Plastic bag bans work | Hacker News Reader

Plastic bag bans work

zmescience.com

264 pointsBrajeshwar575 comments

In addition to being counterproductive (as explained by others), there's another issue with these token environmental laws that add highly visible inconveniences with no actual benefit (e.g. bag or straw bans): they annoy people, leading to resentment and rejection of environmentalism as a whole, harming the chances of policies that would actually have a meaningful positive effect being adopted. [1] .

My impression is that these laws are often popular among one group because they annoy another, perceived as being in the wrong - which then leads to the second group pushing laws that will annoy the first, even if they don't make sense.

[1] backlash effect - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backlash_(sociology)

"they annoy people, leading to resentment and rejection of environmentalism as a whole"

I hadn't thought about it that way before, but I think you're exactly right. I feel this in myself. I am pro-environment, or at least I want to be. But when I think about the actual effects of all these laws and regulations it just makes me mad and want to ignore or fight ALL environmental laws. I have to use a paper straw now? It just seems to go on and on.

Do people really need straws so much they get annoyed if they are made of a different material? You can just not use a straw. Or if it’s life or death you have one, purchase a collapsible metal straw and bring it with you.

> You can just not use a straw. This thought process is the problem. Solutions must benefit all parties. Telling one party to go without and deal with it creates resentment.

>Solutions must benefit all parties.

but solutions never benefit all parties. Laws tend to tell some group what not to do, so most laws will inconvinience someone. You just need to figure out who the law and targeting (and REALLY targeting, not just what PR says) and then follow the money from there.

Less energy would be used by creating straws that are both convenient and good for the environment, like agave fiber straws.

Solutions can benefit all parties in any context (and the best ones do), but environmental protection is unique because the solution must benefit all parties. This is because, while some will sacrifice for the sake of the world, some will not. Convenience compels the lazy to change. No amount of coercion, or threat of force will change that.

Perhaps it would be more useful to unban plastic straws, and then ban unsolicited straws.

It's rather tedious to take a straw out of a drink, dry it off, and find somewhere to put it.

I can agree with this. Straws upon request makes more sense.

This is, in fact, how I think we should have handled plastic bags. The plastic bags themselves are fine. But the customer should have to actually request one.

I can't tell you how many times I bought one small item I intended to carry out of the store with me, and the cashier just automatically put it in a plastic bag. "Oh, I don't need a bag," I'd say. The cashier would then proceed to take the item out of the bag, and throw the bag away.

(No animosity intended towards the cashiers, who have difficult jobs. But we should have a better process.)

Sure, but not forever. My city banned plastic bags in grocery stores and I was annoyed and resentful because I used those when I cleaned out my cats litter box. However I got over it.

Do you really need an extra bedroom? Do you really need a car? Do you really need that extra pair of socks? Do you really need that coca-cola? Of course not. People obviously want it. Quite the slippery slope you're walking.

We are at a point in society where we can't simply keep doing what those before us did. We are killing the planet, and every plant and animal on it, including ourselves.

Yes, life is about to get less convenient and we have to give up some luxuries.

It doesn't matter if you don't like it, it a fact.

"We are at a point in society where we can't simply keep doing what those before us did."

Sure we can. And we will. The choices of most of the world's population surely disagrees with this.

"Yes, life is about to get less convenient and we have to give up some luxuries."

I don't think that's the case, but we will see.

For the record, ideologically, I'm on your side. Realistically, I just don't see a world where the majority of people change.

The stop using the plastic straw argument applies to people who don't like straws. Tell the same anti-straw folks to stop traveling, stop having pets, no more children. You see where this goes - It just doesn't work.

There are laws against plastic straws and plastic bags.

There are laws against chemicals that are known to cause environmental harm.

There are laws against vehicles that pollute too much. Soon there will be laws against cars vehicles that pollute at all.

All we have to do is make laws, and more and more of them are coming.

Again, it doesn't matter what an individual wants.

Your trust in laws is fascinating

For humans, laws and rules are meant to be overstepped : this is how our species got so far : by considering rules, laws and traditions, and say "well, whatever, I will try it my way and see how it goes"

And how is that working out?

In recent months dozens of shops got multi-million dollar fines from the EPA for "deleting " diesel emission equipment. Now it's unheard of in the US.

It works.

We can though. There's a lot of fearmongering but the reality is climate change won't kill us for longer than we'll live.

There's also a lot of gradient in the effect of environmental laws. As an example my family still has tons of plastic bags that get reused over and over again until they become unusable or land as a trash bag. I don't know the math of it all but considering we buy plastic trash bags anyway we might as well get them from shopping instead of buying them separately. I have no idea what the global impact has been on plastic bag production but it could be interesting to see, assuming such a statistic exists.

> the reality is climate change won't kill us for longer than we'll live.

