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Comment by zdragnar | Hacker News Reader

Plastic bags are an interesting example. There was a study a little while back that plastic bag bans at stores resulted in an overall increase use of plastic.

The thinking was that people reused the thin store bags at least once (i.e. as a small trash liner for a work desk). Without those as an option, people switched to buying plastic bags, which were thicker and used much more material.

Personally, we always opt for plastic bags at the store, and they always get reused once if not many times. Paper bags just don't seem to hold up as well for some reason.

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Here in NJ we have a pretty strict plastic bag ban.

It's all gone pretty smooth except for grocery delivery services. Instead of using one time use thin plastic bags, they now have to use reusable bags. That they never reuse. So places like our company that get office foodstuffs delivered weekly, end up throwing away stacks of thick plastic bags.

Apparently though the legislature is working on a fix for this.

In Germany we switched to paper bags. And I really use tote bags, as most people I see in the shops. But why not just use paper bags?

Paper bags available around here don't always have handles. As a result, you either can't carry as many (one hand holds a bag from the bottom) or you crumple or tear the bag at the top accidentally. Also, they tend to not hold as much weight as plastic bags.

What's worse is that they're harder to reuse. Since they aren't resistant to water, there are fewer other uses that they are good for.

My paper bags get reused primarily as a place to keep my cans and bottles (we have a refundable deposit where I live) until I have time to take them to the redemption center or give them to one of the local non-profits that collects them. I've found the paper bags allow any residue to evaporate rather than leaving the cans a sticky and, eventually, moldy mess like plastic bags do.

Paper manufacturing and recycling isn’t carbon neutral either

New Jersey actually specifically banned paper bags. The only option is reusable plastic bags. I would much prefer paper.

rain

I am living in rainy Hamburg, and it's okay, right?

> So places like our company that get office foodstuffs delivered weekly, end up throwing away stacks of thick plastic bags.

Businesses are far and away the biggest offenders when it comes to waste in general and particularly plastic waste. Getting individuals using reusable bags is fine but really doesn't address the biggest offenders.

I forget the stat but you have to reuse those "reusable" bags like a thousand times before it becomes a net benefit. Even if you do reuse them, you are almost certainly not going to reuse it a thousand times before it wears out or whatever and you dispose of it.

Only in terms of energy. Even then 1000 seems like a suspiciously large amount.

In terms of plastic use the reusable bags are much better. It doesn’t take too many reuses before a reusable bag is a net benefit. Compared to other energy uses the plastic bags are a tiny amount so I don’t worry too much about that.

https://www2.mst.dk/Udgiv/publications/2018/02/978-87-93614-...

According to this Danish study a cotton bag has to be reused over 7k times.

Most of the reusable bags in grocery stores are polypropylene, and those you only have to reuse 37 times. So that is better.

In Singapore it’s delivered in cardboard boxes which they request you give them when they next deliver. Used to give them back each time if they didn’t get damaged or daughter didn’t use it as a car.

Same here, but it depends on the delivery service and the store. For example, Aldi puts out used cardboard boxes in which they received produce for delivery services like Instacart to reuse. With warehouse based delivery services like from StopandShop they're using the thick reusable plastic totes. Unfortunately they're so small that you end up getting a dozen of them in a single delivery, and you have no hope of using them all, so they end up getting tossed.

In the delivery-company-on-a-recurring-basis case, they could bring fully re-usable packaging (crates or something I guess) and then just recover it when they come back next week.

When I’ve been in Europe I’ve often seen that there are no bags except for fully re-usable tote bags that you have to pay 1-2€ for. It really only takes one instance of forgetting your own bags to teach the lesson.

The problem there is that the law didn't define "reusable" bags well enough, so stores just made slightly thicker plastic bags and called them reusable even though they really aren't. As a result people ended up using the same amount of bags but with far more plastic.

Anecdotally, the thicker ones are very reusable; but consumers (the 90 percent) are ignorant about reusing and recycling.

I see the benefit of those heavier “reusable” bags as coming from the fact that they are less likely to blow away and get into the waterways. If you drop one it is more likely to be picked up and put in to the trash instead of ending up in a turtle’s breakfast.

> The problem there is that the law didn't define "reusable" bags well enough

There is no one law, this has occurred independently in municipalities across the globe.

I used to use the single use bags I got while grocery shopping as trash bags. Perhaps not coincidentally, grocery purchases and trash production kept a pretty even pace.

Now I have to buy my trash bags, which are not used twice and used in the same amount as the earlier bags. Also, I used to get much stuff unpacked, the bag was there to not throw a bunch of loose carrots, chicken legs and tomatoes in my carrying bag. Now, nearly everything comes prepackaged, which is single use obviously.

I don't see how my plastic consumption is down. I guestimate it's up.

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