California to discontinue plastic grocery bags | Hacker News Reader

California to discontinue plastic grocery bags

sfgate.com

36 pointsCalChris69 comments

This really seems like a solution that's looking for a problem. From the way it reads, these are the ones that are meant for produce. Most of the ones I see are already compostable.

Seems like a drop in the bucket compared to all of the plastic bags that are being used with the still increased level of take-out food.

Maybe it's just me, but I seem to remember (maybe false memory?) that 10,20 years ago the produce section was basically large piles of loose fruits and veg, and you would pick what you wanted. There would also be a few bags of potatoes, oranges, and apples, sometimes in a mesh bag, sometimes plastic.

Now everything seems to be these damned individually wrapped plastic containers holding apples in some strange array. I first saw them at Costco and now they're everywhere.

They're not even cardboard, they are plastic or styrofoam.

Strawberries used to come in these little very thin plastic baskets that were mostly air, now they're in these massive plastic armor containers.

I've seen individually wrapped tomatoes in plastic armor box and then sealed in cling wrap.

The amount of packaging is now bordering on the absurd. I guess they do it because people think they are getting a premium product which is just as absurd as the packaging.

The proliferation of cut fruits in big plastic boxes makes me scratch my head. Cutting a melon takes a minute or so, and these cut boxes are easily 4-5x the price of cutting your own, and often not very fresh.

This. All “environmental friendly” laws tend to be performative at best. Most big stores in California now offer paper bags as an option, my guess would be more than half. This law is barely going to change anything. If I would change, I would force retailers to stop wrapping everything in plastic. It’s so obnoxious that sometimes when you have two loose lemons in the basket, the cashier will inevitably lecture you on putting it in a bag so that it’s easier to handle, and sometimes might outright pull a bag themselves from under the counter and put the lemons in them. The most hilarious part about this transaction is that each lemon has a little plastic barcode attached to it for scanning, and when you do put it in a bag, you have to pull the lemon out to scan it, making it harder to handle. Nothing makes sense anymore.

> the produce section was basically large piles of loose fruits and veg, and you would pick what you wanted.

That's still how it is where I live. You pick what you want, put it in a plastic bag (or not) and they (or you) weigh it at the checkout.

It's still like this in Germany, so probably no false memory.

It's like this for myself as well in Minnesota in the US. It probably depends on state laws here, or maybe just the grocery store chain.

> Maybe it's just me, but I seem to remember (maybe false memory?) that 10,20 years ago the produce section was basically large piles of loose fruits and veg, and you would pick what you wanted. There would also be a few bags of potatoes, oranges, and apples, sometimes in a mesh bag, sometimes plastic.

I live in California, and its still largely that way. The shelf space devoted to prewrapped things is pretty similar to 20 years ago in most stores (more than 40 years ago, though.)

Where I live there's a small fee per bag if plastic, free if paper (and the store offers it), or you bring your own. It's virtually eliminated plastic bags at stores and also had the side effect of eliminating them as a second-use source for small bags around our household -- e.g. organic trash, small bins, etc. We never tossed these bags as-is, they always had a secondary function.

As our previous inventory shrinks (we had collected around a hundred of them), we've started introducing more of the large plastic vegetable bags from the grocery and/or considering just buying a box of a thousand grocery store bags from Costco as their form-factor is really useful (easy to tie-off to help control smells).

It probably works for groceries, but for takeout, instead of using flimsy plastic bags, restaurants here now use sturdy plastic bags, because they aren’t “single use.”

These bags are heavier, so it seems doubtful that plastic use has gone down. Does anyone track this?

I've seen that to, grocery stores with the "really thick nice bags" like you see at a hardware store. They can't cost that much more, and they REALLY ARE nice, but they don't do much to defeat the problem.

really nice, tho

Do you have a visual? I always hated the thick bags because they are stiff and hard to work with. Thin bags were much easier to re-use for purposes like bin liners. And the shape was just awful.

