No more free bags for lining small trash cans, hiking trash and for the car
We had laws put up in Toronto. All it did was let corporations make more money off us. The bag fee was not ever required to be given to the city, the stores just kept it. And now instead of getting a plastic bag at the store, i get yet another reusable bag that is worse than. 100 bags and I’ll never use that many times
New York City has also banned plastic bags since 2020. I was skeptical about the ban at first, because by measure of material weight, bags are but a small fraction of plastic waste. Thin film is just too efficient in terms of use-per-weight ratio. I also thought anyone who didn’t want to use plastic bags already had the option to bring their own reusable bags with them.
My newfound appreciation for the ban is that not only does it divert the use of plastic material, but it forces a change in the public perception around plastic use itself. Sure, you could bring your own bags, but it felt awkward because no one else did. You felt like you were inconveniencing the cashiers and other shoppers by breaking the routine, as if you were asking for special treatment. But now it’s perfectly normal! You want to carry that bag of potatoes in your arms without an external bag? Go right ahead. You want to run home carrying a jug of milk dripping condensation on the pavement? Doesn’t make you look like a crazy person! All thanks to the ban. Single action by the government on behalf of the collective has achieved what collective action by many single individuals could not have.
It’s kind of laughable how much you care about what randos on the street think of you. No one batted an eye if you walked around with food in your hands. Is this a troll account?
Plastic bags were comfortable to carry, hygienic, free, and cashiers put your groceries in it. Now they charge you money for bags without handles. So we’re forced to carry dirty recycled bags with handles everywhere we go, and package our own groceries because cashiers don’t want to touch your dirty bags, while companies use plastic everywhere.
You’re a troll account.
Good on you Vermont, proud of you
On scroll by, the bags in the picture look like people in a convertible.
And in Alabama, when the city of Birmingham banned plastic bags, the state turned around and made a law that banning plastic bags was not allowed 🤦♀️
The right, “We hate gov control of local govs unless we like it.”
“Alabama: Boldly refusing to accept diversity and the inevitable since 1819.”
- John Oliver
(I wonder how bad the brain drain is at this point)
But at least you can marry your cousin. First cousins!
Explains a lot, tbh
I just wish more places put handles on the paper bags.
I don’t mind a paper bag, but I hate having to, like, roll the top to carry it. Just give me some handles. Even a reinforced hole cut in the bag. Anything.
I assume handles cost more money to produce. But yes, bags without handles are useless if you’re shopping for the week.
Would it be feasible to bring your own bags? I picked up a cheap 10 pack of fabric bags and they are sturdy enough I can usually fit a week’s worth of groceries in two or three of them
I mean, feasible in an objective sense? Yes. I don’t want to though, lol. I really like the convenience of bags at the till.
Very much a first world problem though, I’m aware.
If I could remember to put reusable bags in my car, I would. I’d bring them into the store if I remembered too…
I have a bunch in my car. Now I have to remember to take them into the store.
That’s how I got dozens of reusable plastic bags at 10¢ each. Eventually I started remembering to bring them into the store. Now it’s a good habit, so I’m ready for cloth bags …… no hurry, might as well reuse these a bunch more
Throw a bunch in the car and leave them in there.
Another thing is maybe I’m in the minority or something, but if you have an attached garage I don’t understand why you need bags at the store in the first place. You drop the shit in the cart, scan it, pay, put it back in the cart and then put it from the cart into your car trunk. Then you can bag it or box it up at home to carry it from the trunk.
but if you have an attached garage
Not sure why that’s necessary for the process. Sometimes I do what you said with the things I buy, but I’m a standard poor living in an apartment. I gotta park my car outdoors, like a filthy animal, but I still do it.
Though I do find it easier to bag while putting things into the car, rather than when taking it out. I’ve already got to lug everything in and put it all away, so it’s nice to have one fewer chore to do when I get home.
Leave more bags then you’ll possibly need in there or leave a book bag in your car. Eventually you won’t be able to go back. If you have one do most of your shopping at an Aldi or Lidi. Plastic grocery bags take up more space than you realize until you go without.
Sadly, having more reusable bags than you need can result in producing even more single-use plastic. From the article New Jersey Bag Ban Followed By Increased Use Of Plastic:
the reusable bags New Jersey shoppers have been forced to use since the bag ban took effect in May of 2022 are rarely reused, only two to three times on average. With many people in New Jersey now using reusable bags as single use bags, the state’s plastic and paper bag prohibition, though passed with the best of intentions, may be doing more harm than good in practice.
Reusable bags are manufactured with 15 to 20 times the amount of plastic used in the now prohibited single-use plastic bag, notes the Freedonia report. The reusable bags that New Jersey residents now pay for at checkout or when their groceries are delivered, according to researchers, need to be used anywhere from 11-59 times in order to have a net benefit for the environment.
Though I would like to note that New Jersey made the stupid decision to not only ban plastic bags, but to ban paper bags too. It’s a move I can’t understand, except to assume that there’s some corrupt lobbying behind such a stupid decision. If the point is to be environmentally friendly, it makes much more sense to use a renewable source like paper.
I have never in my life found a paper bag with handles that will hold groceries. I’d need easily twice as many to hold all my groceries vs my reusable ones.
Have you ever shopped at a Trader Joes? Those paper bags are by far the best paper bags that I’ve ever used, and can carry about as much as my reusable ones.
Reusable bags. Bonus that you can find something that checks all your boxes and its all yours. Paper bags should be last resort and they should charge 10c to discourage their use.
I’d happily pay $1/paper bag with handles, just for the convenience. That’s about what it’s worth to me.
I’m absentminded as all hell, and I’m not gonna remember to bring an armful of bags into the grocery store with me. And then, if I’m not using a cart, I gotta carry them around? Nah.
