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"Stop using single use items" is a REALLY hard goal. Outside of extreme homesteading/off-grid situations, I don't think it's actually possible. At the grocery,

"Stop using single use items" is a REALLY hard goal. Outside of extreme homesteading/off-grid situations, I don't think it's actually possible. At the grocery, I can purchase some produce and dried goods (from bulk food bins) without needing single-use items. But most of my produce has stickers or rubber bands, even at the farmers market, so I still cannot avoid them. "Grow everything yourself and never interact with society" doesn't seem like a very fulfilling life to me.

Nextgrid 4y ago
There's a difference between "stop using single-use items completely" and merely reduce their usage. There's a lot of excessive packaging in supermarkets that can be addressed without compromising usability/user-experience and ultimately reducing the plastic footprint significantly. Most produce doesn't need stickers or rubber-bands for example, nor does it need individual packaging - the packaging can be provided at the supermarket in the form of a single plastic bag.
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
  Sure, reduction is a reasonable goal, but this thread started with > The only way is to reuse and stop using single use items.
- 9dev 4y ago
  Living in Germany, I don't even need plastic bags - I take produce from large bins, and carry it home in my bag pack (or shopping bags if I'm out doing a week's groceries). Why do we even need single-use plastic bags at all? Supermarkets over here sell more robust, reusable shopping bags at the checkout. These are a good alternative if you forget your own.
  - Nextgrid 4y ago
    Problem with reusable bags is that you have to have it on-hand. Fine if you plan your visit to the supermarket or have a car where you can always have a few stashed. If you don’t have a car and only go to the supermarket occasionally on the way back from somewhere else you’re very unlikely to have a bag with you, so you end up buying the “reusable” bag every time and at this point I’ve thrown away several hundred of those over the last couple years as they accumulate at home and I have no use for them.
    - manicdee 4y ago
      We might have to train people to think about things before they do them. Or heck, even plan things ahead of time, like adding things to a shopping list instead of buying one item at a time on impulse. Though I admit this might be too radical an idea for the majority of today’s youth.
    - Hardwired8976 4y ago
      I also go occasionally to the supermarket and I just put a tote bag or any kind of other bag into my big bag in case the stuff doesn‘t fit. That can‘t be too hard and you should be able to figure that out without wasting several hundred reusable bags
    - 9dev 4y ago
      I’m a bit reluctant to not see how your problem could be solved with minimal planning of your shopping trips, going outside with a bag pack or having a shopping bag stuffed somewhere. It’s not that hard - this falls into the „get your adult life together“ category to me.
      - Nextgrid 4y ago
        It’s not a problem for me, I was just making an observation that the bans on thin plastic bags may be counterproductive with some people. Accumulating & eventually throwing away the reusable bags in bulk is a minor inconvenience compared to making sure I’ve always got one on hand which I pretty much always fail at.
cratermoon 4y ago
> rubber bands Natural rubber or synthetic? The former is biodegradable and compostable at industrial facilities. Don't put rubber in your backyard compost bin, though, even if you're 100% sure it's natural. I agree about the little plastic stickers, though. Those are an abomination.
hinkley 4y ago
If anything should get compostable plastic it’s food stickers. I used to volunteer with a group that got compost from the yard waste composting facilities in Seattle, and that stuff was full of banana and apple stickers. And that’s presumably after it had been through a screen. Microplastics or soon to be. I don’t know what the alternative is. If you want to write your congress critter it helps if you have an alternative suggestion.
- maxerickson 4y ago
  There's been experiments with marking the skin with a laser. And I guess there are edible inks (which at least offers the opportunity to remove the plastic, even if it still off putting).
  - hinkley 4y ago
    Paper stickers with a corn based glue and a bit of clay to make them shiny seems like a reasonable solution that still works with sticker guns. Those second stickers you see the stores put on, I haven’t seen those in the compost, so I’m suspecting they either break down or compost, but the distinction is important. Invisible plastic is still plastic.
jlarocco 4y ago
> "Grow everything yourself and never interact with society" doesn't seem like a very fulfilling life to me. It sounds like a great life to me... but not very realistic in this day and age.
dheera 4y ago
