OCTOBER 2019 • COUNTRY LIFE IN BC Banning plastic bags ignores reality


Paper is no substitute on a rainy day when you’re selling potatoes at the market Clamorous demands have led the society that runs the nine farmers markets in Vancouver to announce that, beginning in 2020, all single- use plastic bags will be banned. It’s been discussed


I going to maintain sales at the market if I can’t use plastic bags? My other feelings include


indignation and not a little derision: how dare anyone who has never tried to sell


Viewpoint by ANNA HELMER


for years, but the formal announcement has forced me to publicly admit that I have issues with the new policy. First, some background. Our family has been selling potatoes at the markets for more than 25 years. A lot of what we sell is sold in plastic. Potatoes, mainly, but also carrots, beets, parsnips and, on the odd occasion, broccoli, beans and basil. Retailing with plastic is effective and efficient. Retailers know this. I also suspect consumers believe things in plastic are more hygienic, so that adds to the appeal and the demand for plastic bagging. It’s entirely about boosting sales, however. So why not at a farmers’


market? It’s very reliable: if I want something to sell, I bag it in plastic. Boom. It sells. My farm depends on farmers’ market sales for almost 80% of its revenue, and at least half those sales come from things in plastic. We make it convenient, attractive and of good value. We’ve tried lots of packaging alternatives, but none check all the boxes. The pending plastic bag ban is causing me to feel (and this is just for starters) highly irritated, somewhat stressed, and quite misunderstood. A mild yet persistent panic overrides everything: how am


potatoes in the rain demand a plastic bag ban. You can’t just


put them in paper. A paper bag containing heavy potatoes is going to be very disappointing at some future (possibly inconvenient and ruinous) point, even in only slightly moist weather. The more fickle customer is going to pass on potatoes in soggy paper (and believe me, there are a lot of that type of customer).


This line of thought leads


to a further point of indignation: why is it okay to impede my ability to compete in the retail environment? Our markets know they’re competing with grocery stores for customers; why should local produce come in any less convenient packaging than what other retailers offer? Moreover, what exactly do


you mean when you glibly say “single-use plastic bag,” which appears to be the go- to wording for these kinds of policies? It sounds a little trendy, to my ears, and it’s semantically weak. How about those produce


roll-bags? They don’t have holes. They get used again. And again. Especially to carry potatoes and carrots in damp weather, and to store them at home. It’s been a long, long time since there was no plastic in the household. Before plastic bags, homes featured things like root-


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storage rooms, and somebody doing daily cooking and shopping. Freshly dug, delicate, oh-so- tasty nugget potatoes store well in a plastic bag in the bottom crisper drawer OR in a log-walled, dirt floor roothouse, kept (at considerable expense) at a cool 4° and 90% humidity. Do people really know how to live without plastic? It’s kind of a big deal. Anyways, I am pretty sure those roll-bags are included in this ban. (As another aside – because it is irresistible and the resentment has briefly bubbled over – are the same people also calling for a ban on plastic dog-poop bags? Oh? What’s that? You have a dog? And you think those dog-poop bags aren’t rife with environmental issues and that your dog poop is pure? Bah. Pick it up with paper, why don’t you?) I guess I think demands for plastic bag bans are thoughtless and just a little frenzied. It seems crazy to expect a little farmer like me to have to re-invent packaging and that, having done so, it will matter. I don’t want to have to go through this with my 600 customers a week when the other three million people in the Lower Mainland are being offered, and voluptuously consuming, singularly useless plastics galore at the grocery store. I don’t think anyone should


feel like an environmental champion because they have been successful in their calls for a plastic bag ban at farmers’ market. This is, and you will forgive the expression, very small potatoes, and the price is being paid by a small, local organic family farm. Hardly heroic. Having said all that, I’m going to stop using the plastic bags with holes. They’re meant to serve a single purpose, and do it well, but they truly are a single-use item. We can do better. But all plastic bags? I have a better idea: why don’t we let customers choose who to support? They already do this with non-organic and organic farming systems; why not packaging, too? Our farmers’ markets are


already setting the pace for low-impact business operations. I am awed by and deeply appreciative of the efforts people make to buy well-grown food at farmers’ markets. Speaking of plastic alone, our customers must use barely any compared to a grocery store shopper. Shouldn’t we be boasting about that? And enticing more people to shop with us, rather than scaring them off? It is a simple exercise to find something environmentally devastating in someone else’s lifestyle. I try to resist – the dog-poop bag rant being exception – because, sometimes, it is simply none of my business. Anna Helmer farms with family and friends in the Pemberton Valley and dearly loves to pile it high and watch it fly.


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