That depends heavily on where you live.

3.6 billion people live in areas that are at a very high risk from climate change.

https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/climate-cha...

> There's a lot of fearmongering

If you have better credentials than the WHO and leading climatologists around the world then I'd love to hear about them.

> There's a lot of fearmongering but the reality is climate change won't kill us for longer than we'll live.

I really don't like this take when I see it.

Do you care about just the next 50 years, or the next hundreds+? Do you have children/grandchildren? Do you care about an increase in the quantity and impact of natural disasters? The resulting increase in death, suffering, insurance premiums? What about more unpleasantly hot days? Less snow on the ski slopes?

All of that stuff is important to me, even though it almost certainly won't kill me personally. It's just such a no-brainer that the environment and climate is something to cherish and protect. Even if you're generally pro-environment, referring to environment-protection measures as fearmongering only makes it harder to enact them and increase their scale.

I don't mind environmentalism and I also see why people prefer to portray a picture of "you will die" instead of "your grand grand grand kids will die" but I also personally dislike it when people skew the picture to push their agenda, even if it is good and pushed entirely out of their love and care for others.

It might be due to me being surrounded by automotive enthusiasts but the general view of recent environmental laws in my circles is that they exist mostly to motivate spending and move some local pollution somewhere else. It's kind of the combination of nonsensical laws and short term effect exaggeration that offends people, making them stubborn/resistant to accepting things that actually make sense. It's probably offset by people who get a sense of urgency out of it but I withhold my right to dislike it.

we're just in different cultures/societies/circles then. around me, no one's portraying "you will die", and I don't feel at all surrounded by nonsensical environmental laws. if anything, it's the opposite. why aren't builders in my city taxed more for using materials with worse environmental effects? why aren't extremely inefficient vehicles taxed more highly? why such little investment in bike lanes?

those are the nonsensical laws i see

Generalizations and platitudes, you can't even argue with this pie in the sky nonsense.

Are you comparing a car with a straw? Really? Trust me you will be perfectly fine without a straw! Try it sometime.

If everything has an inherent carbon footprint, ie. harmful to the environment, then yes, we can compare a straw to a car.

Have you ever gone on a vacation? I'd wager that flight you took is 10000x worse for the environment than whatever reduction in your lifetime straws. Trust me you will be perfectly fine without going on vacation!

I really underestimated how passionate people are about straws. Do you have a blog per chance where you compare different straws and their manufacturers? Would you rate them on thickness, quality of plastic, how quickly liquid travels from beverage to mouth? Do you prefer straws wrapped in plastic or not? Can you describe the different subtle mouth feels?

I’m not passionate about straws. I’m just passionate about stupidity and critical thinking.

It seems odd to me that someone would question whether straws are essential, but have no problem with vacations.

I also am offended when people expressing any interest are deflected into “why don’t care about this so much?” It’s not important how passionate GP is about straws. Address the content of their message, not whether they are super interested in a topic or not.

I'm not sure where I wrote I like straws. It's more of a "I don't like the logic regarding straw bans".

>Can you describe the different subtle mouth feels?

Yes, paper feels way worse to drink out of, objectively.

Do celebrities really need private jets? No, the regular folk need to use shitty straws.

You can buy a reusable metal straw if you want to.

I liked the idea of metal straws but ive about busted out a tooth or two with them more than once since I got them and never use them now.

We should ban private jets too.

"Trust me you will be perfectly fine without a straw!"

You can be fine without a lot of things. In the early 1950s, after the war, my grandpa raised a 5-head family in a single room. Two of the kids went to a university, no serious diseases etc.

The average living standard can be reduced surprisingly low before you run into any issues. Once the city you live in has good sewage system, enough doctors, enough food and not a major problem with drugs, the life expectancy will be reasonably high even with five people per room and one car per twenty families.

Another thing is that people won't vote for that.

Isn't that private bedroom quite a big luxury, and many groups perfectly manage to survive living multiple persons per room... So why not force everyone to give up their private bedrooms?

It slips both ways though. I suspect banning incandescent bulbs is probably a good change, even though there were people who obviously wanted them.

I pretty much loathe paper straws. Their texture is nails on chalkboard to me. I hate that they get soggy. I hate that they collapse in anything thick like a milkshake or smoothie. I will more likely go without than use a paper (even the modern paper) straws.

And I don’t like going without. I like straws. I like their utility. I like the way they work in the car. They let me rate limit the beverage flow rather than something else, such as the ice dam at edge of the cup.

I’m also a big fan of ice.

The closest solution I’ve found are lids with small openings. Starbucks coffee lids are good examples, but they’re also “strawless” cup lids with a small lid over a hole.

They’re not a replacement for straws, but they’re not awful like paper straws are. Some leak though. Puts them lower on the fun scale.

