Sustainable Riverdale

An occasional series

The Food Emporium goes through 40,000 plastic bags a week. If you lined them up they'd reach from the store to the 239th St. Monument.

By Kate McNeil

They thrive under sinks and congregate in gutters. Easily transferable by wind or water, they are the environment's newest menace.

Plastic bags, once the conscientious answer to the query, "paper or plastic?" are filling up landfills and giving legislators headaches.

In New York, the flimsy carriers are an everyday commodity for consumers and a cheap alternative for retailers - at two cents apiece, plastic bags cost less than half what a brown sack does.

Food Emporium manager Bob Aran said his Riverdale Avenue store goes through roughly 40,000 a week. Even balled up to the size of a fist, if you lined them up they'd reach from the Food Emporium at West 259th Street to the Monument at West 239th Street.

Plastic bags take about 13 lifetimes to biodegrade, and it is estimated only one percent of them are recycled. Environmentalists say they are a hazard to wildlife.

Plastic bags comprise nearly three percent of the New York City's waste stream but without large high-tech facilities to decontaminate and sort plastic bags, the city Department of Sanitation does not recycle them. Some grocery stores, like Whole Foods, ShopRite and Stop & Shop allow shoppers to recycle their bags instore.

Food Emporium offers a two-cent discount per bag to encourage recycling.

"There's a small, core group of customers that bring back their bags," said Nancy Pichardo, a Food Emporium employee for 35 years.

Ms. Pichardo estimated the store gives back $4 to $6 each week for customers reusing bags. That's an average of 200 to 300 reused bags - a small dimple in the estimated 40,000 bags the store hands out each week.

But Elizabeth Haub is doing her part to reduce the use.

To egg on customers in the environmental movement, Ms. Haub has designed sturdy waterproof canvas bags and sells them for 99 cents, with most of the profit benefiting environmental causes. The display sells out every week or so, but Ms. Pichardo doesn't see the bags returning to the store.