I’m referring to something like this. https://www.google.com/search?q=vons+plastic+bag&hl=en&prmd=...

At the least, those heavier plastic bags are less likely to blow away and get into the water and general environment. The heavier bags are more likely to end up in recycling or trash.

We use those heavier plastic bags as trash bags as that is about how often we end up with one when we don’t have our reusable ready. It worked out well. Recently the grocery switched to paper bags without handles. Those don’t work as well for trash bags and without handles they are poor grocery bags.

pretty sure the ones without a handle were invented a person who simply loaded them from the cart into their trunk and then from their garage into their house. No rain, 5 meters. But surely not something you'd carry home by foot for just 500m.

They used these thicker bags 20+ years ago, then went to the thin ones. Now we all figured out how useless those thin ones are. And we’re back to the thick ones.

It’s quite shocking visiting a place with no bag restrictions like Florida or Nevada, where they just automatically bag even the simplest purchase of tictacs.

One thing I like about Japanese stores, they ask you if you want a bag....partly because they charge you for it (typically 3-5 Yen). For small objects at a convenience store, I often skip the bag. I typically carry my own fabric bags for deliberate grocery shopping, but if I forget I spend the few extra cents, and typically re-use the plastic bags around the house, usually as intermediate trash bags.

I think an outright ban is overkill.

IMHO, an outright ban is exactly the right thing. The typical person will not turn down a bag given for free every time they visit the store. They get home, unpack and dump the plastic bag. Having people purchase reusable bags makes folks think and actually plan their supermarket visits (how am I going to carry my purchases). In Kenya, single use bags are completely banned, in less than 5 years, plastic bags on trees [1] became a thing of the past.

1. https://i.pinimg.com/originals/df/8f/52/df8f52035377cf815650...

On the other hand since we don't get the plastic bags for free anymore I'm usually struggling to find a sturdy plastic bag at home when I need one, e.g. to wrap shoes in a travel bag.

No, that's not an argument about not banning them, just a funny observation how these things change. I also used to often not buy any trash bags and just use the decently sized grocery store ones, but maybe in never tossing but reusing them I was already an outlier.

I like the idea of reducing plastic waste, but I can’t help but think that this is another virtue signaling. In the last 3 years in the Bay Area the amount of trash along the freeways is astonishing. Same goes for any big metro area, except maybe San Diego, but I have not spent much time there. Then this garbage is gonna end in the ocean.

Bottle and can deposit is fairly hard to get. There aren’t any recycling facility in a convenience zone around, so the stores are required to do it. Not single one in the area does and the state does not enforce it and now is sitting on a lot of unclaimed money.

The state pushes hard for lithium batteries, you can buy shit load of it and other e-waste from amazon, but the state does not do anything to force amazon take it back and recycle when used, etc.

In the office we have three bins, and the janitor at the end just comes and puts trash and recycling in one bag(except compostable), turns out the waste management company treats recycling and trash the same. This indicates that economics of recycling is not, yet they focus on plastic bags for groceries.

Why do you think it's virtue signaling? You never explained why.

You also make the claim that in the last three years the amount of liter has increased , do you have evidence of this?

I disagree that it is "virtual signaling" (such an overused term) but I suspect the person you are responding to believe that the state California needs to force Amazon to accept lithium battery returns, the state needs to provide recycling centers that will refund can and bottle deposits and the state needs to clean up the freeways?

My problem with the argument is that it appears if a state is not doing everything then it is clearly "virtual signaling".

The state cannot do everything, this is exactly right. So they have to focus on things with a high impact or long term measures. Limited capacity requires prioritization. If good PR is a priority, then it is virtue signaling.

Define virtue signaling

> Why do you think it’s virtue signaling.

First, because I don’t think that it will affect recycling or environment in a meaningful way. Legislature can produce only a limited number of outcomes, so if this was passed, means something else wasn’t. Legislature maybe have unknown number of unintended consequences and there is also a burden of enforcing it.

