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Comment by toxik | Hacker News Reader

I’m not sure about paper cups but I know the numbers for plastic bags vs textile bags is something like you have to use the textile bag /several years/ for the emissions to even out. Let alone making any positive impact.

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despite that, my canvas bags will never be blowing around in the wind or getting eaten by animals. If they do somehow get lost, they can just be washed by whoever finds them. At some point we can reach peak canvasbag and simply stop making them completely.

People like to point at 'emissions' because they look sexy on a spreadsheet, but there is more to the world than just that.

Plastic bags certainly have their issues, but I don’t think that a textile bags won’t tangle and kill marine life and wreak havoc in new and unique ways.

When's the last time you saw a durable textile bag hanging in a tree? Washed up on a shoreline? Stuffed with trash, ripped up by rats, birds or cats, next to a rubbish bin?

Now same questions for a 'single' use plastic bag.

About as often as I have seen them be used, I would say. People also don't throw trash in their textile bags, they use plastic bags for that as they are disposable, so this creates a pretty clear selection bias.

That's okay. Make things well enough and they can last for decades or centuries, depending on the item. I have canvas bags, from ~every food co-op I've frequented over the last two decades, that I regularly use for shopping and library books. One strap broke on one bag a few years ago and it's in the to-repair bin for now. When one finally breaks down beyond my repair skills I'll use it for patches and/or put in in the organic scrap cloth recycling stream.

There are zillions of good, used, reusable bags and cups already made, emissions and other pollution already committed, available at thrift stores and garage sales.

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