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Comment by teach | Hacker News Reader

I hope this doesn't turn out like the ban on single-use plastic shopping bags in Austin.

Many grocery stores "complied" by replacing the single-use bags with much thicker "reusable" plastic bags. So now customers still don't bring their own bags into the store, the new bags still aren't easily recyclable and I suspect most are thrown away just as before.

Edit: on the other hand, the city of Austin's waste management is very supportive of recycling and hopefully they'll support plastic film in the single-stream collection and make it much easier for the average person to do the right thing.

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This may be a just factor of culture and attitude.

In Germany, single use plastic bags have not been allowed in supermarkets for several years now and it has worked quite well IMO.

Yes you can buy thicker re-usable bags (sometimes made out of textiles or a mixture of textiles and plastic) but by far many people bring their own bags, or just load the stuff into shopping trollies and take it to their cars (unfortunately the petrol/diesel car culture is still going strong :( ).

Also, in places like Lidl and Aldi, it's quite normal to just look for an empty box of some product on the shelf(e.g. a box that had some canned goods) and use that as your 'basket', stuff your items there, pay, go home and dispose of the box in the paper recycle bin.

EDIT: I also forgot to mention, as an example of culture/attitude: plastic bags are still available for fruit & vegetables but even then, people do make their own choice to just take the produce without a bag, and place it 'loose' at the cashier for them to weigh.

That describes the behaviour I see in the UK very closely.

I wonder about supermarket food in particular. Most of it comes in at least one layer of single use plastic - I think plastic can be the right product, but it would need reusable plastics that are standardised and used across different companies products. A bit like how nearly all Chinese takeaways use a variant of a cheap but reusable plastic container (but they're not quite standardised, particularly the radius of the lid corners).

I'd love to see say 20 different allowed packages, you return after use, they're cleaned (or recycled if damaged), and used for more food. No more half full tubs carefully concealed with labels!

I wonder what the stats say vs GPs impressions of Austin?

Is it still common in the UK to find portioned or chopped servings of fruit, vegetables and food items in plastic packaging? I always found that a bit excessive, though convenient. This is something that I rarely see in Germany.

Ireland and the UK wrap all the Fruit and Veggies in more plastic than I've seen anywhere else. It's probably the biggest contributor to our waste stream in my house.

Visit a store in Japan.

Piece of fruit wrapped in cling film, shrink-wrapped in plastic, tucked into a foam lattice, placed into a styrofoam mold, put in a box, wrapped in paper, then wrapped again by the shop, placed in a small bag that goes into a larger bag.

Even as an American, I never really knew wastefulness until I started going to Japan.

It is common to have both options in the UK. Most people go for whole vegetables, and the chopped versions are seen as convenience options. Kinda half-way to a ready meal.

You do also get whole vegetables in plastic packaging, but there has been a push to remove this. I believe one of the major supermarkets (Morrissons) has recently removed all plastic packaging from fresh produce.

I'd like to see a return of paper bags. That technology is very ecologically friendly.

Really crummy paper bags for (dry) fresh food isolation, heavier re-usable for takeout and carry. It's nice to have bags to be able to give to others and forget about.

Re-usable produce containers should be sold too, and I'd prefer if those were sold from a special part of the store so that consumers could pack in their own togo containers.

> I'd like to see a return of paper bags. That technology is very ecologically friendly.

How? Random search turned up

>According to the previously cited U.K. study, it takes three reuses of a paper bag to neutralize its environmental impact, relative to plastic. A bag’s impact is more than just its associated carbon emissions: Manufacturing a paper bag requires about four times as much water as a plastic bag. Additionally, the fertilizers and other chemicals used in tree farming and paper manufacturing contribute to acid rain and eutrophication of waterways at higher rates.

https://stanfordmag.org/contents/paper-plastic-or-reusable

I guess you can argue that paper bags are compostable, but I'm not sure whether that matters much. Plastic bags that are sitting in the landfill doesn't harm the environment, and their bulk is negligible due to how thin/light they are.

