5 ms·

The study finds that plastic bags as a fraction of the waste on beaches increased in all areas, so that’s bad. A more concerning issue is the nature of the bag

by hedora 1y ago

The study finds that plastic bags as a fraction of the waste on beaches increased in all areas, so that’s bad. A more concerning issue is the nature of the bags being thrown away. California banned “single use” plastic bags (which we used to reuse as trash bags for the bathroom or whatever) but lets you buy “reusable” ones for a few cents at the checkout counter. The reusable ones are much heavier and contain 10-100x more plastic, and take even longer to biodegrade. The study counts “items”, not weight, and reports a 25-47% decrease. Assuming California is the region that hit 47% (call it 50%), and the reusable bags are better than the best available (only 10x worse than pre-ban) that translates to a 5x increase in microplastics on the beach. I’d consider this a disaster, not a win. This matches older studies, which measured total plastic content of landfill waste before and after plastic bag bans like California’s. Those showed sharp increases in plastic waste too. The studies in question were in places that did not allow the reusable plastic ones that California forced the stores to switch to. Instead, the authors found that people switched from using the disposable bags as trash bags to using kitchen trash bags, which are ~100x worse. If only 1% of households were using disposable shopping bags for trash, and no one reused the new style bags, then the policies ended up breaking even. In practice, the policies increased total plastic waste, despite being better thought out than California’s newer ban. I’m all for banning plastic bags, but the current bans target the most efficient use of plastic, increasing overall plastic production and waste. The bans should only target things that have plastic-free alternatives, or at least that have less plastic intensive alternatives.

