In the old days, my highest-rated blog post was this essay on folding plastic bags to fit in your kit. (Now it’s this debunking of tetrochromacy; don’t ask me why.)
Today, 12 states have plastic-bag bans: Maine, Vermont, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Colorado, Washington, Oregon, California, and Hawaii.
My county was an early adopter, and I supported the plastic bag ban. Not because it cut down on plastics; grocery bags comprise a miniscule part of America’s plastic consumption. I was sick of seeing bags hanging from trees, fences and shrubs. The prevailing winds in coastal Maine blow towards the ocean. Sea urchins, jellyfish and the other denizens of tidal pools don’t need to be dodging plastic bags.
However, I’ve noticed in recent workshops that my students have a harder time dealing with plein air painting waste now that plastic grocery bags are less plentiful.
Short weekly class session starts next Monday
Claim your spot in Painting Water, Monday evenings or Painting Nocturnes, Tuesday evenings. Both are 6-9 PM, starting the week of August 17, 2026, which is next week.
This is my last Zoom session until I get back from Sedona Plein Air at the end of October. That’s because I’m teaching and eventing non-stop until then.
I upload videos of these online classes and you have access to them for as long as there’s YouTube. That means you can review them if you need a refresher or have to cut out early.
BYOB (Bring Your Own Bag)
Obviously, we want to carry in, carry out. We’re stewards of the landscape, after all.
I don’t like the lightweight trash receptacles that are meant to hang from your easel. They’re heavier and bigger than a plastic bag. Emptying them in a trash can may be no big deal in Manhattan, but it’s a pain in less civilized areas. They tumble around in your car until you empty them. That’s an opportunity to get paint on the upholstery. Then you have to fold them and remember to put them back in your kit.
Washable reusable bags put pigments into the water stream. Paper bags leak. The humble plastic bag remains the most practical answer, but in the bag-ban states, we have to buy rolls of 1-gallon trash bags. I’ve resigned myself to it.
Trash is tough if you forget the bag
Without a trash bag, plein air painting waste can be difficult to manage. Used paper towels and rags accumulate quickly. There are foul, sticky palette scrapings, bits of tape, plastic gloves, sandwich wrappers, tissues and other trash.
I’ve been forced to tuck dirty rags into my pockets. Worse is to set them down until you pack up. They get paint on the ground and can blow away. A dirty paper towel isn’t just unsightly litter. Pigments shouldn’t be added to the landscape.
One of the pleasures of plein air painting is that you develop an intimate relationship with a particular piece of land. That means you also notice the garbage. I hike daily and find coffee cups, soda cans, dog poop, candy wrappers, tissues, etc. along the trail.
Your painting kit should contain everything you need to make the painting and everything you need to pack up and leave no trace. We are guests in the landscape. Our goal should be to leave our little patch of earth looking as we found it, if not better.
Registration is now open for workshops in 2026! Reserve your spot:
- New! Color Clinic 2026 | Rockport, ME, October 3-4, 2026
- New! Composition Week 2026 | Rockport, ME, October 5-9, 2026
Can’t commit to a full workshop? Work online at your own pace:
Question: NY still has plastic bags. Should I use that for trash and dump it when I’m done for the day? Bag and rags in the landfill. Or, bring the waste home, let the rags (oil painting) dry and then throw away? Being a watercolorist is so much simpler.
WHERE in New York? You have a plastic bag ban! Does the city have an exemption?
Plastic bags everywhere in NYC. Like the ban doesn’t exist.
That’s absolutely shocking to me, because of course the city is where the highest concentration of small retailers, coffee shops, to-go restaurants, etc. are.
Not your fault but so often laws are passed by the votes of downstate residents that unduly affect upstaters. Sounds like this is one of them.
Rags and waste can safely go in a landfill.
If you can get them, absolutely. Although (see above), I’m baffled about that since the state has had a bag ban for several years.
It is weird but I get my corn on the cob anput ot in plastic bags Produce in grocery stores is put in plastic bags too. Market stands have plastic bags and all this in the tiny parameter o Saranac Lake. Go figure.
I think the lightweight produce bags are exempt, at least in my state and yours. But market stands?
