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Something that came up in this article, is often brought up as a ‘gotcha’ in other articles and in discussions is the whole thing about a cotton bag needing 140

Something that came up in this article, is often brought up as a ‘gotcha’ in other articles and in discussions is the whole thing about a cotton bag needing 140 uses to be better than a plastic bag. This has been so easy for me, but the fact it keeps coming up makes me think it’s not for other people? I have cotton bags that I have had for 3 -4 years that I still use a few times a week. The first couple of weeks I would forget them. But I stuck with it and it’s just habit that I grab them on the way to the shops or throw them in my work bag in the morning. Also the idea that plastic isn’t bad for the environment doesn’t make a difference about wether I want that stuff floating around in the ocean or ruining beaches/forests. Make producers pay for the clean up. F them.

nervousvarun 8y ago
"Make producers pay for the clean up. F them." Totally agree...but this isn't a lake or local stretch of a river that a pulp mill is polluting, this random/isolated stretches of the ocean where everything ends up. Does international waters jurisdiction make it harder to make them pay for it (from a legal perspective)?
- alanbernstein 8y ago
  I couldn't get to the article, but I'm fairly certain there are lakes and/or rivers in the world that are thoroughly polluted with plastic debris?
  - nervousvarun 8y ago
    my point was when this happens (pollution in a river/lake), the legal jurisdiction is a little more black/white. by that i mean it's in one country or one state or one county or whatever so from a government perspective jurisdiction isn't hazy. when it's 1000s of miles from any government in the ocean how does that work legally? who makes the companies pay?
tony_cannistra 8y ago
Not an economist, but it strikes me that perhaps a better way than "making producers pay for the clean-up" (short of regulating their production in the first place) is to make users pay for the cleanup. If some sort of "tax" or "fee" on these items is passed to consumers, I'd bet we'd see less use. Hell, I live in Seattle, and the $0.05 I have to pay to get a paper bag in the store (plastic is mostly banned) is enough to make me bring my cotton bag.
marcosdumay 8y ago
> that I have had for 3-4 years If you do groceries once a month, you would need 10 years to get into that magic number. That using the same bags every time, if you have more bags than you need, so you alternate their use, it would take more than 10 years. That said, I usually use plastic bags 2 or 3 times. Does that mean I would have to keep a cotton bag for 20 years? (I do like using reusable bags, but I don't carry them all the time.)
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- KozmoNau7 8y ago
  Once a month seems like a very long cycle. I buy groceries and other commonly needed items 2-4 times per week. Of course, I live within walking/biking distance of several stores, and I hardly ever buy more than what I can fit in a bag. Still, only once per month seems very little, especially for perishables.
  - gambiting 8y ago
    Once a month seems extremely low. We do one big shop a week, and that's with a lot of planning(we do a massive shop for all dinners and lunches for the entire week) and that's with using long-life milk and freezing bread so that we don't have to go to a shop more often.
snarf21 8y ago
It is also possible to create bags that are useful for more than just groceries. Part of it is also the mental shift away from disposable. There is also the the possibility of shared bags but the germ/dirt issue would exist and then adding the cleaning of shared bags may be energy worse. We used to have shared glass bottles for milk that had to be cleaned and sterilized after each use not to mention transporting all the weight of empty bottles back to the dairy. I think it also depends on what we are solving for. Is it lower carbon footprint or keeping plastic out of our waterways? More quickly bio-degradable plastics may be best for one but not the other.
mikeash 8y ago
Is it really 140 uses, or is it that you breakeven at 140 plastic bags? This is a significant difference because reusable bags are usually a lot larger and a lot stronger. In my experience, one use of a reusable bag substitutes for something like five plastic bags. That makes the breakeven point arrive a lot faster.
- ggm 8y ago
  This is an excellent question. I've always wanted to know how the 140 is calculated and what assumptions and model it brings to the table.
- olejorgenb 8y ago
  The cotton bags I've seen in Norway are usually about 2/3 the size of a standard plastic bag. I usually just reuse the plastic bags - some bags are needed for garbage so this works well.
  - mikeash 8y ago
    Interesting. In the US, the standard plastic grocery bag is really small, to an almost idiotic degree sometimes. (A particularly large box of cereal may not fit in one at all!) Typical reusable bags are much larger.

nervousvarun 8y ago

"Make producers pay for the clean up. F them." Totally agree...but this isn't a lake or local stretch of a river that a pulp mill is polluting, this random/isolated stretches of the ocean where everything ends up. Does international waters jurisdiction make it harder to make them pay for it (from a legal perspective)?

alanbernstein 8y ago
I couldn't get to the article, but I'm fairly certain there are lakes and/or rivers in the world that are thoroughly polluted with plastic debris?
- nervousvarun 8y ago
  my point was when this happens (pollution in a river/lake), the legal jurisdiction is a little more black/white. by that i mean it's in one country or one state or one county or whatever so from a government perspective jurisdiction isn't hazy. when it's 1000s of miles from any government in the ocean how does that work legally? who makes the companies pay?

tony_cannistra 8y ago

Not an economist, but it strikes me that perhaps a better way than "making producers pay for the clean-up" (short of regulating their production in the first place) is to make users pay for the cleanup. If some sort of "tax" or "fee" on these items is passed to consumers, I'd bet we'd see less use. Hell, I live in Seattle, and the $0.05 I have to pay to get a paper bag in the store (plastic is mostly banned) is enough to make me bring my cotton bag.

marcosdumay 8y ago

> that I have had for 3-4 years If you do groceries once a month, you would need 10 years to get into that magic number. That using the same bags every time, if you have more bags than you need, so you alternate their use, it would take more than 10 years. That said, I usually use plastic bags 2 or 3 times. Does that mean I would have to keep a cotton bag for 20 years? (I do like using reusable bags, but I don't carry them all the time.)

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
KozmoNau7 8y ago
Once a month seems like a very long cycle. I buy groceries and other commonly needed items 2-4 times per week. Of course, I live within walking/biking distance of several stores, and I hardly ever buy more than what I can fit in a bag. Still, only once per month seems very little, especially for perishables.
- gambiting 8y ago
  Once a month seems extremely low. We do one big shop a week, and that's with a lot of planning(we do a massive shop for all dinners and lunches for the entire week) and that's with using long-life milk and freezing bread so that we don't have to go to a shop more often.

snarf21 8y ago

It is also possible to create bags that are useful for more than just groceries. Part of it is also the mental shift away from disposable. There is also the the possibility of shared bags but the germ/dirt issue would exist and then adding the cleaning of shared bags may be energy worse. We used to have shared glass bottles for milk that had to be cleaned and sterilized after each use not to mention transporting all the weight of empty bottles back to the dairy. I think it also depends on what we are solving for. Is it lower carbon footprint or keeping plastic out of our waterways? More quickly bio-degradable plastics may be best for one but not the other.

mikeash 8y ago

Is it really 140 uses, or is it that you breakeven at 140 plastic bags? This is a significant difference because reusable bags are usually a lot larger and a lot stronger. In my experience, one use of a reusable bag substitutes for something like five plastic bags. That makes the breakeven point arrive a lot faster.

ggm 8y ago
This is an excellent question. I've always wanted to know how the 140 is calculated and what assumptions and model it brings to the table.
olejorgenb 8y ago
The cotton bags I've seen in Norway are usually about 2/3 the size of a standard plastic bag. I usually just reuse the plastic bags - some bags are needed for garbage so this works well.
- mikeash 8y ago
  Interesting. In the US, the standard plastic grocery bag is really small, to an almost idiotic degree sometimes. (A particularly large box of cereal may not fit in one at all!) Typical reusable bags are much larger.