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Since the move from single use plastic bags to reusable ones, my environmental impact has increased. Firstly I now have to buy garbage bags, where I previously
by eloff 4y ago
Since the move from single use plastic bags to reusable ones, my environmental impact has increased.
Firstly I now have to buy garbage bags, where I previously reused shopping bags. That completely negates the benefit. But let’s ignore that and say most people just trash them.
Even in that case you’d have to reuse a reusable bag 20 times to break even. I don’t know about you, but on average maybe I get 0-5 reuses out of these bags. That’s just squarely worse off than we were before.
- taude 4y agoI just reuse my "disposable" bags anyway, like ziplocks and stuff. I agree the fancy "reusable" plastic bags are pretty much junk (when storing food, like lunch items). It does make sense using the reusable grocery bags, though. Those things last a long time and don't get gross inside. I'm waiting for someone to invent the re-usable dog-poop bag. ;)
- srcreigh 4y agoThe reusable dog poop bag is probably a bucket. Maybe smaller one with a lid.
- djleni 4y agoUm what kind of reusable bag are you using? I’ve had the same reusable bags for probably 5 years now and not a single one has failed.
- taude 4y agoI think it depends that you're reusing them for. I bought some of those "Stasher" branded reusable plastic bags for lunch things, they got gross pretty quickly, hard to wash, and then they started coming apart at the seems. Pretty dumb optimization, considering they cost $15 for three bags. My grocery bags, though, for loading up at the store are good, and last a long time. As in all things, moderation, do the 80% etc...
- SapporoChris 4y agoThere are reusable bags that are fairly durable. I bought one in Mexico, I think its woven plastic. Not cheap thin plastic by any means. I bought it from Bodega Aurrerá which is owned by Walmart de México y Centroamérica. The bag is labeled 100% recyclable. I've been using it for eleven months, so far it has a one 2 cm cut in the bottom of it. It is still very useable.
- lokar 4y agoI have been reusing the same canvas shopping bags for over 10 years.
- kdkdodl 4y ago>A 2018 Danish Environmental Protection Agency report suggested that a cotton bag should be used at least 7,100 times to offset its environment impact when compared to a classic supermarket plastic bag that's reused once as a trash bag and then incinerated. (If that cotton is organic, the figure is an eye-popping 20,000 times, with the report assuming a lower yield but the same input of raw materials.) Hey if you've been using the same bag for a shopping trip every day, for all that time and never replaced it or got another, and it wasn't organic, you're almost halfway to having a smaller environmental impact than just using single use plastic bags all that time. https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/13/world/cotton-tote-vs-plastic-bags-environment-climate-cost-scn/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/13/world/cotton-tote-vs-plastic-...
- lokar 4y agoThat’s a narrow view of impact. Sea life does not choke on cotton bags.
- theossuary 4y agoThis of course isn't accurate. The original study had a few assumptions which led to this high number, but those assumptions aren't accurate for many even in Denmark, much less throughout the rest of the world. This is a pretty good read about it - https://medium.com/@parkpoomkomet/breaking-down-the-danish-study-on-the-environmental-impacts-of-grocery-carrier-bags-b8c97eb6c8fb https://medium.com/@parkpoomkomet/breaking-down-the-danish-s... So you'd need to reuse a cotton bage 70-1000 times most likely to come out ahead. Or you could reuse cotton you already have and lower that number to effectively 0.
- djleni 4y agoYou leave out from that study that for hydrocarbon bags the number is 30-50. Pretty easy to do that in a year.
- georgeecollins 4y agoWe definitely reuse bags more than twenty times. At the grocery store, one of the bags I use is from a trip I think I took almost a decade ago. Or another from my kids orthodontist, and he is in college now. You are probably not getting very good quality bags.
- ilyt 4y agoI have cloth bag I got in promotion with some sauce for ~12+ years now. Pretty sure it broke even. Sure if you got random cardboard one it won't be that great
- michaelmrose 4y agoYou buy strong canvas grocery bags. Don't attempt to put so much in each one that they literally structurally fail. Wash them if they get dirty. They last indefinitely. Shopping bags were always terrible garbage bags able to hold only tiny amounts of trash meaning you had to use a ton of them and as many as you needed the average household received 100x as many bags as they could profitably use as trash bags. Consider throwing everything wet into centrally located large trash receptacles with large bags and either not lining small trash cans or lining them with paper bags. TLDR buy better bags and use small paper bags.