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Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

FWIW they did this in Austin, TX (before, as usual, it was overturned by the state lege a couple years later) and IMO in was a really big success. There used to be a ton of plastic bag litter downtown, especially along the creeks that empty into the river that runs through downtown Austin, and after the bag ban there was a huge visible reduction in this litter.

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How did they handle the fact that transport of paper bags has a significantly higher energy cost?

If that’s true then it is a solvable problem, use green energy. How to get people to do so? Carbon taxes for example, and other means.

They developed a new transportation system in Austin running on renewable energy? I didn't suggest, and wouldn't, that the problem wasn't solvable. It's simply not a foregone conclusion that paper bags are 100% upside with no drawbacks. Their increased weight has to be paid for. This may be an acceptable cost, but one can't simply wish it didn't exist. It's disappointing that I asked a very straightforward question about what Austin did in support of their effort and got such an answer.

Problems can be solved incrementally and/or converted to other types of problems. In this case it would be converting destroying the environment with plastics pollution to destroying it with climate change. But its imho easier to switch energy source than fishing microplastics out of the ocean.

It’s dissapointing that you take this as an attack.

I am aware that problems can be solved incrementally. I haven't the slightest idea what any of this has to do with what Austin, Texas actually did which was the question asked.

You've failed to count the energy cost of removing that waste plastic from the environment.

Except for whole foods and central market. Always poorer people have to deal with this kind of unproven laws.

What? The ban was applied the same, everywhere. Stores were allowed to give out paper bags with handles on the idea that those are more reusable (and, IMO this is true, and in any case those bags are much easier to recycle, or heck compost, and they don't cause anywhere near the litter problem).

If anything, who do you think has to deal more with the problem of plastic bag litter, folks in Tarrytown or those in East Austin? Poor people want a clean environment too you know.

Poor ppl have to carry groceries using public transport. Paper bags are not good

Here we use the big hiking backpacks for a big purchase. How would you even carry those amounts in plastic bags? You plan these trips, so you bring enough bags with you.

So get reuseable bags? They're $1/each at Trader Joe's and last years and years. You won't need more than 4 over the course of 10 years.

I've had them since I was poor.

I carried wet vegetables in paper bags on public transportation for years with no problem. Where are you hearing this?

from personal experience. have you ever carried a cartons of milk in a paper bag?

No, I don't do that, I use the handle on the milk cartons.

I am talking about boxes of milk. Ppl aren't just buying vegetables.

/shrug the jugs were always cheaper by like a dollar so I bought them

and your point being ?

Originally, that I've carried wet heavy things in paper bags without issue lol. I can see though that we've gotten sidetracked.

Reusable bags are cheap and durable.

Poor people in America drive. The rich live in places that are served by transit.

Poor people simply don't buy grocery, in fact many of them haven't "bought" anything except lottery tickets and an occasional pizza in decades.

Actually, a lot of poor people can't afford cars and have to use busses or similar, in areas where they take vastly longer than driving.

Superthin plastic bags are better? I walk home with groceries all the time, I've had many plastic bags break on me, but never a paper or cloth one.

When I was poor I carried groceries on public transport using a large rolling suitcase on wheels. Worked pretty well and would not have been a problem with paper bags.

Perhaps instead of destroying the environment to help the poor, we should simply give the poor more money and stop them being poor at all.

paper bags are far preferable for walking around with to thin plastic bags with weak "handles"

The paper bags I get from whole foods with the glued on handles routinely break before I even get to my car.

I don't think I've ever had a disposable plastic bag handle break on me, and I used to walk about a mile to get groceries for a number of years.

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