Arguably, paper bags are "better" because they don't require petroleum to produce, and even if not reused can be burned in incinerators or plasma gasification waste disposal operations as part of the waste stream. If landfilled, any breakdown byproducts (biogas) are going to be captured and burned off (either flared, or the new hotness, burned for electricity). Trees sourced for wood pulp can be grown without fertilizer, and water is a renewable resource.

Failing all of the above, it is unlikely used paper bags end up on barges destined for the developing world for recycling, only to be dumped into the ocean.

>Arguably, paper bags are "better" because they don't require petroleum to produce

Is using petroleum intrinsically bad? There are externalities with oil extraction, but growing a monoculture of trees for paper isn't stellar for the environment either. Also, plastic is stronger than paper (on a mass basis), hence plastic bags can be thinner than paper bags, which also carry advantages. I feel people irrationally like paper bags because it's more "natural" than plastic. It's insufficient to judge whether plastic or paper is better for the environment just by coming up a list of bullet points. A total lifecycle cost analysis is needed. Of the literature I've seen, paper bags are not better for the environment overall than plastic.

>Failing all of the above, it is unlikely used paper bags end up on barges destined for the developing world for recycling, only to be dumped into the ocean.

addressed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23763885

> Is using petroleum intrinsically bad?

Yes. It should be phased out of all use cases, as quickly as possible. We have proven ourselves incapable of being responsible stewards of the resource.

Paper bags do have a larger carbon footprint, but I assume that parent is talking about plastic waste ending up in the oceans. Bottom line is reusability per your excellent linked article, which paper would edge out on. I do reuse paper bags at least once or twice, but also sometimes reuse plastic bags. I wish there was a way to guarantee that the plastic bag I toss won't end up in the ocean or become aerosolized and survive for a bajillion years or whatever.

>Paper bags do have a larger carbon footprint, but I assume that parent is talking about plastic waste ending up in the oceans

Most of the plastic in the oceans isn't coming from consumer waste[1]. Furthermore, most ocean pollution comes from a few developing countries[2]. Therefore a ban single-use plastics for consumers in developed countries will have little or zero impact on ocean pollution.

[1] "Ocean-based plastic originates mainly from the fishing industry, nautical activities and aquaculture" https://www.iucn.org/resources/issues-briefs/marine-plastics

[2] https://www.statista.com/chart/12211/the-countries-polluting...

The developed countries send their plastic to developing countries to be "recycled" and then it ends up in the ocean. So ultimately, a ban in a foreign land actually can help. See Plastic China.

>The developed countries send their plastic to developing countries to be "recycled" and then it ends up in the ocean

That statement might be broadly true, but I doubt that it's accurate for plastic bags.

For china at least, only around 10% of their total waste is imported[1], so blaming it all on developed countries is questionable. The data is from before the ban, by the way.

I'm not sure what you're implying by putting "recycled" in quotes, but they're not definitely taking the plastic and dumping it into their rivers. They're paying us for the plastic[2], not the other way around. Plastic bags can't even be recycled in most jurisdictions, so it's unclear how they'd be imported into those developing countries in the first place.

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/plastic-pollution#how-much-plasti...

[2] https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/06/28/6239729...

> I guess you can argue that paper bags are compostable, but I'm not sure whether that matters much. Plastic bags that are sitting in the landfill doesn't harm the environment, and their bulk is negligible due to how thin/light they are.

The biodegradability of paper bags is the whole point here. You've seen the sides of the roads. You've seen the streams and rivers. People get done with their garbage and just throw it wherever. With garbage made out of plastic that doesn't break down, this is a big deal.

>You've seen the sides of the roads. You've seen the streams and rivers.

My local rivers are relatively plastic-free. Same with roads. They're not completely free of plastic, of course. Given that there are thousands of plastic bags being dispensed in my neighborhood every day and that the roads/rivers aren't being regularly cleaned, the fact that the neighborhood isn't completely filled with plastic bags makes me think that the overall disposal rate is pretty good.