dawnerd 1y ago
I used the old style plastic bags as trash bags. I use the new thicker ones as trash bags (cat litter). All the law did was increase how much plastic ends up in the landfill. They should have required paper. Oregon did the same dumb thing. Portland has paper bags everywhere. Then they required charging for bags and everyone switched to plastic.
- Tagbert 1y ago
  Paper bags are a pain. The stores that push paper have paper bags with no handles. It makes carrying more than one bag very clumsy. I tend to avoid the stores around here that only have paper.
socalgal2 1y ago
100% agree though I'm curious how to fix things. If I go to any supermarket it's full of plastic. Of course many traditional products are often (not always) sold in plastic like milk, yogurt, cottage cheese, breads. But, stores are full of, packaged by the store or the store's company products. The easist place to see this is the prepared foods section. Veggie salads in plastic, pasta salad in plastic, hummus in plastic, cookies in plastic, nuts in plastic, sandwiches in plastic, ... I have no idea what it would take to stop that and what the substitute would be. Examples: I like Japanese Milk Bread. It generally comes wrapped in a plastic bag, arguably because it's not hardy like something like sourdough which can be sold in an open paper bag. Similarly, local markets sell Chinese sticky lotus leaf rice, 2 or 3 in a plastic container, they sell fresh tofu skin in a plastic container. I guess they could try to switch to waxed cardboard like milk is sometimes sold? Is that good or is that cardboard infused with plastic? Has any "progressive" country banned plastic such that pre-sliced meat/cheese is not sold in plastic?
- serial_dev 1y ago
  Not only that, they now sell all kinds of vegetables in plastic. I would like to buy 3-4 "loose“ carrots for a meal, I cannot. I can only buy a 1 kg bag of carrot and it's plastic. One kilogram of carrot is a huge amount for my dietary habits, and I need to throw away usually half of the carrot. Now multiply it by about ten for the different vegetables.
  - trollbridge 1y ago
    Mangos? Wrapped in plastic. Other fruits? Often packaged in styrofoam. Meats? Styrofoam package or vacuum sealed plastic. I sort my rubbish for what can be composted, is metal, what can be burned ecologically, and what must be thrown away. A normal household level of buying ingredients results in a mountain of plastic trash with no ecological way to dispose of it (other than landfills assuming the landfill is run properly, which they are where I live… but no way to guarantee it will stay that way for the next several hundred years). I won’t even get into the nightmare of plastic toys, one of which I found had dangerous levels of lead despite being a newish toy from a responsible source (Melissa & Doug), and I was unable to get any government agency interested in investigating further.
fmbb 1y ago
> Assuming California is the region that hit 47% (call it 50%), and the reusable bags are better than the best available (only 10x worse than pre-ban) that translates to a 5x increase in microplastics on the beach. I’d consider this a disaster, not a win. You are assuming that people are throwing away more reusable plastic bags. Are they? Where I live (Sweden) the extra plastic bag fee introduced made people also buy more single use plastic bags in bulk which were cheaper and flimsier. If they are making up a larger part of the "items" counted, and not the reusable bags, then the win is even greater than a 25-47% decrease. What reason do you have to believe people are throwing away the heavier, reusable bags at that rate? Do other bags not exist anywhere?
- scoofy 1y ago
  We are throwing them away. "Reusable" is a term of art. We're not talking about the actually reusable canvas-like bags. We're talking about heavy sheets of plastic. The situation is complicated, and nobody wants to have an honest conversation about it. The reason why the switch to heavier bags is important is mainly to stop them from blowing away in the wind when people litter, where they end up in the water system. I don't think anyone really has any serious concerns about the density of plastic that ends up in our landfills, ideally, never to be seen again. The idea that plastic is bad, without concern for whether or not it ends up in a landfill, I think is misplaced concern. There are some decomposition GHG concerns, but again, those are insignificant compared to something as common as just driving ever day. Here we must remember that recycling plastic is generally a bad idea altogether if we care about GHGs. The only people that seem to be pushing back against the bans are people with sudden and politically surprising (fake) environmental concerns because they are annoyed that they have to pay 10¢-25¢ for a bag (and absurdly trivial amount), and having to ask for one, instead of getting them for free without asking. This also has the effect of making paper bags competitive with plastic. The entire debate is between most people on this issue seems to be people who either don't understand what it's about or don't actually care. Virtue signalling on the left or fake concern on the right.
  - trollbridge 1y ago
    It’s hard to understand why couldn’t just have ecological canvas or jute bags.
00N8 1y ago
In terms of microplastics, I would think 100 of the old flimsy single use bags would be much worse than 5 reusable plastic bags, even if the total mass is the same. The heavier reusables have less surface area per mass, so they'll be degraded more slowly by the sun. They also are less easily blown by the wind, so it's more likely someone will dispose of them properly or that they'll naturally end up buried somewhere that does a better job of containing the eventual microplastics. Fewer bags in total would probably be better for sea turtles than thinner bags as well. I'm not sure if that makes the reusables better overall, but I don't think we can say they're 10-100x worse based on weight alone.
- kragen 1y ago
  I agree with most of your comment, except that microplastics come from paint, tires, and washing synthetic garments, not plastic bags, and I'm dubious about your photodegradation point.
belorn 1y ago
My anecdotal experience as a diver in Sweden that do a few ocean clean days per year, and who have operated during the periods of before, during and after a plastic bag ban, my experience has been that the ban worked greatly in reducing bags and plastic eating tools to a very major degree. Before the ban we saw plastic garbage practically every single dive, and the days we were cleaning we picked up bags of it by the end of the day. In contrast, plastic garbage is now thankfully rather rare to see, maybe once every 10th dive, and the effect has continued after the ban was lifted (so far). On cleaning days we might get like a few items in total. Plastic is no longer a major thing we pick up, and focus is instead on e-scooters and cans of laughing gas. In the couple ocean clean up events we have found more scooters than plastic bags. I have seen a few canvas bags, but they don't seem to last long under the water.
- DanielHB 1y ago
  It worked in Sweden because the bags you can buy (used to) cost 7kr (about a US dollar in purchasing power). So even though those bags are heavier and sturdier people do reuse them. I cringe every time I have to buy one because I didn't plan ahead.
  - jay_kyburz 1y ago
    I think its the same here in Australia. Whats more, a lot of the bags you pay extra for are paper anyhow.
- trollbridge 1y ago
  There really needs to be a ban on single use eating utensils and most single use plastic food packaging. It would require a tiny bit of planning ahead, such as people would need to carry around a fork, knife, metal straw, and perhaps a cup or coffee mug. Considering how minimal the cost of forks and spoons are, eateries could simply sell metal forks and spoons to people who forget them. An easy way to implement this is a tax / user fee on single use plastics for mitigating waste that ends up in shorelines or in the ocean, and make the fee enough to actually mitigate it + set the fee so that reusable metal or wood cutlery is price competitive.
barbazoo 1y ago
> The bans should only target things that have plastic-free alternatives, or at least that have less plastic intensive alternatives. I find this very interesting. It’s basically saying that unless there is a better way that’s just as convenient, one has the right to buy these disposable bags. Who gives us the right to pollute the environment?
- anticorporate 1y ago
  One might easily argue that nearly everything has a plastic-free alternative anyway.
