https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/grocery-bag-environmental...
If we looked at each one of the metrics, both for single use plastics and for their alternatives, would we find a similar story of absolute best/worst case scenario to paint single-use plastics as environmentally friendly?
The original article also notes that plastics industry groups jumped on the pandemic to write to regulators and grocers imploring them to ban re-usable shopping bags due to them being "virus-laden" cesspools. Which is not at all what the science suggests (we figured that one out pretty early in the pandemic as I recall).
These people are interested in one thing only: getting as much plastic into consumer markets as humanly possible. They are not operating in good faith by any stretch.
[0] https://www.metabolic.nl/news/are-organic-cotton-totes-reall...
I usually bring my backpack or a duffel bag to purchase groceries or whatever, and the cashiers are absolutely uniformly grossed out by these bags. They will hardly touch them. They poke at a hem as if it were radioactive or something. Of course, this started around the time of the pandemic, when everyone was extra paranoid about germs. But it has not abated. Nobody will bag groceries into my personal bags, they just kind of shove it to the end and make me do it all myself.
I mean, you do know what those cashiers touch all day? Raw, unwashed produce, packages dripping liquids, boxes and cans that gathered dust on the shelf for 4 months, items that have been handled by N dozen customers and employees recently?
I suppose it's reasonable to treat a person's personal bag with suspicion, but I feel sort of insulted. Perhaps I'm not rational to be so insulted by this attitude, but they could at least pretend to be OK, for PR sake.
Then those people shall furnish single-use bags that are fit for purpose, rather than (1) forcing me to bring stuff from home (2) bagging my own stuff, when we pay bag boys to perform this skilled service for us. Fair enough?
This whole rigmarole is just another way for climate alarmists to shame the consumer and foist responsibility upon us to shell out for worthless bags that would otherwise be free. Face it, this is just another capitalist-fascist moneymaking scheme, and we're collateral damage.
In a not too distant past, grocery stores employed people who rang up our purchases and they also employed people who bagged groceries. These openings were beneficial to the job market. In fact, grocery stores have traditionally presented a lot of opportunity to people who are developmentally disabled, and I really appreciate that.
Now if groceries want to fire those cashiers and fire those bag boys and offload the labor onto the consumer, then I am sure they will be happy to pay us double wages and/or pass the cost savings on to us in the form of lower prices across the board. Unless they simply want to ramp up their paranoia, surveillance tracking, and accusations of shoplifting at the self-checkout, especially when we dare to use our own goddamn filthy bags, what do you think?
The report has been out for over 5 years. I think that's enough time for people to analyze it and point out specific methodological flaws, and we should not have to rely on "there's one methodological flaw so let's assume the whole report is wrong".
>The original article also notes that plastics industry groups jumped on the pandemic to write to regulators and grocers imploring them to ban re-usable shopping bags due to them being "virus-laden" cesspools. Which is not at all what the science suggests (we figured that one out pretty early in the pandemic as I recall).
1. when did this happen?
2. In 2022-2023 I was still seeing supermarkets with cart disinfection stations, and hand sanitizer dispensers sprinkled in every public space. Clearly plenty of people missed the memo.
I don't have an exact timeframe for when surface contact was determined to be a much lower risk vector, but I seem to recall that info coming out within the first few months (early to mid spring) after the virus hit the US. At the beginning of the pandemic people were quarantining all of their groceries and/or wiping every single package down with sterilizing solution. Then we learned that the virus is not terribly transmissible from surface contact, the major risk by far is via particulates, and basically everyone stopped doing that.
Of course basic hygiene is still encouraged. Sanitizing stations for carts is just a good idea in general, I hope that option never goes away. And given how bad the average person is at washing their hands on a consistent basis, I'll take the wide availability of hand sanitizer as a win for every single communicable disease (many of which are vastly more transmissible than Covid via surface contact). Like all Covid safety measures, at this point if bags freak you out then don't touch other people's bags.
I was more interested in when plastic manufacturers were lobbying businesses to ditch reusable bags. According to this new york times article[1], the CDC only acknowledged it over a year into the pandemic. If the lobbying efforts were within the period, they could have been forgiven for not keeping up with the latest scientific literature and using the official government recommendations.
>At the beginning of the pandemic people were quarantining all of their groceries and/or wiping every single package down with sterilizing solution. Then we learned that the virus is not terribly transmissible from surface contact, the major risk by far is via particulates, and basically everyone stopped doing that.
Did they stop doing that because they were keeping tabs on the scientific consensus, or did they simply get bored?
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/08/health/coronavirus-hygien...
We split our garbage into compost, recycling, paper, glass, and others.
Compost goes to a compost facility that generates methane from it and then sells the excess as fertilizer. Plastics get recycled. Reusable glass bottles get cleaned and reused, other molten down and reused. Other gets burned, filtered, and generates electricity.
