What's the Bag Deal?

Two ladies start to argue at the supermarket about which is better—paper or plastic bags. A bag fight erupts—the bags transform themselves into sumo wrestlers (dressed in paper or plastic mawashi), and the battle of the century begins! However, before the sumo wrestlers can get at each other, the Green Ninja intervenes. He uses his handy Carbon Footprint Scale to compare the carbon emissions associated with paper and plastic bags. But then the story gets more complicated when the Green Ninja throws the groceries themselves onto his Carbon Footprint Scale. Now who's going to win the battle?

Paper or plastic: The Green Ninja delivers a deeper message on the debate about paper or plastic. He shows that although paper bags actually have a higher carbon footprint (approximately 10 times larger primarily because they weigh more) compared to plastic bags, the average contents of a grocery bag (regardless of whether it is paper, plastic, or reusable cloth) have a carbon footprint at least 40 times larger than the bag itself. So the message is that when it comes to climate change, the contents in the bag is the most important part of a grocery store trip, not what type of bag we use.

However, the Green Ninja also completely recognizes the serious environmental issues associated with single-use plastic bags, such as plastic pollution in our streams and oceans. So what bag should we use? Reusable of course! But we also learned that choosing good contents for our bags (e.g. foods that lean toward local, organic, seasonal, whole) can reallly make a big difference!

 

 

Credits

Main Artist:

Michelle Ikemoto
Michelle designed and produced What's the Bag Deal? and Freight Debate. She is an Animation/Illustration student at SJSU. She began drawing at a young age and consumed any animated media she could get her hands on, carrying her dream of being part of the animation industry through childhood into college. She's also fond of musicals and cultivating her comic book collection. Michelle is currently working to become a professional animator, with an interest in storyboarding.

Sound Editor: Steve Erickson

Voice Actors: Jessica Ellithorpe, Katie Zeisl and Ovan Chan.

 
This video is a work in progress. These storyboards (or animatics) are developed to help visualize the scenes and refine the story before the final animation is produced.