> …, do you have evidence of this?

I don’t, beyond personal observation. How would track the amount of garbage along a highway? I am specifically talking about 101, 280, 880, 580 in the bay area. Every time I am driving I am thinking about putting a camera facing the shoulder and then trying analyze it with cv. I also don’t have evidence I can present that it then ends up in the ocean. My observation is that after windy and rainy days, especially in November, you can see a lot more household trash on the beach along the Pacific coast. I assume the Bay may have the same issue, but I don’t go there often to notice.

You're misusing the term "virtue signaling:, an already ridiculously dumb term.

If they are making changes they believe will help the environment it's not virtue signaling, even if you don't think it will. More so that you don't offer any evidence to the contrary.

I wonder about right wing people and "virtue signaling". Is it that they don't care about the environment or animals,or maybe are just generally selfish, that it's difficult for them to imagine that others might just want to do the right thing without benefitting from it?

As for your inconsistent personal observations that solely relies on memory- they have no value

If my personal observation has no value, than neither does your opinion and your comment.

Your anecdotal evidence is different from my opinion on it.

If I review a movie and say it's bad would you say "if the movie is bad then your opinion is bad?"

You shouldn't make accusations without evidence and you shouldn't use anecdotal evidence as the sole backing for a claim.

Lithium batteries at least you should be able to dump at any Home Depot. You can around here.

It'd be amusing if California law was such that they DIDN'T offer that in CA.

You can drop it at HD. It is one of the few places as my go to. But amazon is the place where you can buy all kinds of cheap crappy lithium batteries that may not even have proper marking in it. Something that may end up not recycled properly, yet amazon is not gonna be taxed for the consequences.

All of this is virtue signaling. It always has been, it always will be.

The question is do you fall for it, and turn a blind eye to the many other horrible ways the bureaucratic industrial complex harms the environment.

I have a feeling most highway trash is coming from the garbage trucks themselves, or open trucks. I've NEVER seen anyone litter from a car, ever, in decades in California. However, I have seen a lot of garbage fly away from garbage trucks on the freeway, or those dumpster trucks or from pickup trucks filled with garbage. They have no containment whatsoever.

The fact that these other things are still happening indicates more progress is needed, but doesn’t change the benefit of eliminating plastic bags or mean doing so is virtue signaling.

If you were to accept this logic to its extreme, nothing short of an all encompassing policy that addresses all issues simultaneously would count as not virtue signaling.

Progress is almost always incremental. That doesn’t mean it’s not progress.

> turns out the waste management company treats recycling and trash the same

this is quite common in many countries but perhaps not always a bad sign. there are modern waste disposal (burning) plants with great filtering where the temperature of the burning needs to be stable and only mixed garbage provides that. https://youtu.be/ag_grOFzadw?t=249

Your grounds for opposition sound like you are trying to indicate your values to the group.

For those commenting about grocery bags, this is not about those. It is about those little thin plastic bags we use for produce and meat. Paper makes a lot of sense there, though you can’t just scan the barcode through a paper bag.

Those thin plastic bags are too likely to get dropped or blow away and get into the environment where they clog up waterways and choke animals. They end up in oceans where turtles mistake them for jellyfish.

Paper makes no sense for things that can leak. Which is the vast majority of the use cases for these bags. That’s everything from meat or poultry to a pack of berries. One bad pack or bump on the way home and it’s soaked through to all the rest of your groceries.

There is a very wax-impregnated paper (maybe it's plastic impregnated) that works pretty well for meats, at least. The butcher wraps the meat in it, and it can leak but not through the paper (usually through the cracks).

Most meats in a grocery store aren’t bought from the butcher directly, they’re pre-packed in a styrofoam tray then covered with plastic wrap. The seal is far from water tight, so the meat liquid leaks out on all the other packages sitting on the shelf, and then in your cart and bags/everything else after you pick it. You need a bag for these, otherwise you have cross-contamination everywhere.

