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> Isn't that the critical point? Of all our environmental problems, atmospheric CO2 is the biggest one, right? Energy is important, but the energy consumption
by dheera 5y ago
> Isn't that the critical point? Of all our environmental problems, atmospheric CO2 is the biggest one, right?
Energy is important, but the energy consumption of a grocery bag is small compared to the energy consumption of most of the things in the grocery bag, and if you drive a car to the grocery store, the energy consumption of the car for the roundtrip (~0.3 kWh per mile).
I'd say for grocery packaging the ecological impact should be the bigger concern.
Honestly the solution is easy, change the $0.10 grocery bag surcharge to $1.00 and people will stop using single-use grocery bags tomorrow. $0.10 is not enough for people to care.
- njarboe 5y agoEven better solution. Charge $100 to go into the grocery store and that will greatly reduce people driving to stores, shopping and using single-use bags.
- temp10298385 5y agoI'm assuming you are being facetious in order to highlight an alleged absurdity of the suggestion. Though in reality the suggestion seems quite sensible to me. Where I am, we've been under the effect of a pretty steep tax on plastic grocery bags that get noticeably passed along to the consumer. The result, from my personal experience, seems to have been a widespread adoption of tote bags. These last a very long time, 5+ years in my own experience. It has not resulted in a decrease in supermarket visits, to the best of my knowledge. Or perhaps I'm misunderstanding your comment.
- imtringued 5y agoI can walk to the grocery store, now I will have to drive to a bigger store because I have to buy everything in bulk. Your fine isn't tied to any externality so it is stupid.