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I would kill for this for when I’m buying fresh produce at the shops. Right now I just raw dog the produce into my basket as putting 4 apples into a plastic bag
by mrmincent 1y ago
I would kill for this for when I’m buying fresh produce at the shops. Right now I just raw dog the produce into my basket as putting 4 apples into a plastic bag to ease the weighing and transport home seems like a selfish thing to do to the environment, but something that starts to break down soon after that sounds great.
- hedora 1y agoI’d guess paper would work fine for that purpose, except that it’s harder for the checkout person.
- weaksauce 1y agothe places around here are using compostable plastic bags. not sure what it's made of but it can be composted in municipal facilities according to the bag. one downside is they are green tinted and harder to see what is in there but if it removes some of the plastic killing the ocean then i'm for it... assuming it's not a plastic that degrades into microplastics.
- ars 1y ago> but if it removes some of the plastic killing the ocean then i'm for it It doesn't. The plastics in the ocean don't come from your grocery store. They come from fishing gear and from places without municipal trash service. Honestly? It's basically greenwashing, it doesn't actually do anything at all. No one ever composts this things, and landfilling or incinerating a bag does not harm the environment.
- kjkjadksj 1y agoI just threw one of those into my compost pile last month and it’s still there. No clue how long it’s supposed to take.
- vkou 1y agoCompostable plastics don't compost if you just throw them in a compost heap, you need to compost them in high-temperature conditions.
- kjkjadksj 1y agoWell that is disappointing. I feel like that should be specified on the bag instead of alleging it is generally compostable like a brown paper bag.
- weaksauce 1y agoyeah I mentioned municipal compost because they can get the compost temperature way higher than we can at home scale. It should break down in the big compost piles they have
- throw101010 1y agoMost of these at least in my region are made from cornstarch. They decompose well/without "microplastics" but only under correct conditions. Home composts aren't usually meeting these, their temperature isn't going high enough for full decomposition and you can have traces of polymers left behind. I throw them in the trash for compostable waste because thankfully my collectivity collects these to generate biogas and my guess is they do end up in much larger/managed composts where they can fully decompose.
- nielsbot 1y agoI thought it was all PLA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingeo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingeo I think there's also "biodegradable" plastic which has cornstarch in it which allows bacteria to degrade it, but that's not the same thing?
- stoobs 1y agoPLA doesn't actually biodegrade outside of specialist industrial facilities, it was much vaunted as an eco friendly thing when 3d printing started using it, but we rapidly found out it can last decades without breaking down much if at all.
- mook 1y ago> it can be composted in municipal facilities according to the bag Note that "according to the bag" is very different from "according to your municipality"; my understanding is that most places actually can't handle them, and they might need to divert your compost to the landfill if it has too much of those plastic bags. They can be composed under certain conditions, but whether the facility your municipality uses has those is unclear. See also "flushable" wipes that must not be flushed down the toilet.
- yellowapple 1y ago> See also "flushable" wipes that must not be flushed down the toilet. That really should be prosecuted for false advertising. Just because I can physically flush Orbeez down the toilet doesn't mean it's safe to do so.
- jfim 1y agoI'd assume those bags would be okay considering they break down after a few days of holding compostable materials, and frequently make a mess in the compost bin. The "compostable" cutlery is definitely not compostable under normal household situations though.
- bluGill 1y agoMy understanding is most manicipal compost facilities can handle them - the vast majority of manicipalities don't have a facility at all. They are expensive. A home pile won't compost them, a pile at manicipal size is likely a health hazzard and so not a good option.
- ars 1y agoThe plastic bag also prolongs the life of the produce, which is the main reason I want it. Wasting produce is much worse for the environment than wasting a bag. After all if you don't litter the bag, throwing it out is pretty harmless.
- jay_kyburz 1y agowe use these fresh and crisp bags. They sound like a gimmick but they really do work. We reuse a bag for months until its full of holes and not doing its job well anymore. https://www.woolworths.com.au/shop/productdetails/2824/fresh-crisp-resealable-storage-bags-medium https://www.woolworths.com.au/shop/productdetails/2824/fresh...
- squigz 1y agoWhy not use a fabric bag? Either way good on you
- koolala 1y agoWould be nice to have bags like that with their weight printed on them that machines trust.
- bschwindHN 1y agoWhere I live they have scales that tare at the beginning as part of the process of using your own bag.
- koolala 1y agoDo you write down the result? How is the process connected? Smart produce scales log weight => Smart checkout scales compare weight to produce logs?
- worthless-trash 1y agoWrite down -what- result. You put the bag on the scale, it then sets this amount to 0.0 You put the product on the scale, (say 500g of apples), It shows 500g. You remove the bag, it takes off 4g, you add the bag it puts on 4g. There is no need to write down the result.
- jwagenet 1y agoIn the US, produce is rarely weighted and labeled in the produce section with the bag. Only at checkout is it weighed for sale, so no opportunity to tare the container.
- worthless-trash 1y agoToday I learned.
- nielsbot 1y agoI quit using bags for produce--I just put the produce in my basket or cart and then straight into the checkout bag on my way out of the store. The exception is small loose produce like snap peas.
- cyberax 1y agoUgh. That's a REALLY bad idea for anything that you don't thoroughly cook.
- zygentoma 1y agoThat's such an American fear. Wash it (as you should anyways) and you'll be fine ...
- weq 1y agoJust wash some forever checmicals over the pesticides, that'll do the job. Jokes aside, i raw dog with a quick wash and im yet to have caught covid so it cant be that bad.