  - barbazoo 1y ago
    True. Less convenient though, e.g. reusing a box from the store, bringing reusable bags, skipping the shopping when without bags, buying more expensive less disposable containers.
graemep 1y ago
> California banned “single use” plastic bags (which we used to reuse as trash bags for the bathroom or whatever) but lets you buy “reusable” ones for a few cents at the checkout counter. The reusable ones are much heavier and contain 10-100x more plastic, and take even longer to biodegrade. We have the same problem in the UK. Single use bags not available but you can buy heavier ones, so while people throw fewer bags, they are heavier ones. Paper bags have also become a lot more common. Obviously no plastic pollution but I do not know what other impact they have. They are often reusable and obviously very biodegradable so I would guess its a win?
janalsncm 1y ago
If the cost of the bags covered the cost to clean up I wouldn’t mind. As it stands, ten cents seems pretty arbitrary and frankly not even a decision factor. At the grocery store they ask if you want to round up your bill to donate. On average that is 50 cents, way more than a bag costs.
coryrc 1y ago
> and take even longer to biodegrade I didn't think they did at all, but turns out to do so slightly: https://biosphereplastic.com/microbes-that-biodegrade-plastic/microbes-consume-bags-in-ocean-water https://biosphereplastic.com/microbes-that-biodegrade-plasti...
gljiva 1y ago
Arguing about which bags are worse for the environment is a waste of time and resources, since littering is the root problem and huge fines regarding littering invested in enforcement and prosecution of such acts should be much better for the environment
- BrenBarn 1y ago
  There's something to be done there, certainly, but I wonder how much of the problem is due to the fact that these bags easily blow away in the wind, etc. It's one thing to say "don't deliberately litter" but to insist that everyone watch every bag like a hawk to make sure it doesn't blow away, fall out of a pocket, etc. is a bigger ask.
kevin_thibedeau 1y ago
The anti-rugged bag stuff is propaganda put out by the disposable bag industry. There is no problem with them once they've been used long enough.
- hedora 1y ago
  I wasn't referring to the rugged bags. I mean the ones that are made of something similar to large trash bags, and that end up getting small holes in them on the first use about 10% of the time. Rugged bags would be OK if they actually got reused. Canvas would be drastically better. I usually go for paper bags (they make good kindling, and are reusable a few times), but some chains here in California seem to be phasing them out in favor of the thick plastic ones.
- condiment 1y ago
  I think the parent is pointing out that empirically, increases in plastic waste are observed in places where plastic bags are banned. You are correct there’s no problem with them if they’re used enough, but evidence suggests they do not receive that usage.
- hansvm 1y ago
  People still view them as disposable though. Public policy necessarily interacts with real people, and those interactions are currently a net negative. You might fix that by encouraging properly reusable bags (e.g., by banning even the rugged bag sales), but that's problematic too. By many metrics, with normal usage, they're worse than the disposable bags people used to use (the break-even point is linear in the number of days between shopping trips, and unless we also encourage more frequent short _walks_ or something to the store you also have the issue of car-related expenses, not to mention that if your diet is largely meats and other animal products as is common in the US, walking is actually more carbon intensive than taking an EV the same distance (biking blows them both out of the water in efficiency)).
  - cwillu 1y ago
    Got a breakdown on the walking calculation anywhere? I find myself suspicious of the argument, not least because such walking will likely displace exercise and idle time elsewhere.
mjevans 1y ago
My opinions: * Leave my dang plastic straws alone or at least make any degradable replacement take longer than a week to degrade and __not crumple like a limp noodle__ during normal use. * 1000% yes on this inanity of selling bags. Require standard grade carry out bags all be complimentary (this will drive stores to get the cheapest ones that don't irk customers), and just outright ban plastic for 'bags'. Do not specify exactly but require that any take out bag be (non commercially) compostable, or recycled (for real, not export to someone that just treats it as trash).
- Viliam1234 1y ago
  My kids use silicon straws. You can take them apart, wash them, put them together again and they work ok.
  - trollbridge 1y ago
    We use metal and glass, and they also work fine.
  - kragen 1y ago
    Silicon? That sounds really dangerous—what if it shatters while it's in their mouth? Are you sure you don't mean silicone?
- golergka 1y ago
  If you're a bar or restaurant, please invest in metal, re-usable straws instead of humiliating your paying clients with paper ones. I just don't understand why a place that charges $50 or more for a dinner would do something like this.
  - mjevans 1y ago
    Probably health regulations and existing infrastructure. They have an Industrial Dishwasher. It's pretty good at blasting dishes, bowls, plates, cups, utensils, etc, things with all their surfaces easily exposed and no narrow inner areas, with hot water and a bit of chemicals like detergents to get things clean. Maybe it's some other device for smaller faster loads. Cleaning a straw properly, _drying_ it properly. That sounds like a giant pain. Potentially a massive liability. (Detergents stuck in the straw? Someone's food and diseases not cleaned properly?) I could see Silicone straws maybe working, but not as well in a lot of respects. They'd need a specialized cleaning process. Maybe boil in water with something to force (and measure) water flow through them. Then transfer to a baking chamber to dry and sanitize with heat. This sounds labor and energy intensive. Just gut instinct, I'm pretty sure it'd be cheaper to use some of that industrial compostable plastic to make a plastic straw. If some paper straw that didn't suck (as outlined in my other post) were used instead that'd be OK too.
hilbert42 1y ago
"The bans should only target things that have plastic-free alternatives, or at least that have less plastic intensive alternatives." There's also what I call junk plastic products. I'll illustrate with examples. Plastic products that aren't durable and have very short lifespans: - Plastic storage bins and such that use so little plastic that they break when stacked thus become plastic waste long before they ought to. - I bought three plastic buckets at the supermarket and the handles fell off two before I got them home. I nevertheless used them only to find that they soon cracked and leaked with normal domestic usage. (BTW, there's an old galvanized bucket in our family that's well over 80 years old (it belonged to my grandmother), and it's still serviceable (the galvanizing is still intact and it's not rusty).) - The use of polyethylene for containers, etc. Over time polyethylene leaks its plasticizers to produce a greasy coating on the surface. The polyethylene then hardens and cracks—thus more junk plastic waste. Polyethylene should not be used for such purposes. Moreover, phthalate plasticizers have been found to have bad effects on human health. Phthalate plasticizers ought to be banned for use in domestic products. I could go on, there are hundreds more examples. The plastic waste problem could be fixed quick smart if high taxes were applied on plastic products that were deemed insufficiently durable. No doubt, manufacturers, penny-pinching cheapskates and greedy profit mongers would cry foul over what's deemed as 'durable'. That's solvable with standards set down by an authoritative standards body.
- trollbridge 1y ago
  Plastics need to be taxed for the external cost their waste causes. Galvanised metal wouldn’t have such a tax if it has no impact (it doesn’t).
  - HenryBemis 1y ago
    Well we did this for the bags (put a high price on them) and banned some others (e.g. straws). My fear is that taxing plastic items more (let's say of VAT is 20%, plastics could get 35%). Then our dear politicians on Year4 will pass a law to "redirect the extra collection for blah blah blah" and it will end up _not_ to the effort of mitigating the plastic pollution, and we will be stuck with one more tax _and_ the pollution!!