I mean, it’s a super first world problem, and not a big deal at all in the grand scheme of things. But in all honesty I’d rather just pay $1/paper bag than have to deal with it.
Damn, that hurts me to read haha. Like, I get the absent mindedness thing, but it’s a ridiculously easy step that if all 330 million people in the US (I assume that is also where you are from, sorry if I’m wrong) were to stop then it would actually have a tangible effect on resource consumption. Obviously that isn’t going to solve all of our problems, but the whole idea of ‘whatever, this is slightly more convenient’ should instead be ‘eh, it’s not that much of a hassle.’ I think that’s fully the fault of 100 years of that mindset being pushed down our throats in the form of CONSUME, but we’ve got to break free of it if there’s ever going to be a chance.
I’d be really interested to see a quantitative analysis of how much difference it would make if all 330mil of us swapped to renewable bags.
My gut is that paper bags are pretty clean overall, and that grocery bags are a tiny fraction of paper usage in the US. But I’d be really interested to be proven wrong.
My quick search keeps popping up the statistic of 14 million trees for 10 billion paper bags used annually in the US, but in 1999 so I’m sure that is higher. You’ve also got to consider the high energy usage and large environmental concerns of paper mills. I don’t know if you’ve ever been near a paper mill, but they’re known for their air pollution, they make entire towns stink.
This stat taken from http://www.forestecologynetwork.org/climate_change/plastic_or_paper.html
ENERGY TO PRODUCE BAG ORIGINALLY (BTUs) Safeway Plastic Bags: 594 BTUs Safeway Paper Bags: 2511 BTUs (Source: 1989 Plastic Recycling Directory, Society of Plastics Industry.)
I do think the BTUs portion is less concerning in the greater context. Both 600 and 2500 are negligible compared to, say, my daily commute, or a single plane trip, or basically any other activity that requires energy.
But the first part is kinda interesting. Doing some super sloppy back of the napkin math, I think that makes paper shopping bags about 6.5% of all paper products made in the US. Paper products account for around 50% of all wood products in the US, so call it just over 3% of total wood use (which may have gone up some due to increased prevalence of paper lately.)
Which isn’t nothing for sure. I would have guessed lower. I do think it may be overstating it to say we’d see a huge shift if everyone started using reusable bags overnight. A 3% drop in timber harvesting would be good, but not world changing I would think. But not insignificant either.
Again, I want to point out this is a minor change that you can make that if everyone did, would have a positive impact in this world. Huge impact, maybe not. But when our entire society is built to destroy the planet that we require for life, we need to remove as many cuts as possible.
I hope this doesn’t come across as rude, but conversations like this one are the reason that I have zero faith in humanity. It’s easy to point fingers as the obvious evil we have going on in the world, which clearly has more of a direct threat. But even if we were somehow able to rid the world of the truly despicable, we’d still be left with a world full of ‘its more of an impact than I thought, but still not so bad’ people. And our planet cannot continue on like that. It absolutely amazes me how many people (including good friends of mine) who think the same way. And there is no way to change this mindset, its as ingrained as any of the bigotry and hate on the other side. We just have no chance against this.
The timber part is no big deal - it’s all farmed trees and sawmill waste product. The water and energy use to make them, store them, ship them is more significant.
I dunno not being willing to even carry bags, things that are literally made for carrying, kinda seems like a you problem rather than a first world problem. Like there’s the regular biases toward convenience we all have and there’s Jesus fucking Christ how are you this incapable of tolerating the most minor of tasks.
You know how you handle the onerous task of carrying a bag while shopping? You put the bags in the basket with everything else, put the food in the bags themselves, or just loop the handle over your shoulder.
I think you’re overstating my position. It’s not that I’m “not willing to carry bags.” It’s that I’ve weighed the options and decided that the provided disposable bags are more convenient, so I’m just gonna do that. I’m unconvinced that switching would do much beyond slightly inconvenience me.
And you say it’s just a “me problem,” but a quick and unverified Google search says that 70% of people in the US don’t use reusable bags (and 57% worldwide). So it seems like it’s not so much a “me problem” as a “literal majority of the world” problem. Though I’m sure it probably felt good to attack me personally, as that gives you someone to lash out at.
As someone who frequently shops on their bike, lack of handles on paper bags can be the difference between me being able to bring things home or not. I can hang a plastic bag off of the handle bars or over my shoulder if I need to. A paper bag without handles is going to leave me pretty screwed if I don’t currently have panniers with me.
Rack and some bungee used to be my way to do it.
Hated it every time.
I’m starting to think Vermont is pretty awesome
But but but I was told that it would result in a plastic bag gray market or something.
Meanwhile our plastic bag tax has pretty much eliminated paper bags and raked in fortunes in profits on plastic bags.
Yeah, that’s why plastic shouldn’t be an option. Paper bag tax for last resort only in my opinion.
I mean, yeah, that’s how bans work.
The news is that it did in fact work. You may think it’s very clever to point out the obvious effect, but stupid people (republicans) need to hear over and over again that these programs have a positive effect and aren’t just intended to impinge on their freedumbs.
“news”
We can ban a bag successfully but we can’t ban a gun?
“It’s mah rite!”
Unironically, yes, it’s literally protected by the Constitution. Plastic bags are not
Yeah, but why aren’t hand-grenades and suicide vests covered in the right to bear arms?
Constitution doesn’t specify what type of gun, not sure ak47 and other fully automatic weapons were on the minds of the writers of the constitution. A lot of things have changed since then.
NJ got rid of them a few years back. My trashcans have had the sane liners since then.
For trash I’m still using plastic bags I hoarded in anticipation of our ban in NYC 5 years ago.