When they raise it and turn it upside down to empty it, the wind can easily cause any loose and light stuff to blow around and not end up in the truck.
One bin probably is a small thing, but I can definitely imagine if the entire block were doing it it would start to accumulate fairly quickly.
I do hunt out extremely cheap thin bags that probably use less plastic per bag than the grocery store ones as they don't need to be as durable for most of the cans. But I also use heavy real garbage bags for the kitchen trash whereas before I'd use a grocery bag and empty it more often. So I can't really tell if I'm using more total plastic or not.
They were recently saying that they've started to see more and more of the other residents using the much thicker bags now sold at checkouts for bundling their garbage, rather than the thinner plastic bags they used to use instead.
I think other environmental indicators are good to consider, but simply presenting these metrics as capturing "environmental impact" is both deceptive and out of line with the goals of the bag bans as I understand them.
1. Is this actually the case, or just post-hoc justification? Remember when during the pandemic, the lockdowns were justified by "just 2 weeks to flatten the curve"?
2. Most of the time I'm given a plastic bag, it's being used to carry something back to my home. Under that scenario, there's basically a 0% chance that it's going to "become litter and pollute the environment". If litter was actually the concern, you'd expect the bans to be targeted at stores where goods being sold don't end up going to homes (fast food resturants and gas stations maybe?), but that's not what we're seeing.
2. I don't think what you are saying makes sense? I also take things that gas stations and restaurants give me home. Like...based on your objection there should be no litter because everyone takes things given to them home. That said - I am sure that the people who advocated for the current bag bans would absolutely support expanding them.
I didn't realize how effective it was until about 6 months when I was walking Downtown and noticed a plastic bag tumbling down the street. Prior to the ban, they were a regular sight and nothing I would have taken note of.
I've got a pair of giant silicone bags for this purpose but the shape and thickness means they can't hold many veggies, take up more space than they should, and are generally unwieldy. They were also $20 each, which seems a bit high (I assume because they are a specialty item in a niche market). Come on free market, solve this problem for me so I can ditch single-use plastics!
I always thought moving away from single use plastic was meant to be environmentally friendly in that it reduced the pollution caused by disposing of the single use items. I thought everyone knew the production costs were higher including from an environmental perspective of things like greenhouse gas emission and water use. Sometimes different environmental goals are in conflict with each other.
The actual take away should have been, the bigger the paper industry, the more trees there will be.
If you are grasping you can bring modern carbon sequester theory into the argument. but I will admit that is too complicated a subject for me to feel comfortable leaning on it.
Its kind of like all those wine is good for you vs bad for you studies where both are kind of correct but in different ways.
Organic cotton is ahead of plastic for greenhouse gases after 149 uses. That's a small number of uses for a cotton tote bag, which should last several years of daily wear. That means that from the 150th use you are reducing greenhouse gases every time you take the bag out, while potentially still net polluting in a couple of other ways.
But greenhouse gas emissions are by far the most critical and potentially catastrophic environment issue. If we can effectively and reliably lower greenhouse gases while causing a few extra rhino deaths or depleting the ozone layer marginally, we should enthusiastically seize that opportunity.
Given this, the "average over all pollution types" seems particularly useless and intentionally misleading here. That number literally cannot be coerced into meaning anything that should affect your decision making process.
Who uses it every day? My trips to get groceries are every week or two weeks. I'd have a decent chance of misplacing the thing before I offset its carbon. If I forgot it just once and had to turn the car around to get it I'd probably double its footprint.
There are 52 weeks in a year. After several years of weekly use you have offset the carbon.
> I'd have a decent chance of misplacing the thing before I offset its carbon.
You can keep things simply and only use it for groceries if you have trouble keeping track of things. Keep it in the same location every time, ideally by the door, always return it to it's spot immediately after unloading groceries when you get home. Don't leave a full bag of groceries at the store. You're pretty much set.
You could also go for a recycled PET reusable bag if you just can't trust yourself to hang on to a cotton bag for a few years. Still better than single-use plastics by many metrics as long as you aren't losing bags multiple times per year. And yeah, don't turn around to get your bag when you're halfway to the store; get single-use plastic on that occasion and spend a few moments gently reaffirming your habit/routine that includes grabbing the bag when you head out for groceries.
Is it a small number? I put my bags in my shopping cart so I always wash them after each use since the carts are unsanitary. Once you start washing them after each use, the bags fall apart rather quickly. It might not be less than 149 uses, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was.
It feels like this is tying the manufacturing process to the materials for manufacturing. You can't make a plastic bag without plastic production, but I feel like you can make a non-plastic bag without plastic production and at lot of other modern industrial processes and chemicals.
Even in Cebu Philippines, they still had massive glass cola re-bottling plants, as recent as today...
Why is the US so afraid of actual reuse, as opposed to trash. (oh, we invented the plastics industry...)