by hedora 1y ago

dawnerd 1y ago

I used the old style plastic bags as trash bags. I use the new thicker ones as trash bags (cat litter). All the law did was increase how much plastic ends up in the landfill. They should have required paper. Oregon did the same dumb thing. Portland has paper bags everywhere. Then they required charging for bags and everyone switched to plastic.

Tagbert 1y ago
Paper bags are a pain. The stores that push paper have paper bags with no handles. It makes carrying more than one bag very clumsy. I tend to avoid the stores around here that only have paper.

socalgal2 1y ago

100% agree though I'm curious how to fix things. If I go to any supermarket it's full of plastic. Of course many traditional products are often (not always) sold in plastic like milk, yogurt, cottage cheese, breads. But, stores are full of, packaged by the store or the store's company products. The easist place to see this is the prepared foods section. Veggie salads in plastic, pasta salad in plastic, hummus in plastic, cookies in plastic, nuts in plastic, sandwiches in plastic, ... I have no idea what it would take to stop that and what the substitute would be. Examples: I like Japanese Milk Bread. It generally comes wrapped in a plastic bag, arguably because it's not hardy like something like sourdough which can be sold in an open paper bag. Similarly, local markets sell Chinese sticky lotus leaf rice, 2 or 3 in a plastic container, they sell fresh tofu skin in a plastic container. I guess they could try to switch to waxed cardboard like milk is sometimes sold? Is that good or is that cardboard infused with plastic? Has any "progressive" country banned plastic such that pre-sliced meat/cheese is not sold in plastic?

