4 ms·

I am in favour of banning all single use plastic (and quite a lot of non single use as well). But I now do have to buy some bin bags... What do people do to av

I am in favour of banning all single use plastic (and quite a lot of non single use as well). But I now do have to buy some bin bags... What do people do to avoid this?

slacka 7y ago
I actually used to reuse single use bags to line all of the trash cans in my house. Now that my town banned free ones, my family has been trained to reuse. Only now I'm buying disposable trash bags and only using them once. Fairly sure the overall impact here is worse. Especially since the heavy trash bags you buy consume much, much more plastic compared to the thin film freebies I was using before. I do hate to see trash bags blowing in the road and know they end up in the rivers and oceans. I guess overall this is still a win, just not for my household.
- FranOntanaya 7y ago
  I guess trash bags can/could be produced with biodegradation in mind, while shopping bags may prioritize being able to stay in stock for years and to hold dyes, etc. It's not necessarily a 1:1 replacement.
- usrusr 7y ago
  > Especially since the heavy trash bags you buy consume much, much more plastic compared to the thin film freebies I was using before. Seems to be cultural/regional: the bin liners I buy are of the flimsy type, precision engineered to just barely survive the one-way trip from the room bin to the large outdoors bin, whereas the free bags I used to get at the store were almost universally heavily overdesigned as brand-carriers, can't take any chances with a bag that has your logo all over it.
btb 7y ago
I always carry an eastpak backpack when I bike to work. Those things are pretty much indestructible; on my second one since highschool. Then I usually shop on my way back from work. Obviously I probably have to shop more often than most people because of the limited capacity. I usually keep a spare plastic bag(that i re-use) in there as well if I need to buy more than can fit in the eastpak.
aquadrop 7y ago
I don't agree with blanket bans. We should also consider patterns of usage and actual environmental impact. Trash bags are efficient in production, very convenient and allow to better organize other garbage , and most often end up in the landfill, as it's their main usage. It almost never will end up in the ocean or in the forest/on the streets/on the tree branches by the wind etc. Plastic bottles, plastic fishing net, etc that's where main source of problems is.
nguoi 7y ago
I'd guess that bin bags are more likely to make it to landfill (full of other things that need to go to landfill) than to end up in rivers, etc. Since we are still throwing things in landfills for the foreseeable future and bin bag usage is a) directly proportional to the amount we dispose of and b) relatively minor, it doesn't seem like a great loss.

I am in favour of banning all single use plastic (and quite a lot of non single use as well). But I now do have to buy some bin bags... What do people do to avoid this?

slacka 7y ago

I actually used to reuse single use bags to line all of the trash cans in my house. Now that my town banned free ones, my family has been trained to reuse. Only now I'm buying disposable trash bags and only using them once. Fairly sure the overall impact here is worse. Especially since the heavy trash bags you buy consume much, much more plastic compared to the thin film freebies I was using before. I do hate to see trash bags blowing in the road and know they end up in the rivers and oceans. I guess overall this is still a win, just not for my household.

FranOntanaya 7y ago
I guess trash bags can/could be produced with biodegradation in mind, while shopping bags may prioritize being able to stay in stock for years and to hold dyes, etc. It's not necessarily a 1:1 replacement.
usrusr 7y ago
> Especially since the heavy trash bags you buy consume much, much more plastic compared to the thin film freebies I was using before. Seems to be cultural/regional: the bin liners I buy are of the flimsy type, precision engineered to just barely survive the one-way trip from the room bin to the large outdoors bin, whereas the free bags I used to get at the store were almost universally heavily overdesigned as brand-carriers, can't take any chances with a bag that has your logo all over it.

btb 7y ago

I always carry an eastpak backpack when I bike to work. Those things are pretty much indestructible; on my second one since highschool. Then I usually shop on my way back from work. Obviously I probably have to shop more often than most people because of the limited capacity. I usually keep a spare plastic bag(that i re-use) in there as well if I need to buy more than can fit in the eastpak.

aquadrop 7y ago

I don't agree with blanket bans. We should also consider patterns of usage and actual environmental impact. Trash bags are efficient in production, very convenient and allow to better organize other garbage , and most often end up in the landfill, as it's their main usage. It almost never will end up in the ocean or in the forest/on the streets/on the tree branches by the wind etc. Plastic bottles, plastic fishing net, etc that's where main source of problems is.

nguoi 7y ago

I'd guess that bin bags are more likely to make it to landfill (full of other things that need to go to landfill) than to end up in rivers, etc. Since we are still throwing things in landfills for the foreseeable future and bin bag usage is a) directly proportional to the amount we dispose of and b) relatively minor, it doesn't seem like a great loss.