I’ve been using empty 1lb coffee bags for trash. They’re foil + plastic, so not recyclable, but will never leak, are sealable, pack small, and hold an entire painting’s worth of trash. They can even be re-used, if necessary, but my household generates enough coffee bags to keep me well-supplied.
I need to increase my coffee consumption!
Brilliant!
You could switch to sketching. Lots of materials such as pencil, ink pens and acrylic paint pens don’t have much waste. If painting in watercolor, rags can be used over and over until saturated. Or you can use the convenient water brushes that hold water and simply brush along a rag to clean. Instead of taping paper, you can paint on the paper blocks or in a sketchbook. It’s harder but definitely a goal of all outdoor activities to leave no trace. And as Carol said, bring along a trash bag to pick up other people’s waste and you will be making the site better than you found it.
Nice suggestions, Bonnie; however, I do think we can just clean up after ourselves. I spend half my time in the woods muttering about people who still think their mothers clean up after them.
Save your chips bag. Think of how much stuff one gets at the grocery store that is in plastic bags: Chips. Toilet paper, paper-towels, all come wrapped in plastic. Order something on line and there is a possibility it comes in a plastic bag. Then there is produce that comes in plastic bags. How are you bringing all that corn on the cob home? We can reuse a lot of that stuff without using garbage bags and it is a reuse. Bread bags work great a few more times before tossing them. We are creatives. Give it some thought. They are never getting rid of the stuff so re use it.
Our produce bags are too sheer to be used as trash bags. And I don’t eat chips. I tried your strategy of recycling food packaging and realized that I don’t generate enough reusable plastic bags to make it a permanent strategy. Now, if you could figure out a way to use old egg cartons or tin cans I’d be golden.
BTW, I toss all that plastic film that mass produced goods are wrapped in (not conventionally recyclable) in the large plastic bag that dog food comes in. When it’s full, I take that to a plastic-film recycling bin similar to that described by Jane, above.
I’m going to defend the plastic bag here. Santa Fe county (but not all of NM) has plastic bag bans. I lived in the adjoining county so always had a good supply and brought them to the grocery store in Santa Fe which had the double benefit of annoying the heck out of the “we’re so much better than you” crowd. Used plastic grocery bags have multiple uses from reuse at the store to painting to dog waste pick up. And in Florida, the grocery store had a recycle bin where they could be made into all sorts of products. Not so the paper bags that usually have to be double bagged because they rip on the first use and also end up in the landfill. And also not so the “reusable” ones they sell manufactured in China (from that recycled plastic adding to pollution in the manufacture) and brought by the millions in cargo ships and distributed by truck across the country. Can someone please explain that logic?
So if anyone wants an ample supply of these glorious simple plastic bags just let me know… I have bags of them.
Next time you fly east you can bring me some contraband ones. My friend Van Reid gave me a bunch but then the ban went statewide and we were stuck.
I prefer plastic bags myself, but also got mighty sick of seeing them caught in trees and bushes. I hate reusable shopping bags; for one thing, they take up way too much room in my car and house. But if people won’t be responsible, we all have to pay for their carelessness.
I have a foldable mesh bag that hangs from the tripod especially designed for plein air (miss fancy pants!) I find it works well as it compresses all the garbage and fits back in my backpack easily. Just a few ounces.
I personally don’t love them. I end up putting them in my car and getting paint all over from the rags that are in them. Then I forget to put them back in my pack.
Driving from Ohio to the Berkshires, I did expect to collect plastic at the grocery and was a bit shocked when I got there! I have a load ready to recycle I shoulda-woulda-coulda brought!
I tend to put rags in whatever I have that can’t blow away. Food wrappers go back into my lunch cooler, because those suckers do blow around!!!
Leave no trace : ) (but take the pigs to town)
Please do check out “End Plastic Soup” on line. My sister, Tami Mulcahy, is on the International Board to get rid of plastics. Amazing things are being done. She told me that the name came about from a guy sailing his boat who said he felt he was sailing through “plastic soup”. So glad to hear you all are recycling plastic.
Always, my friend.
I think plastics have some good applications, of course, but couldn’t we just stop buying bottled water for a start?