serial_dev 1y ago
Not only that, they now sell all kinds of vegetables in plastic. I would like to buy 3-4 "loose“ carrots for a meal, I cannot. I can only buy a 1 kg bag of carrot and it's plastic. One kilogram of carrot is a huge amount for my dietary habits, and I need to throw away usually half of the carrot. Now multiply it by about ten for the different vegetables.
- trollbridge 1y ago
  Mangos? Wrapped in plastic. Other fruits? Often packaged in styrofoam. Meats? Styrofoam package or vacuum sealed plastic. I sort my rubbish for what can be composted, is metal, what can be burned ecologically, and what must be thrown away. A normal household level of buying ingredients results in a mountain of plastic trash with no ecological way to dispose of it (other than landfills assuming the landfill is run properly, which they are where I live… but no way to guarantee it will stay that way for the next several hundred years). I won’t even get into the nightmare of plastic toys, one of which I found had dangerous levels of lead despite being a newish toy from a responsible source (Melissa & Doug), and I was unable to get any government agency interested in investigating further.

fmbb 1y ago

> Assuming California is the region that hit 47% (call it 50%), and the reusable bags are better than the best available (only 10x worse than pre-ban) that translates to a 5x increase in microplastics on the beach. I’d consider this a disaster, not a win. You are assuming that people are throwing away more reusable plastic bags. Are they? Where I live (Sweden) the extra plastic bag fee introduced made people also buy more single use plastic bags in bulk which were cheaper and flimsier. If they are making up a larger part of the "items" counted, and not the reusable bags, then the win is even greater than a 25-47% decrease. What reason do you have to believe people are throwing away the heavier, reusable bags at that rate? Do other bags not exist anywhere?

scoofy 1y ago
We are throwing them away. "Reusable" is a term of art. We're not talking about the actually reusable canvas-like bags. We're talking about heavy sheets of plastic. The situation is complicated, and nobody wants to have an honest conversation about it. The reason why the switch to heavier bags is important is mainly to stop them from blowing away in the wind when people litter, where they end up in the water system. I don't think anyone really has any serious concerns about the density of plastic that ends up in our landfills, ideally, never to be seen again. The idea that plastic is bad, without concern for whether or not it ends up in a landfill, I think is misplaced concern. There are some decomposition GHG concerns, but again, those are insignificant compared to something as common as just driving ever day. Here we must remember that recycling plastic is generally a bad idea altogether if we care about GHGs. The only people that seem to be pushing back against the bans are people with sudden and politically surprising (fake) environmental concerns because they are annoyed that they have to pay 10¢-25¢ for a bag (and absurdly trivial amount), and having to ask for one, instead of getting them for free without asking. This also has the effect of making paper bags competitive with plastic. The entire debate is between most people on this issue seems to be people who either don't understand what it's about or don't actually care. Virtue signalling on the left or fake concern on the right.
- trollbridge 1y ago
  It’s hard to understand why couldn’t just have ecological canvas or jute bags.

00N8 1y ago

In terms of microplastics, I would think 100 of the old flimsy single use bags would be much worse than 5 reusable plastic bags, even if the total mass is the same. The heavier reusables have less surface area per mass, so they'll be degraded more slowly by the sun. They also are less easily blown by the wind, so it's more likely someone will dispose of them properly or that they'll naturally end up buried somewhere that does a better job of containing the eventual microplastics. Fewer bags in total would probably be better for sea turtles than thinner bags as well. I'm not sure if that makes the reusables better overall, but I don't think we can say they're 10-100x worse based on weight alone.

kragen 1y ago
I agree with most of your comment, except that microplastics come from paint, tires, and washing synthetic garments, not plastic bags, and I'm dubious about your photodegradation point.

belorn 1y ago

My anecdotal experience as a diver in Sweden that do a few ocean clean days per year, and who have operated during the periods of before, during and after a plastic bag ban, my experience has been that the ban worked greatly in reducing bags and plastic eating tools to a very major degree. Before the ban we saw plastic garbage practically every single dive, and the days we were cleaning we picked up bags of it by the end of the day. In contrast, plastic garbage is now thankfully rather rare to see, maybe once every 10th dive, and the effect has continued after the ban was lifted (so far). On cleaning days we might get like a few items in total. Plastic is no longer a major thing we pick up, and focus is instead on e-scooters and cans of laughing gas. In the couple ocean clean up events we have found more scooters than plastic bags. I have seen a few canvas bags, but they don't seem to last long under the water.

