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Wonder what would happen if plastic bags and straws were just no longer used, I already pack my groceries in a school bag when I go shopping because the plastic

Wonder what would happen if plastic bags and straws were just no longer used, I already pack my groceries in a school bag when I go shopping because the plastic bags are flimsy. Straws aren't also necessary, I don't drink coffee I buy with a straw and I'm managing fine. Soft drinks can probably just have those coffee caps and then gradually transition.

omnimus 8y ago
I think this is coming. Straws are getting banned in EU next year and many countries already implemented the ban. Where i am from they got replaced with paper ones and in bars etc with metal / glass ones that get washed like regular glasses. Plastic bags cannot be given for free so you have to buy them and many chains are transitioning to paper or more durable ikea style bags. The big problem in my eyes are trash bags. Don't know how to replace those.
- jogjayr 8y ago
  > The big problem in my eyes are trash bags. Don't know how to replace those. Composting, and recycling glass, metal, and paper greatly reduces the need for plastic trash bags. Most of my regular trash these days is plastic that can't be recycled - either food contaminated, or thin plastic bags. And when you have so little landfill trash, you don't need to buy those massive plastic garbage bags. In my household, we just use the plastic bags that we get our produce in - and we don't even bag all of our produce, just things like leafy greens (delicate) or green beans/okra (hard to keep together)
sjg007 8y ago
Paper straws are fine for a single use.
jaggederest 8y ago
I think really it has to be a push that plastic is only for extremely durable things that are significant enough to be worth recycling. Something like https://www.c2ccertified.org/ https://www.c2ccertified.org/ being applicable to every usage of plastic, essentially.
saurik 8y ago
Aren't those "coffee caps" made out of plastic? (FWIW, I don't drink coffee, so it is highly possible there is new non-plastic coffee lid technology.)
- forkLding 8y ago
  Yea, it's a sort of transition that mitigates usage of the straw, right now plastic cups served at fast food restaurants have both a cap and a straw. I think it could be easier for customers to accept just having a cap right now and then later on removing the cap as well and drinking from just a cup.
jeffbax 8y ago
Straws and plastic bags get all the heat, but they are actually a pretty small proportion of plastic produced and littered. Straws are like .001% of plastic in the ocean, vs. 50% for discarded fishing equipment. Those "flimsy" plastic bags in particular have a ~65% re-use rate in the US, whereas the heavy duty "reusable" bags often take far more plastic and energy to product, so you have to re-use them at far higher rates than the flimsy ones to make up for the cost to produce them. 40% of shoppers who have those bags forget them, so there's a world where we are actually producing more plastic and incurring food born illness from people not washing out their re-usable bags. People not even trying to recycle is a huge pet peeve of mine, but I think the plastic bag bans tend to be kind of stupid. Nevermind that now people have to buy garbage liners instead of just re-using the bags. https://reason.com/archives/2015/09/01/plastic-bags-are-good-for-you/print https://reason.com/archives/2015/09/01/plastic-bags-are-good... I would like to see something to get the soda industry back to aluminum, but even moving to glass the costs of it all are not very easy to track, because the significantly higher impact on energy required to move glass in bulk vs. plastic. One good move you can make is do things like purchase bar-form soaps and shampoos for your bathroom… but ultimately we've got to get people off of K-Cups and buying so much plastic bottled water when they can just re-fill something, or bring your own container to a coffee shop. And maybe give up on 2-day shipping from Amazon, or try to bulk-ship your order instead of placing a new one for every item you think of 30 minutes apart… The closest solution will probably come from some kind of plastic-consuming bio engineering, or energy-harvesting incinerators like in parts of Europe and Africa: https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/21/africa/reppie-waste-to-energy-addis-ababa/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/21/africa/reppie-waste-to-energy... That, and maybe move away from the "big blue bin" which has made people think they can just throw anything in there which has had the unintended consequence of causing recycling to cost much more and have way more contaminants.

omnimus 8y ago

I think this is coming. Straws are getting banned in EU next year and many countries already implemented the ban. Where i am from they got replaced with paper ones and in bars etc with metal / glass ones that get washed like regular glasses. Plastic bags cannot be given for free so you have to buy them and many chains are transitioning to paper or more durable ikea style bags. The big problem in my eyes are trash bags. Don't know how to replace those.

jogjayr 8y ago
> The big problem in my eyes are trash bags. Don't know how to replace those. Composting, and recycling glass, metal, and paper greatly reduces the need for plastic trash bags. Most of my regular trash these days is plastic that can't be recycled - either food contaminated, or thin plastic bags. And when you have so little landfill trash, you don't need to buy those massive plastic garbage bags. In my household, we just use the plastic bags that we get our produce in - and we don't even bag all of our produce, just things like leafy greens (delicate) or green beans/okra (hard to keep together)

sjg007 8y ago

Paper straws are fine for a single use.

jaggederest 8y ago

I think really it has to be a push that plastic is only for extremely durable things that are significant enough to be worth recycling. Something like https://www.c2ccertified.org/ https://www.c2ccertified.org/ being applicable to every usage of plastic, essentially.

saurik 8y ago

Aren't those "coffee caps" made out of plastic? (FWIW, I don't drink coffee, so it is highly possible there is new non-plastic coffee lid technology.)

forkLding 8y ago
Yea, it's a sort of transition that mitigates usage of the straw, right now plastic cups served at fast food restaurants have both a cap and a straw. I think it could be easier for customers to accept just having a cap right now and then later on removing the cap as well and drinking from just a cup.

jeffbax 8y ago

Straws and plastic bags get all the heat, but they are actually a pretty small proportion of plastic produced and littered. Straws are like .001% of plastic in the ocean, vs. 50% for discarded fishing equipment. Those "flimsy" plastic bags in particular have a ~65% re-use rate in the US, whereas the heavy duty "reusable" bags often take far more plastic and energy to product, so you have to re-use them at far higher rates than the flimsy ones to make up for the cost to produce them. 40% of shoppers who have those bags forget them, so there's a world where we are actually producing more plastic and incurring food born illness from people not washing out their re-usable bags. People not even trying to recycle is a huge pet peeve of mine, but I think the plastic bag bans tend to be kind of stupid. Nevermind that now people have to buy garbage liners instead of just re-using the bags. https://reason.com/archives/2015/09/01/plastic-bags-are-good-for-you/print https://reason.com/archives/2015/09/01/plastic-bags-are-good... I would like to see something to get the soda industry back to aluminum, but even moving to glass the costs of it all are not very easy to track, because the significantly higher impact on energy required to move glass in bulk vs. plastic. One good move you can make is do things like purchase bar-form soaps and shampoos for your bathroom… but ultimately we've got to get people off of K-Cups and buying so much plastic bottled water when they can just re-fill something, or bring your own container to a coffee shop. And maybe give up on 2-day shipping from Amazon, or try to bulk-ship your order instead of placing a new one for every item you think of 30 minutes apart… The closest solution will probably come from some kind of plastic-consuming bio engineering, or energy-harvesting incinerators like in parts of Europe and Africa: https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/21/africa/reppie-waste-to-energy-addis-ababa/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/21/africa/reppie-waste-to-energy... That, and maybe move away from the "big blue bin" which has made people think they can just throw anything in there which has had the unintended consequence of causing recycling to cost much more and have way more contaminants.