6 ms·
My city outright banned single-use grocery bags. I was already in the habit of bringing re-usable bags, but every so often I'll have forgotten to grab bags or I
by kennywinker 4y ago
My city outright banned single-use grocery bags. I was already in the habit of bringing re-usable bags, but every so often I'll have forgotten to grab bags or I'm stopping in on my way home from something else so I don't have them on me. Before the plastic bag ban, I'd just grab a "single-use" bag, and then use it as a trash bag for my kitchen or bathroom. Since the ban I regularly buy kitchen trash bags, I have about a dozen re-usable bags stuffed in the back of a closet, and half the stuff I buy at the grocery store still comes wrapped in a layer or two of excess plastic. For me, net loss. For the city? Probably a minor win in terms of plastic usage and street trash, and a significant loss in terms of people's willingness to ban other forms of single use plastic.
- userbinator 4y agoBefore the plastic bag ban, I'd just grab a "single-use" bag, and then use it as a trash bag for my kitchen or bathroom. Since the ban I regularly buy kitchen trash bags I wonder if those who come up with these ideas realise the irony of forcing people to buy bags which are truly going to be single-use instead of reusing what they would've already had.
- kennywinker 4y agoHow many people in your life re-use grocery bags? I'm fairly certain grocery bag bans are a net-win when viewed from the perspective of total plastic usage, because MOST people would have to be using them at least twice for the result to be anything other than a net-win from any perspective but mine. I only managed to use about as many as I was given because I got pretty good at remembering my re-usable bags... The problem is not the burden of changing my behaviour, or the extra cost of buying exactly as much single-use plastic as I need in the form of a box of trash bags a couple times a year - the problem is why are we starting with this?? I'm dead certain that there are a ton of single-use plastics we could ban that would have close to ZERO impact on 99.9% of people's lives, because it would be handled entirely by industry doing a single re-tooling of their lines, but we're not doing those for some strange reason?
- userbinator 4y agoEveryone I know reuses them; not just for trash, but they're handy for whenever you need a bag (or even just a film of plastic) for whatever reason, because they take up almost no room.
- pixl97 4y agoSingle use grocery bags are problematic in the sense they use almost no resources individually. Anything you're replacing them with uses far more plastic and/or energy to produce. A reusable bag tends to need reused dozens to a hundred times for the material needed to make it. Then add in you need to wash the reusable to avoid spreading food borne contamination and the ratio gets even worse.
- Eisenstein 4y agoI just use a backpack.
- 2000UltraDeluxe 4y agoMy in-group used them extensively. For just about everything. It doesn't really matter though; the ban on straws and taxes on shopping bags have resulted in a noticably lower amount of said products blowing around main roads. Totally worth it in my opinion. Now, if we could just get biodegradable coffee and soda lids...