Plastic litter might be the most visible externality of single use plastics, but I'm not quite sure whether tripling our co2 emissions from plastic bags is a worthwhile trade for eliminating plastic bags from our neighborhoods.

The entire idea behind the policy is that people do not take care of their trash. Each plastic bag causes harm and getting rid of the plastic isn't something that can be fixed with money. People are willing to spend a little bit more money to prevent an intractable problem. So the answer is to simply not use single use plastic bags.

Paper bags is what you’ll find in SF in addition to more reusable bags brought buy people into the store.

Paper bags are prone to tearing, which probably encourages car use. Having your groceries fall in the sidewalk is no fun.

> Yes you can buy thicker re-usable bags (sometimes made out of textiles or a mixture of textiles and plastic) but by far many people bring their own bags

This has been my experience shopping in Austin, but it may vary based on neighborhood. The vast majority bring their own reusable bags. Those that forget to bring bags buy the plastic reusable bags (unless the store also offers free paper bags).

I think the ban of plastic bags happened across Europe years ago. Still you can see them in many smaller supermarkets and other markets (not in Aldi, Netto, EDEKA, etc...)

1) What I find it funny is banning plastic bags but at the same time many of the "bio" veggies and fruits come in plastic packaging to prevent contamination and hijacking (sometimes between the producer and consumer non bio stuff is introduced and sold like so)

2) And the funniest thing is that single plastic use is banned in a first world country where most of the food products come from the other side of the world. The CO2 footprint here in Germany is one of the biggest in Europe... Sometimes it feels a bit of green-washing all this news

Who says plastic grocery bags are single-use, though?

Many people re-use them for dog/cat waste disposal, as laundry bags when traveling, packing material, soiled diaper disposal, for coating meat prior to cooking, etc.

Now those people have to buy more plastic for these things, instead of re-using what they received while shopping.

Loopholes are so maddening. We need to ensure full lifecycle consideration for all consumer products. If it doesn't decompose within N years, the manufacturer needs to have a recycling solution. The current situation has the free market degrading our public environment for private profit. As you note, why should a 1mm bag be banned but a 2mm bag be ok?

The cost to the environment should be borne upfront, with the benefit from recycling refunded at delivery (like bottle taxes)

A good start would be a carbon tax, but crucially it would have to apply to imports too

In the UK, they put a mandatory 5p charge on bags (reusable or not) instead of banning them outright. Remarkably this has led to a 90% reduction in plastic bag use.

The thicker reusable bags also now available here (usually costing 10p), and in practice they do actually see a lot of reuse.

My experience in Massachusetts (different culture probably) is that a lot of people did start using reusable bags--and I assume many, like me, found that they let you carry more stuff compared to minimalist plastic bags that could hold very little.

Of course, that's all out the window now with reusable bags banned in stores indefinitely. And I assume it will take years before people go back to regularly using recyclable bags again in much of the US.

Plastic bags were of this kind as long as I can remember where I live. I use them as trash bags and it turns out I need about the same amount of trash bags as I do shopping bags. So none of it ends up in nature (other than as the rest from incineration).

If I brought multiple use bags to buy groceries I’d have to buy plastic bags to use for trash.

For larger shops - supermarkets etc - the UK government has both banned single-use plastic bags and also made them charge for thicker plastic bags (10p in my local supermarket), which has noticeably decreased their use. Of course it hasn't eliminated them entirely.

Which grocery stores? I live in Austin.

At H-E-B you must pay for the thicker bags at $.24/ea, which incentivizes people to bring their own. I bring the same ones every time now.

At Central Market, Wheatsville & Whole Foods they give you paper bags.

Not sure about Randalls or Sprouts though

Most countries/cities I have seen where free single-use plastic bags are banned people bring their own bags, as the "reusable" are too costly over time to use only once all the time.

In the Bay Area we can either bring our own reusable bag or get a paper back for 10c. That charge is enough for most people to bring their own bag or lug the groceries in the cart to the car.

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