I've noticed some (but not all) meats are becoming more and more "factory packaged" with tight (and sometimes even resealable) bags that are more like ziplock.

I suspect as the number of grocery stores with actual butcher/deli counters continues to decline, we'll see more and more of that, especially as leaking into a plastic grocery bag is annoying but leaking into your reusable bag is really annoying.

The produce bags are probably less likely to blow away, since you don't "unwrap" whatever was in it until you're in your house.

I've seen many a garbage bag tumbling along the road, but I can't recall seeing a produce bag.

I almost feel like grocery bag and plastic straw bans were a psy-op by the plastic lobby. These seem like the least consequential, but most inconvenient things to start with. Every time I use a paper straw, or have to buy a $1 "reusable" grocery bag I think of how many people this will have turned away from further plastic restriction.

My memory is that in Europe, these bans came into force as a way to reduce litter as much as anything else. There definitely used to be bags in bushes and trees everywhere when I was a child, but no more.

Litter is a much better argument than "save the climate turtles" or whatever is usually mentioned.

In fairness, the article itself doesn't mention climate effects, just the following, which I read as implying that voluntary reduced use of single-use plastic bags has had a material anti-litter effect, so the law should have an even greater anti-litter effect:

> According to the Mercury News, the number of plastic bags picked up at California beaches during the state’s annual Coast Clean Up day dropped by 61% from 65,736 to 25,768 by 2019.

I'm not claiming that proponents didn't primarily highlight climate, I don't know, I'm just going off this article where it's not even mentioned (yet practically all the comments seem to revolve around this being an ineffective climate measure).

I remember a time when there were no disposable plastics bags, also lighters, pens and wrapping for fruit and vegetables at the grocery store. I remember the central bay on the coast without plastic garbage in it. Anyone who spends time along waterways or at the ocean has seen dead animal life with plastic as a cause.

Fast-foward and .. it is measurably true to plastics on the ocean largely originate in East Asia and other non-USA places.. populations are very large there. It is not exactly California that is the source of the majority of plastics in the waterway.

However, note to the people complaining about inconvenience -- there are no plastic bags in nature. They are deadly to many life forms, and entirely man-made. How much pollution do you think is OK? Where is the place to stop it?

I buy a plastic bag for meat from the grocery store and use it as my garbage bag.

If I can’t buy the plastic grocery then garbage bag, will I still be able to buy more expensive garbage bags?

Garbage bags won't go away, even though they're a relatively modern invention and not actually necessary if you work at it a bit.

(Mainly, if you separate compostibles from your normal trash, you can just dump trash straight from an unlined can into the main can, though modern garbage trucks might cause a bit of a issue with the dump).

I live in an apartment with garbage in a shed and it’s much easier to walk out a bag on the way out rather than having to walk back up with a bin.

I think this policy has disproportionate impacts on different socioeconomic groups.

This was a huge thing for me. Both small receptacle trash bags, as well as when I lived with dogs, grabbing poop during walks. Bonus points as un-torn bags meant I didn't even need a disposable glove to pick things up.

This is the case in Vermont already. Most people just end up using the reusable bags.

A life cycle analysis[1] found that an organic cotton bag has the same environmental impact as 20,000 LDPE plastic bags. I find this quite shocking, if true.

[1] https://mobile.twitter.com/AlecStapp/status/1566797139023462...

personally I find the plastic grocery bag bans dumb. I reuse all of my plastic bags and don't buy regular trash bags. in that sense, for me, there's no waste. as paper bags are not resistant to liquid trash, I end up buying trash bags, resulting in net waste.

I doubt most are like me, but those are my two cents. anyone else reuse plastic grocery bags?

We have this in my jurisdiction. Now you can get a useless (because you can carry max 1 and cant re-use it for much) paper bag that uses more energy and creates more pollution than a plastic bag.