DanielHB 1y ago
It worked in Sweden because the bags you can buy (used to) cost 7kr (about a US dollar in purchasing power). So even though those bags are heavier and sturdier people do reuse them. I cringe every time I have to buy one because I didn't plan ahead.
- jay_kyburz 1y ago
  I think its the same here in Australia. Whats more, a lot of the bags you pay extra for are paper anyhow.
trollbridge 1y ago
There really needs to be a ban on single use eating utensils and most single use plastic food packaging. It would require a tiny bit of planning ahead, such as people would need to carry around a fork, knife, metal straw, and perhaps a cup or coffee mug. Considering how minimal the cost of forks and spoons are, eateries could simply sell metal forks and spoons to people who forget them. An easy way to implement this is a tax / user fee on single use plastics for mitigating waste that ends up in shorelines or in the ocean, and make the fee enough to actually mitigate it + set the fee so that reusable metal or wood cutlery is price competitive.

barbazoo 1y ago

> The bans should only target things that have plastic-free alternatives, or at least that have less plastic intensive alternatives. I find this very interesting. It’s basically saying that unless there is a better way that’s just as convenient, one has the right to buy these disposable bags. Who gives us the right to pollute the environment?

anticorporate 1y ago
One might easily argue that nearly everything has a plastic-free alternative anyway.
- barbazoo 1y ago
  True. Less convenient though, e.g. reusing a box from the store, bringing reusable bags, skipping the shopping when without bags, buying more expensive less disposable containers.

graemep 1y ago

> California banned “single use” plastic bags (which we used to reuse as trash bags for the bathroom or whatever) but lets you buy “reusable” ones for a few cents at the checkout counter. The reusable ones are much heavier and contain 10-100x more plastic, and take even longer to biodegrade. We have the same problem in the UK. Single use bags not available but you can buy heavier ones, so while people throw fewer bags, they are heavier ones. Paper bags have also become a lot more common. Obviously no plastic pollution but I do not know what other impact they have. They are often reusable and obviously very biodegradable so I would guess its a win?

janalsncm 1y ago

If the cost of the bags covered the cost to clean up I wouldn’t mind. As it stands, ten cents seems pretty arbitrary and frankly not even a decision factor. At the grocery store they ask if you want to round up your bill to donate. On average that is 50 cents, way more than a bag costs.

coryrc 1y ago

> and take even longer to biodegrade I didn't think they did at all, but turns out to do so slightly: https://biosphereplastic.com/microbes-that-biodegrade-plastic/microbes-consume-bags-in-ocean-water https://biosphereplastic.com/microbes-that-biodegrade-plasti...

gljiva 1y ago

Arguing about which bags are worse for the environment is a waste of time and resources, since littering is the root problem and huge fines regarding littering invested in enforcement and prosecution of such acts should be much better for the environment

BrenBarn 1y ago
There's something to be done there, certainly, but I wonder how much of the problem is due to the fact that these bags easily blow away in the wind, etc. It's one thing to say "don't deliberately litter" but to insist that everyone watch every bag like a hawk to make sure it doesn't blow away, fall out of a pocket, etc. is a bigger ask.

kevin_thibedeau 1y ago

The anti-rugged bag stuff is propaganda put out by the disposable bag industry. There is no problem with them once they've been used long enough.

hedora 1y ago
I wasn't referring to the rugged bags. I mean the ones that are made of something similar to large trash bags, and that end up getting small holes in them on the first use about 10% of the time. Rugged bags would be OK if they actually got reused. Canvas would be drastically better. I usually go for paper bags (they make good kindling, and are reusable a few times), but some chains here in California seem to be phasing them out in favor of the thick plastic ones.
condiment 1y ago
I think the parent is pointing out that empirically, increases in plastic waste are observed in places where plastic bags are banned. You are correct there’s no problem with them if they’re used enough, but evidence suggests they do not receive that usage.
hansvm 1y ago
People still view them as disposable though. Public policy necessarily interacts with real people, and those interactions are currently a net negative. You might fix that by encouraging properly reusable bags (e.g., by banning even the rugged bag sales), but that's problematic too. By many metrics, with normal usage, they're worse than the disposable bags people used to use (the break-even point is linear in the number of days between shopping trips, and unless we also encourage more frequent short _walks_ or something to the store you also have the issue of car-related expenses, not to mention that if your diet is largely meats and other animal products as is common in the US, walking is actually more carbon intensive than taking an EV the same distance (biking blows them both out of the water in efficiency)).
- cwillu 1y ago
  Got a breakdown on the walking calculation anywhere? I find myself suspicious of the argument, not least because such walking will likely displace exercise and idle time elsewhere.