At the very least I think it's a reasonable goal to require that plastics not be used for single-use items. Plastic is a fantastic material for reusable items of sorts, but it doesn't belong in a single-use drink cup, food container, or bag, until we have the technology to truly recycle it and the law enforcement to require that said recycling happen. Execution is important. I've been seeing so much fuss about banning plastic straws but no fuss about the cup. I frequently see drinks in plastic cups with paper straws. Completely backwards.
danbolt 4y ago
Collecting rubber bands from grocery store purchases is kind of like long-term saving. You should start early and not fret about downturns (eg: the occasional one breaking from wear). If you keep a steady supply, you’ll have a healthy nest egg that you can call on when you need it.
amalcon 4y ago
I never understood why the stickers are usually plastic rather than paper. I'm sure there's a reason that I just don't know. It just always seemed to me that if paper is good enough for a price gun, it should be good enough for a barcode.
- rqtwteye 4y ago
  Plastic has a lot of advantages over paper and unfortunately it’s too cheap.
rocket_surgeron 4y ago
I have almost completely eliminated single-use plastics from my life to the point that my only non-recyclable waste output is a single half-full 20-gallon bag set out for collection approximately every three weeks. The very few remaining items are typically cleaning supplies such as bleach and hazardous cleaning agents but for safety and hygiene purposes I do not consider those a high priority for finding non-plastic alternatives. Please note that I do not include the several-microns-thick coating of plastic that coats the insides of some cardboard boxes and aluminum cans as "plastic output" due to its total annual weight (in my case) being less than that of a single bottle of shampoo. For shaving I use a safety razor, whose blades come in cardboard. For shaving cream I use a puck that comes in cardboard packaging. My toothpaste comes in compressed pellets and all of my soap, even shampoo, comes in bar form. There are currently no plastic single-use items in my bathroom. Even my toilet paper is purchased in bulk, 80 rolls at a time, and comes in a large cardboard box with each roll packaged in paper. It is a recognizable brand's "Industrial" product line. Rather than paying for water most of my cleaning products are purchased in powder form, usually under a recognizable brand's "Industrial" product line, in bulk. This means that yes, I do buy a 5-gallon bucket of laundry detergent but in over a year after I have finally used it all I have a reusable 5-gallon bucket that does not go into the waste stream. You can also buy items like that in cardboard boxes lined with a plastic liner but even then the volume of plastic is, after many years, less than that of a single plastic laundry detergent container which only lasts months. Even cleaning products that, again for health and safety reasons, come in plastic containers I buy them in bulk, dispensing them into reusable (and much higher quality) applicators. This means that the (realistically) unavoidable use of plastics is minimized. The amount of plastic used in a single 128-ounce bulk "industrial" cleaning bottle is less than that used in 4 32-ounce (typical sized) bottles and the reusable (again, "industrial") spray bottles I use to apply the product last for years if not decades. For food items I typically do not buy anything that comes in plastic with the main exception being sliced bread, but again that volume of plastic is so low it is almost irrelevant. When I realized that I was throwing away ~30 plastic yogurt containers per month I started making yogurt myself in an instant pot and storing the yogurt in glass jars. Doing so requires almost no effort-- the instant pot does it for you. I've been doing this since 2011 with the same jars, which will probably last another 100 years, so I have not thrown away over 4,000 yogurt containers. In your example, the rubber bands and stickers are irrelevant. Years, if not decades, of rubber (assuming you mean synthetic rubber, natural rubber is fine and will biodegrade) bands and stickers add up to a single bottle of dish soap's worth of plastic. Plastic is a wonderful material but it is immoral, to me, to use it without foresight of its impact and costs. It requires effort, but is not "hard". Effort does not equal "hard". My anti-plastic crusade started because I live on the Chesapeake Bay and became involved in Bay cleanup initiatives about a decade ago. I'd say 9 out of every 10 items I recovered were plastic items, some from as far away as New York State, having floated for hundreds of miles down the Susquehanna and Delaware Rivers.
rqtwteye 4y ago
“ But most of my produce has stickers or rubber bands, even at the farmers market, so I still cannot avoid them.” As consumer there are only limited ways you can reduce single use. We need to change the economics so excessive packaging is too expensive.

