as a communal inhabitation.

[1] McSmith, A. (Tuesday 30th January 2007), The Independent - Rules on wasteful packaging 'are unenforceable'. http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article2198396.ece
[2] Toffler, A. (1971) Future Shock, Pan Books, London, p50.
[3] Papanek, V. (1972) Design for the Real World, Thames Hudson Ltd. London, p74.

see also: www.wen.org