Death of the Throwaway Society? The Lohasians Cometh!

“They don’t make ‘em like they used to,” goes the expression. This is true to some extent. While certain kinds of consumer durables like cars, white goods, tools, and outdoor gear can now be purchased with unprecedented levels of quality, finish, and durability, this cannot be said of many other products. In numerous categories – including hardware and building supplies - immediate or short-term use and disposability are increasingly designed into the product. Flimsy, people call them. Cheap and cheerful. The debris of the Throwaway Society. Is this trend ecologically sustainable? Traditional concerns about waste and litter aside, in view of today’s debates about climate change and energy scarcity, it certainly isn’t!

Perhaps the greatest icon of the throwaway society is the single-use shopping (or grocery) bag. Since Walter Deubner came up with the idea around 1912, they have become a fixture of modern life. Owner of a small grocery in St. Paul, Minnesota, USA, Walter Deubner came up with a clever paper bag design with cord handles (which he later patented) so that customers could carry more away from his store – and therefore buy more on each visit. Convenient they were! People no longer had to think about bringing their own baskets or sacks, or could carry away more than their own container held. Mr. Deubner’s sales increased, and customers found a way to live more spontaneously, with less planning.

That’s all different now. Today, as many as one trillion disposable bags are used globally – about 154 for every single living human being. Show me a kitchen in the advanced industrial countries that doesn’t have a wad of folded bags stuffed under the sink or counter, and I’ll show you a tiny percentage of consumers who are organized and diligent enough to voluntarily abstain from throwaway bags.

Ever-increasing convenience was supposed to be a sign of Progress, at least in our 20th-century minds. But Progress is taking a new turn. In Europe, stores started charging a modest sum for bags in the 1980s, and across the USA shoppers have been being asked “paper or plastic” for decades in some places. Despite the convenience, we have discovered a deep, queasy, shared notion that there is something profligate about throwaway bags, especially plastic ones. And the challenges to this aspect of the Throwaway Society are mounting. In March 2007, The City and County of San Francisco took the heroic step of banning certain categories of plastic bags. Starting in July 2007, all large supermarkets in California will be required, by law, to take back and recycle plastic shopping bags. Similar things are underway in Portland, Oregon. Bag bans are being discussed in Boston, in New York City, in Beijing, in Singapore, in London, and thousands of other cities and towns around the world. South Africa and India have banned most kinds of thin-walled plastic bags. The US branch of Swedish home-furnishings retailer IKEA is running a campaign to “Bag the Plastic Bag”.

The Throwaway Bag Century appears to be drawing to an abrupt, legislated close. All over the world, at about the same time. Can we expect the same to happen to other throwaway items, from single-use disposables to the just plain shoddy or superfluous?

Maybe. There may be an important lesson in the demise of plastic bags. It has the makings of an avalanche of change – a paradigm shift. Whether the local justification has more to do with energy efficiency, or with litter and its impacts on animals and scenery, governments and civil society have identified disposable bags as a feature of the throwaway society that has to go, and fast. With all the talk these days of “tipping points,” this is one with a vengeance: the modern throwaway bag is headed for the tip (or “landfill” for Americans) of history.

What’s next? The throwaway society is about far more than bags. There is the vast array of disposable items: diapers, paper towels, cameras, batteries, single-use medical devices, all sorts of consumer product packaging… Cling-wrap on everything from wood pellets to books. Thick phone books you only keep for a year. Daily newspapers. Wrappers, bags, and foam cups and boxes for fast food. Whole continents of paperboard and corrugated fibreboard boxes and cartons. Blister packs and skin packs…

To be sure, some other disposables have already gone the way of the shopping bag. Led by Xerox and Canon, the reprographics industry moved aggressively in the 1990s to make ink and toner cartridges recyclable, along with the boxes and trays they come in. In many parts of the world, glass, plastic, and metal drink containers are seeing moderate to high levels of recycling. Some of these changes have been driven by markets for end-of-life items, such as the valuable refined aluminium in cans. For others, state regulation closed the loops so toxic chemicals and waste would not leak away or scatter into landfills, incinerators, fields, forests, rivers, seas and the environment at large. Either way, there is a clear trend – from disposables to re-usables and recyclables – and little appears to be bucking this trend. Indeed, today’s headline news about shopping bags may indicate an acceleration.

But, beyond disposables – the signature concept of Consumer Convenience – what about all the other cheaply made products that, once upon a time, might have lasted decades but now only last months, days, or even hours? Like the fast-food restaurant “kids’ meal” toys transported around half the planet that break in days, and are usually thrown away anyway? Or the fashion-of-the-season clothing that only makes it through five washes before it goes to rags, rubbish, or charity? Or the toaster that lasts a summer? Or the metal screws that shear off before you’ve even screwed them tight, the fragile gypsum board that looks nice but starts crumbling a year after it’s installed, the thinner-walled copper pipe sneaking into the DIY stores, and all the low-density particle board showing up in kitchen cabinets, counter tops, and who knows what else? A little moisture, and the latter swells up like fungus!

Can we hope that the new definition of Progress driving plastic bags into extinction will affect all these other throwaways?

There is a powerful term in market research and brand management these days, one which captures a potent zeitgeist: LOHAS. This is short for “Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability.” Coined in 1999 by Boulder, Colorado-based Gaiam, Inc., a diverse media, information, and consumer products company, LOHAS refers to market segments that pay attention to health, fitness, environmental protection, corporate social responsibility, sustainability, and a host of social issues. LOHAS consumers typically make up the majority of those who buy:

o Hybrid and electric cars
o Organic and natural food
o Fair trade products
o Natural and preventive medicine
o Organic and natural personal care products
o Energy efficient electronics/appliances
o Socially responsible investments
o Natural household products
o Green, energy-efficient buildings
o Fitness equipment
o Memberships in health clubs and spas
o Ecotourism and adventure tourism

In the US, for example, LOHAS is said to account for about 20% of the adult population, and for a quarter of a trillion dollars per year of purchasing. The fastest-growing LOHAS markets, according to marketers, are in Japan and Taiwan. But LOHAS is a global phenomenon. In China, natural health products continue booming. Organic foods are expanding at astounding rates in Europe and North America. From Wal-Mart to Carrefour to Japan’s Aeon and Lawsong, the influence of the “Lohasians” is being felt.

And if they don’t want throwaway bags today, and occupy the vanguard of a many-headed global movement to actually banish them, what will be next? If the Lohasians are consistent, anything throwaway will be rejected in favour of what’s durable and environmentally friendly. In most cases, they’ll reason that one durable item is a more environmentally and socially responsible prospect than a series of cheap substitutes.

One thing is clear, I believe. Any manufacturer today with a significant reliance on disposability/short lifetimes in its value chain needs to take a hard look at this, and explore a turn toward durable strategies. There may be direct economic gains – the so-called “low-hanging fruit” of cleaner production – but even if there isn’t, watch out! Emboldened by their impending victory over the lowly shopping bag, their ranks swelling with new recruits, the Lohasians are massing… And they take no prisoners!

Ralph Meima writes from Brattleboro, Vermont, USA, where he also directs the new Marlboro College Graduate Center’s MBA in Managing for Sustainability.