Nextgrid 4y ago

There's a difference between "stop using single-use items completely" and merely reduce their usage. There's a lot of excessive packaging in supermarkets that can be addressed without compromising usability/user-experience and ultimately reducing the plastic footprint significantly. Most produce doesn't need stickers or rubber-bands for example, nor does it need individual packaging - the packaging can be provided at the supermarket in the form of a single plastic bag.

yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
Sure, reduction is a reasonable goal, but this thread started with > The only way is to reuse and stop using single use items.
9dev 4y ago
Living in Germany, I don't even need plastic bags - I take produce from large bins, and carry it home in my bag pack (or shopping bags if I'm out doing a week's groceries). Why do we even need single-use plastic bags at all? Supermarkets over here sell more robust, reusable shopping bags at the checkout. These are a good alternative if you forget your own.
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  Problem with reusable bags is that you have to have it on-hand. Fine if you plan your visit to the supermarket or have a car where you can always have a few stashed. If you don’t have a car and only go to the supermarket occasionally on the way back from somewhere else you’re very unlikely to have a bag with you, so you end up buying the “reusable” bag every time and at this point I’ve thrown away several hundred of those over the last couple years as they accumulate at home and I have no use for them.
  - manicdee 4y ago
    We might have to train people to think about things before they do them. Or heck, even plan things ahead of time, like adding things to a shopping list instead of buying one item at a time on impulse. Though I admit this might be too radical an idea for the majority of today’s youth.
  - Hardwired8976 4y ago
    I also go occasionally to the supermarket and I just put a tote bag or any kind of other bag into my big bag in case the stuff doesn‘t fit. That can‘t be too hard and you should be able to figure that out without wasting several hundred reusable bags
  - 9dev 4y ago
    I’m a bit reluctant to not see how your problem could be solved with minimal planning of your shopping trips, going outside with a bag pack or having a shopping bag stuffed somewhere. It’s not that hard - this falls into the „get your adult life together“ category to me.
    - Nextgrid 4y ago
      It’s not a problem for me, I was just making an observation that the bans on thin plastic bags may be counterproductive with some people. Accumulating & eventually throwing away the reusable bags in bulk is a minor inconvenience compared to making sure I’ve always got one on hand which I pretty much always fail at.

cratermoon 4y ago

> rubber bands Natural rubber or synthetic? The former is biodegradable and compostable at industrial facilities. Don't put rubber in your backyard compost bin, though, even if you're 100% sure it's natural. I agree about the little plastic stickers, though. Those are an abomination.

hinkley 4y ago

If anything should get compostable plastic it’s food stickers. I used to volunteer with a group that got compost from the yard waste composting facilities in Seattle, and that stuff was full of banana and apple stickers. And that’s presumably after it had been through a screen. Microplastics or soon to be. I don’t know what the alternative is. If you want to write your congress critter it helps if you have an alternative suggestion.

maxerickson 4y ago
There's been experiments with marking the skin with a laser. And I guess there are edible inks (which at least offers the opportunity to remove the plastic, even if it still off putting).
- hinkley 4y ago
  Paper stickers with a corn based glue and a bit of clay to make them shiny seems like a reasonable solution that still works with sticker guns. Those second stickers you see the stores put on, I haven’t seen those in the compost, so I’m suspecting they either break down or compost, but the distinction is important. Invisible plastic is still plastic.

jlarocco 4y ago

> "Grow everything yourself and never interact with society" doesn't seem like a very fulfilling life to me. It sounds like a great life to me... but not very realistic in this day and age.

