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> I've yet to see any recycling guidelines with anywhere near the amount of required precision. The main one I can think of is the plastic bubble mailers and a

by bmitc 3y ago

> I've yet to see any recycling guidelines with anywhere near the amount of required precision. The main one I can think of is the plastic bubble mailers and also the air packaging bubbles Amazon uses. The city says not to put them in the blue recycle bin. The mailer itself says take it to a grocery store. I take it to Whole Foods, owned by Amazon, ask the Amazon return staff where to put it, and they refer me to the general recycle bin in the front. Then there's a web address on them that says the same thing as above. I don't know what to actually do with them or where a magic plastic mailer dropbox is at. No one uses plastic bags around here anymore, so I don't have to worry about them. When I did have them, I typically reused them until they basically became trash.

bhandziuk 3y ago
I currently use grocery plastic bags as household garbage bags. I've not bought trash bags in a decade. It'll be slightly more pricy and less convenient if plastic bags go away. But maybe it's still good on the greater whole.
- userbinator 3y ago
  Many people do that too, hence why the observation that banning them as "single use" when they're not, and forcing people to buy garbage bags instead, which are then actually single-use, is even worse.
  - Dylan16807 3y ago
    Worse how? Carrying groceries home in a plastic bag, then using that bag for trash, costs one plastic bag of resources. Carrying groceries home in a cloth bag, then using a plastic bag for trash, costs one plastic bag of resources. Those are pretty much the same, as long as you're not burning through cloth bags. To put it simply: Using something twice is not better than avoiding a use and then using it once. And when I get plastic bags at the grocery store, a third of them end up too damaged to put trash into. The small size also makes them a lot less efficient at containing trash, despite them saving material by being half as thick.
    - userbinator 3y ago
      Cloth bags take up more volume and weight for the same capacity, and also cost a lot more to make. Of course you can reuse them many more times, and you need to do that to break even, but the former point still holds. And when I get plastic bags at the grocery store, a third of them end up too damaged to put trash into. That's unfortunate, but a natural consequence of optimising for profit based on a self-fulfilling prophecy: the belief that the bags will only be used once, leads to them being made so that they can barely be used once. The same optimisation for profit is likely happening with cloth bags too, but it's just not as obvious yet. That said, there are countless other occasions where a thin film of plastic comes in handy.
      - Dylan16807 3y ago
        Let's forget cloth bags for a moment. Using a bag once instead of twice but still getting the same job done means you're reducing instead of reusing. That's not a bad thing by itself. It's only bad if your other costs are causing problems. > That's unfortunate, but a natural consequence of optimising for profit based on a self-fulfilling prophecy: the belief that the bags will only be used once, leads to them being made so that they can barely be used once. Yeah but better bags require more plastic. I'm not convinced that a sturdier bag will get enough people to increase their reuse enough to have a net benefit.
        thfuran 3y ago
        >Let's forget cloth bags for a moment. Using a bag once instead of twice but still getting the same job done means you're reducing instead of reusing. That's not a bad thing by itself. It's only bad if your other costs are causing problems. You can't forget the cloth bag but then still count its use.
        Dylan16807 3y ago
        I'm not counting it. Please point at where you think I am? Lack of using a plastic bag does not mean you're using a cloth bag.
  - usrusr 3y ago
    Store-provided bags are perceived as brand vehicles by management, so they'd rather be on the safe side when deciding about which gauge to get, wether recycled bags from stocks might be good enough and so on. Purpose-bought bags? Unless you get the heavy duty stuff like someone planning to dispose of their hacked-up murder victims will be much less material per bag. But the main issue with ubiquitous bags is that not all of them make it to disposal, und that just doesn't happen that much with bags specifically bought for that very purpose.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
throwoutway 3y ago
I take them to Kroger, there's usually a bin at the entrance by where they store the shopping carts. I noticed the other major chains tend to have these too, in more or less the entrance location
- bmitc 3y ago
  Yea, I have found a few places, but they're rare I think because plastic bags are banned by most cities in my area. But my overall point is that the process requires trial and error, and even the creator of the packaging doesn't give accurate directions to properly recycle the material.
mhalle 3y ago
Also note that the Amazon padded packaging says to remove paper labels before recycling, but it practically impossible to remove the Amazon paper labels (at least in my experience).
- sokoloff 3y ago
  They cut out quickly (with the plastic attached) with our kitchen scissors in a pushing motion. Those go in the trash and the plastic to our supermarket plastic bag collection. (I’m not 100.00% sure that’s right, but I’m pretty sure and enough to do it.)