mjevans 1y ago

My opinions: * Leave my dang plastic straws alone or at least make any degradable replacement take longer than a week to degrade and __not crumple like a limp noodle__ during normal use. * 1000% yes on this inanity of selling bags. Require standard grade carry out bags all be complimentary (this will drive stores to get the cheapest ones that don't irk customers), and just outright ban plastic for 'bags'. Do not specify exactly but require that any take out bag be (non commercially) compostable, or recycled (for real, not export to someone that just treats it as trash).

Viliam1234 1y ago
My kids use silicon straws. You can take them apart, wash them, put them together again and they work ok.
- trollbridge 1y ago
  We use metal and glass, and they also work fine.
- kragen 1y ago
  Silicon? That sounds really dangerous—what if it shatters while it's in their mouth? Are you sure you don't mean silicone?
golergka 1y ago
If you're a bar or restaurant, please invest in metal, re-usable straws instead of humiliating your paying clients with paper ones. I just don't understand why a place that charges $50 or more for a dinner would do something like this.
- mjevans 1y ago
  Probably health regulations and existing infrastructure. They have an Industrial Dishwasher. It's pretty good at blasting dishes, bowls, plates, cups, utensils, etc, things with all their surfaces easily exposed and no narrow inner areas, with hot water and a bit of chemicals like detergents to get things clean. Maybe it's some other device for smaller faster loads. Cleaning a straw properly, _drying_ it properly. That sounds like a giant pain. Potentially a massive liability. (Detergents stuck in the straw? Someone's food and diseases not cleaned properly?) I could see Silicone straws maybe working, but not as well in a lot of respects. They'd need a specialized cleaning process. Maybe boil in water with something to force (and measure) water flow through them. Then transfer to a baking chamber to dry and sanitize with heat. This sounds labor and energy intensive. Just gut instinct, I'm pretty sure it'd be cheaper to use some of that industrial compostable plastic to make a plastic straw. If some paper straw that didn't suck (as outlined in my other post) were used instead that'd be OK too.

hilbert42 1y ago

"The bans should only target things that have plastic-free alternatives, or at least that have less plastic intensive alternatives." There's also what I call junk plastic products. I'll illustrate with examples. Plastic products that aren't durable and have very short lifespans: - Plastic storage bins and such that use so little plastic that they break when stacked thus become plastic waste long before they ought to. - I bought three plastic buckets at the supermarket and the handles fell off two before I got them home. I nevertheless used them only to find that they soon cracked and leaked with normal domestic usage. (BTW, there's an old galvanized bucket in our family that's well over 80 years old (it belonged to my grandmother), and it's still serviceable (the galvanizing is still intact and it's not rusty).) - The use of polyethylene for containers, etc. Over time polyethylene leaks its plasticizers to produce a greasy coating on the surface. The polyethylene then hardens and cracks—thus more junk plastic waste. Polyethylene should not be used for such purposes. Moreover, phthalate plasticizers have been found to have bad effects on human health. Phthalate plasticizers ought to be banned for use in domestic products. I could go on, there are hundreds more examples. The plastic waste problem could be fixed quick smart if high taxes were applied on plastic products that were deemed insufficiently durable. No doubt, manufacturers, penny-pinching cheapskates and greedy profit mongers would cry foul over what's deemed as 'durable'. That's solvable with standards set down by an authoritative standards body.

trollbridge 1y ago
Plastics need to be taxed for the external cost their waste causes. Galvanised metal wouldn’t have such a tax if it has no impact (it doesn’t).
- HenryBemis 1y ago
  Well we did this for the bags (put a high price on them) and banned some others (e.g. straws). My fear is that taxing plastic items more (let's say of VAT is 20%, plastics could get 35%). Then our dear politicians on Year4 will pass a law to "redirect the extra collection for blah blah blah" and it will end up _not_ to the effort of mitigating the plastic pollution, and we will be stuck with one more tax _and_ the pollution!!