dheera 4y ago

At the very least I think it's a reasonable goal to require that plastics not be used for single-use items. Plastic is a fantastic material for reusable items of sorts, but it doesn't belong in a single-use drink cup, food container, or bag, until we have the technology to truly recycle it and the law enforcement to require that said recycling happen. Execution is important. I've been seeing so much fuss about banning plastic straws but no fuss about the cup. I frequently see drinks in plastic cups with paper straws. Completely backwards.

danbolt 4y ago

Collecting rubber bands from grocery store purchases is kind of like long-term saving. You should start early and not fret about downturns (eg: the occasional one breaking from wear). If you keep a steady supply, you’ll have a healthy nest egg that you can call on when you need it.

amalcon 4y ago

I never understood why the stickers are usually plastic rather than paper. I'm sure there's a reason that I just don't know. It just always seemed to me that if paper is good enough for a price gun, it should be good enough for a barcode.

rqtwteye 4y ago
Plastic has a lot of advantages over paper and unfortunately it’s too cheap.

rocket_surgeron 4y ago

I have almost completely eliminated single-use plastics from my life to the point that my only non-recyclable waste output is a single half-full 20-gallon bag set out for collection approximately every three weeks. The very few remaining items are typically cleaning supplies such as bleach and hazardous cleaning agents but for safety and hygiene purposes I do not consider those a high priority for finding non-plastic alternatives. Please note that I do not include the several-microns-thick coating of plastic that coats the insides of some cardboard boxes and aluminum cans as "plastic output" due to its total annual weight (in my case) being less than that of a single bottle of shampoo. For shaving I use a safety razor, whose blades come in cardboard. For shaving cream I use a puck that comes in cardboard packaging. My toothpaste comes in compressed pellets and all of my soap, even shampoo, comes in bar form. There are currently no plastic single-use items in my bathroom. Even my toilet paper is purchased in bulk, 80 rolls at a time, and comes in a large cardboard box with each roll packaged in paper. It is a recognizable brand's "Industrial" product line. Rather than paying for water most of my cleaning products are purchased in powder form, usually under a recognizable brand's "Industrial" product line, in bulk. This means that yes, I do buy a 5-gallon bucket of laundry detergent but in over a year after I have finally used it all I have a reusable 5-gallon bucket that does not go into the waste stream. You can also buy items like that in cardboard boxes lined with a plastic liner but even then the volume of plastic is, after many years, less than that of a single plastic laundry detergent container which only lasts months. Even cleaning products that, again for health and safety reasons, come in plastic containers I buy them in bulk, dispensing them into reusable (and much higher quality) applicators. This means that the (realistically) unavoidable use of plastics is minimized. The amount of plastic used in a single 128-ounce bulk "industrial" cleaning bottle is less than that used in 4 32-ounce (typical sized) bottles and the reusable (again, "industrial") spray bottles I use to apply the product last for years if not decades. For food items I typically do not buy anything that comes in plastic with the main exception being sliced bread, but again that volume of plastic is so low it is almost irrelevant. When I realized that I was throwing away ~30 plastic yogurt containers per month I started making yogurt myself in an instant pot and storing the yogurt in glass jars. Doing so requires almost no effort-- the instant pot does it for you. I've been doing this since 2011 with the same jars, which will probably last another 100 years, so I have not thrown away over 4,000 yogurt containers. In your example, the rubber bands and stickers are irrelevant. Years, if not decades, of rubber (assuming you mean synthetic rubber, natural rubber is fine and will biodegrade) bands and stickers add up to a single bottle of dish soap's worth of plastic. Plastic is a wonderful material but it is immoral, to me, to use it without foresight of its impact and costs. It requires effort, but is not "hard". Effort does not equal "hard". My anti-plastic crusade started because I live on the Chesapeake Bay and became involved in Bay cleanup initiatives about a decade ago. I'd say 9 out of every 10 items I recovered were plastic items, some from as far away as New York State, having floated for hundreds of miles down the Susquehanna and Delaware Rivers.

rqtwteye 4y ago

“ But most of my produce has stickers or rubber bands, even at the farmers market, so I still cannot avoid them.” As consumer there are only limited ways you can reduce single use. We need to change the economics so excessive packaging is too expensive.