- fy20 1y agoI always find it interesting when I visit Italy. The supermarkets there do sell some kind of dissenfectent for produce, and everyone is really strict about using gloves (this was even before COVID). My country has none of that...
- account42 1y agoIt's really weird how some safety regulations differs between countries - sometimes the rules are even the exact opposite like washing eggs before sale in the US vs. EU. Makes you wonder how much of it is actually based on any kind of rigorous science and how much is done just because someone thought it was a good idea once and now its just how we do things.
- hedgehog 1y ago
- blamestross 1y agoIronically i only use the produce bags to wrap raw chicken and beef in an entirely different section.
- nerdponx 1y agoBring a cloth bag to put the apples in after checkout.
- latexr 1y agoWhy don’t you bring plastic bags from home? They are very much reusable, you don’t have to throw them out. They are also quite easy to fold into small shapes and keep on you, or your car, or whatever. I have plastic bags which have endured for literal years. I also decided early on that if I forget to bring a bag, I either do without or have to go back to get one. You start remembering really fast after a few times of forcing yourself to go back. Another thing you can do is just take a cardboard box from some product in the store. This may depend on country, but where I live the shops leave products on their transport boxes on the shelves. Walking around the store I can usually find one empty box, or maybe one almost empty that I can move the products from into another box for the same product next to it. Then I just take the box and use it to transport my groceries. Stores just throw those boxes out anyway, so they don’t care if you take them (I have asked). At this point it’s a bit of a game for me, to guarantee I always find a box. I have a personal rule never do anything that would make the lives of the workers harder in the process.
- lstodd 1y agoThis. HDPE lasts. So reuse it. Cardboard not so much, but where I live one can just take how many boxes one can haul off various shops and they will just thank you.
- ehnto 1y agoYou can bring your own, non-plastic bags. I do wonder if maybe some cultures just don't have this and so the deprecation of plastic bags has left everyone quite confused. It's a very solved problem, has been for centuries probably. You can even get some with little wheels! If you absolutely can't handle the looseness of the fruits amongst your shopping, you could use string nets.
- geerlingguy 1y agoReusable shopping bags have been a thing for a long time, but I think for many, they never went back to them after stores banned them as a Covid mitigation.
- sitharus 1y agoI've been doing that since before anyone cared, it just seems wasteful to use a bag for a handful of things. I use bags if I buy more than a few of something, or if it's something with dirt on like potatoes.
- tw04 1y agoWhy don't you just buy some re-usable fruit bags? https://www.target.com/p/lotus-original-reusable-produce-bags-3ct/-/A-84622523 https://www.target.com/p/lotus-original-reusable-produce-bag...
- lunarboy 1y agoSAME. It kills me inside when people wrap things like fruits and potatoes in plastic that have natural peel they'll remove before eating anyways
- ehnto 1y agoJapan is wild for this, but also pretty good at recycling plastic in general. Bananas are often wrapped individually for sale. You buy a box of biscuits and they're often individually wrapped in plastic etc.
- gleenn 1y agoJapan recycles but also a whole bunch of their waste is incinerated. I think they super-heat it to reduce emissions but guessing that also costs energy which also secondarily causes emissions.
- adastra22 1y agoIt is energy positive. Their incineration plants provide power.
- scheme271 1y agoMost of that plastic can't be recycled so it's probably being burned or thrown away.
- adastra22 1y agoJapan incinerates most of their plastic.
- ericmay 1y agoWe have been using linen bags from Rough Linen and have been pretty happy with those.
- not_a_bot_4sho 1y ago> I just raw dog the produce into my basket
- th0ma5 1y agoIt's crazy, and how fast "glazed" became commonplace.
- cm2012 1y agoPeople dramatically over weight how bad plastic is for the environment. The impact of a 10 min car ride = 10,000+ plastic bags of emissions. And in first world countries almost no household plastic ends up in the environment.
- positron26 1y agoCan't imagine this survives napkin scrutiny. A ten mile drive isn't using nearly as much hydrocarbon mass as 10k plastic bags. While most of the plastic hopefully winds up in a landfill, most of the gasoline is water and carbon dioxide by the end. It's tires versus bags. While tires shed, the mass lost in 10min is definitely quite a bit lower than 10k bags or the fraction that escapes the waste pipeline.
- privatelypublic 1y ago30mpg, 10 miles, means two pounds of gasoline, 910grams, knock off or add 100g for ethanol per your preference, a google says about 5grams per bag, so nearly 200 bags. Nowhere close to 10k, but nontrivial. And, this gets reduced and sometimes outright negated if you reuse the bag. Doesn't mean we shouldn't evaluate if plastic shopping bags are the beat choice though. I don't think replacing them with store bought doggy poo and cat litter bags is better. It's not a reduction and theres no reuse. If you find yourself discarding them outright, then find an alternative I guess.
- dz0707 1y agoI think your math is wrong. Most of modern cars do up to 150g of CO2 per 100km, there are other emissions too, but they are in way smaller numbers.
- hedgehog 1y agoI think the units there are off, a Camry hybrid is about 100g direct CO2 per km. One widely repeated calculation has total direct + indirect emissions for a grocery bag at 200g. So 1km driven vs 1 bag is a similar magnitude of emissions.
- sircastor 1y agoWe've got reusable mesh bags that we use for this.
- foxyv 1y agoI bring these little net bags from home. They work great to keep the veggies separated. https://a.co/d/4luSE9Q https://a.co/d/4luSE9Q
- account42 1y agoPaper bags solve that use case much better.