by bmitc 3y ago

bhandziuk 3y ago

I currently use grocery plastic bags as household garbage bags. I've not bought trash bags in a decade. It'll be slightly more pricy and less convenient if plastic bags go away. But maybe it's still good on the greater whole.

userbinator 3y ago
Many people do that too, hence why the observation that banning them as "single use" when they're not, and forcing people to buy garbage bags instead, which are then actually single-use, is even worse.
- Dylan16807 3y ago
  Worse how? Carrying groceries home in a plastic bag, then using that bag for trash, costs one plastic bag of resources. Carrying groceries home in a cloth bag, then using a plastic bag for trash, costs one plastic bag of resources. Those are pretty much the same, as long as you're not burning through cloth bags. To put it simply: Using something twice is not better than avoiding a use and then using it once. And when I get plastic bags at the grocery store, a third of them end up too damaged to put trash into. The small size also makes them a lot less efficient at containing trash, despite them saving material by being half as thick.
  - userbinator 3y ago
    Cloth bags take up more volume and weight for the same capacity, and also cost a lot more to make. Of course you can reuse them many more times, and you need to do that to break even, but the former point still holds. And when I get plastic bags at the grocery store, a third of them end up too damaged to put trash into. That's unfortunate, but a natural consequence of optimising for profit based on a self-fulfilling prophecy: the belief that the bags will only be used once, leads to them being made so that they can barely be used once. The same optimisation for profit is likely happening with cloth bags too, but it's just not as obvious yet. That said, there are countless other occasions where a thin film of plastic comes in handy.
    - Dylan16807 3y ago
      Let's forget cloth bags for a moment. Using a bag once instead of twice but still getting the same job done means you're reducing instead of reusing. That's not a bad thing by itself. It's only bad if your other costs are causing problems. > That's unfortunate, but a natural consequence of optimising for profit based on a self-fulfilling prophecy: the belief that the bags will only be used once, leads to them being made so that they can barely be used once. Yeah but better bags require more plastic. I'm not convinced that a sturdier bag will get enough people to increase their reuse enough to have a net benefit.
      - thfuran 3y ago
        >Let's forget cloth bags for a moment. Using a bag once instead of twice but still getting the same job done means you're reducing instead of reusing. That's not a bad thing by itself. It's only bad if your other costs are causing problems. You can't forget the cloth bag but then still count its use.
        Dylan16807 3y ago
        I'm not counting it. Please point at where you think I am? Lack of using a plastic bag does not mean you're using a cloth bag.
- usrusr 3y ago
  Store-provided bags are perceived as brand vehicles by management, so they'd rather be on the safe side when deciding about which gauge to get, wether recycled bags from stocks might be good enough and so on. Purpose-bought bags? Unless you get the heavy duty stuff like someone planning to dispose of their hacked-up murder victims will be much less material per bag. But the main issue with ubiquitous bags is that not all of them make it to disposal, und that just doesn't happen that much with bags specifically bought for that very purpose.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

throwoutway 3y ago

I take them to Kroger, there's usually a bin at the entrance by where they store the shopping carts. I noticed the other major chains tend to have these too, in more or less the entrance location

bmitc 3y ago
Yea, I have found a few places, but they're rare I think because plastic bags are banned by most cities in my area. But my overall point is that the process requires trial and error, and even the creator of the packaging doesn't give accurate directions to properly recycle the material.

mhalle 3y ago

Also note that the Amazon padded packaging says to remove paper labels before recycling, but it practically impossible to remove the Amazon paper labels (at least in my experience).

sokoloff 3y ago
They cut out quickly (with the plastic attached) with our kitchen scissors in a pushing motion. Those go in the trash and the plastic to our supermarket plastic bag collection. (I’m not 100.00% sure that’s right, but I’m pretty sure and enough to do it.)