This only hurts poor people anyway, it's easy for comparatively wealthy people to just buy new "reusable" bags every time they need them, or to truck the paper bags home in their SUV. Poor people who have to walk or take public transit, and choose between buying a bag and a food item are who will suffer. But I feel like that's the point

Imagine being so out of touch to actually buy in to policies like this.

The point is signaling how perfect California is. Practicalities aren't an actual issue.

I love my reusable leather bag, it works great. But I'm glad I can get a bag when I forget it without a huge expense.

Goodwill around here has a decent selection of "used/donated" bags that they put your stuff in, often they're pretty decent and not just a reused grocery bag.

Seems like a simple fix would be just to give out some reusable bags for free. Reusable bags are way easier to carry than a bunch of plastic ones. Do you actually think that getting rid of single use plastic bags is to make things more difficult for people who are poor?

Some stores have done that, they buy a "thicker" bag (like you see at Menards or Home Depot) and call it reusable (to be fair, it would be) and use them as normal.

Most of the economically depressed people in my area are already using reusable bags and pull carts for some things as they don't usually have cars and don't want to carry stuff a long ways. This pattern extends all the way up into the lower middle classes and was long before any bag-ban here.

Note: I live in an unusually walkable area in the U.S.

Those disposable plastic and paper bags are way too weak to take on a 10-15+ minute walk home unless you double paper bag or only put like 3 things per plastic bag.

We shop at a grocery store in a pretty poor area. At least half the people do bring their own reusable bags. The price is pretty cheap for them and they last a long time. The energy difference between one plastic bag and one paper bag is minimal. Yes, in volume it ads up but the choice is between one of this or one of that. To me the issue with the old plastic bags was that they were too light and escaped into the environment where they clogged waterways, choked animals and broke down into plastic particles. The heavier plastic bags and the paper bags are less likely to escape and pollute.

Title should be adjusted to plastic produce bags. No doubt eventually the state will follow LA, et al, but for now this is the little bags you see near the apples.

I’ve never in my life trashed a plastic bag that wasn’t filled with garbage. Now I gotta buy plastic bags. How is this helping?

I recently drove through Lancaster, CA. And the amount of trash there from the taco stands is just insane.

How about we focus on those things first? The things we actually find next to the road instead of annoying people.

By far the most common litter in my neighborhood is face masks. Maybe we ban non-reusable face masks first, which contain elastic (petrochemical)?

They've done this in my country. It's fine. I think I like it better this way. Single use plastics need to end and become a brief unpleasant blip of a moment in history, and the sooner, the better.

The real issue of plastic in the ocean has to do with the fishing industry, but lets just pretend that's not even there and instead focus on PR stunts

My county already banned plastic bags I think 10(?) years ago.

Since then I just don't buy enough at a time to need a bag. Period. Haven't paid for a bag once.

I’ve never understood the focus on the grocery bags over the thousands of SKUs in the store that are wrapped in single use plastic.

OMG!

What are we gonna use for :

- complying with doggie poop retrieval laws?

- carry out food with?

- enshroud our paper straws with?

- Cover our bowls of leftovers with?

An SNL skit that I want to watch...

Moses and Aaron are standing in front of Pharoah. Evidently we're several plagues into Pharoah not letting the Israelites go. The scene starts with chitchat on this matter then Pharoah shaking his head no.

Moses and Aaron step aside to huddle to discuss which plague to bring on next. They come back, and one says to Pharoah in a booming voice: "Since you will not let my people go, the Land of Egypt will suffer a single-use plastic bag ban!"

Cut to Egyptians walking about with their arms overflowing with stuff, people cursing that they forgot their cloth bags, angry arguments all over the street, and various individuals spitting and daring to curse Pharaoh's name.

Cut to Moses and Aaron in front of Pharoah. Pharoah looks haggard. Pharoah sadly nods yes.

The skit ends with a line of Israelites, overseen by Moses, as they march towards the Red Sea. Each holding several reusable cloth bags.

...again

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