Not a big fan of the stainless steel ones either to be honest.

I am forever haunted by the death of a woman by a metal straw where it impaled her in the head when she accidentally fell in her home.

As soon as I saw people were using metal straws as a replacement for plastic straws, I thought... that is a terrible, dumb idea. Yet people still buy them. It's pretty nuts.

There are now perfectly functional composable straws, but people still need to compost them.

Impaled through the eye, my god.

The odds of something like that happening are so astronomically low that you’re better off spending your energy looking up for falling pianos.

Or the guy that died of a rare bacterial infection that he got from using his dirty metal straw he never cleaned /s

There are also silicone and glass straws. Plus a metal straw with a bend in it may be safer than a straight one. I was expecting someone else to have mentioned silicone straws already, I'd heard of them before in other straw discussions. Had to do a search and make sure they really existed.

Do people really need the things they drink with straws?

There’s two ways I generally think of this:

1) who knows what is actually essential. I can’t judge what others truly need and don’t know of an objective board who can. Is art necessary? Is coke necessary? Are luxury vehicles necessary?

2) people choose what’s needed by buying them and prioritizing their money toward it. So by existing and being purchased that’s proof enough of necessity.

I’m sure as hell not carrying and keeping clean a collapsible metal straw on the off chance that I’ll want to drink a drink one day. It seems like the mental stress of that would outweigh the negative impact of a thousand plastic straws (not to mention the energy spent to create the collapsible metal straw in the first place). It’s important to keep in mind all the tradeoffs and not to create negative overall effects from the aim of improving only environmental effects.

The paper straws are awful products. They taste like paper and disintegrate quickly even though they are still covered in plastic. Wood utensils in comparison were an adjustment but they work fine.

I have been avoiding lids and straws for two decades now, because they are wasteful, but when I have need of a straw and lid it's nice if they work.

Paper straws are an improvement. Just not perfect.

I cannot speak to cost, but wax, paper/cardboard performs well enough for just about any food related purpose. Not suitable for shakes? Make them thicker.

I've never met a single person who likes using a paper straw over a plastic one. They feel weird in your mouth, they get soggy, and they fall apart. I fail to see how adding more paper material would fix the issue.

Plastic straws perform better than your average paper straw, no argument there. I think the talking point is a lot of people do not care that much and paper straws are good enough.

Wax would help way more for most use cases, but the added material would help for thicker mediums.

Waxed paper straws are a thing and are almost as good as plastic straws. I am not sure why they are not more common. Pretty rare actually.

The reason we use plastic straws is because we've ALREADY used paper straws and consumers preferred the plastic ones. Especially now that all of our drink portion sizes are gigantic and straws tend to sit in drinks for hours.

That and they are cheaper to produce. Now we're learning more and more that using plastic for everything is not just bad for the environment, but also bad for our health. Consumer sentiment is shifting accordingly.

For the record, I'm in camp, "Don't care that much, whatever straws are fine". I'd be happy if as a society we could just get people not to litter like other developed countries manage to. I have a lot of junk which ends up in my front yard (people tossing garbage from passing cars) and my backyard (a river where all kinds of styrofoam, plastic cups, plastic bags, etc. all wash up). If all the junk was biodegradable it wouldn't hang around my yard and require me to pick it up (or I could at least toss it on the burn pile).

I'm in camp "I would rather gulp it right from the glass", which seems like a better stance anyway. But I heard that some people really need straw, and if I'm in that position I'll 100% ask for the plastic one everytime.

Then again if only <1% of people use plastic than it used be, we're already winning very much.

Minute amounts of wax will be ingested into the body with every use. It will be similar to the current situation with microplastics (mostly polyester – coming from the sportswear and clothing in general that fray at the microscopic level) that have been detected in human body organs pervasively and are being investigated for their side effects on the hormonal system.

Moreover, wax is not one chemical compound but is a broad term for a variety of very different chemical compounds shoved under the «wax» umbrella term due to sharing same properties: being solid, lipophilic and malleable. Anything that shares such properties is a wax.

There are four broad categories of wax:

– Plant based (e.g. soy, carnauba, castor, jojoba, tallow and others)

– Animal based (beeswax, lanolin – from sheep, Chinese wax – from insects)

– Petroleum (paraffin and microcrystalline)

– Mineral waxes (peat and ceresin are most important ones).

Other than beeswax, long term health effects of ingesting a wax are unknown. Plant based waxes can't be completely purified and will contain miniscule amounts of potentially harmful phytochemicals that may have a detrimental effect on the human body. Animal based waxes are already known to cause irritation in some people and are likely to mess up the hormonal system in the long term. They can just a have a rancid or a funny smell – sufficient to be unsuitable to put in one's mouth.

Petroleum based waxes… Food-grade paraffin wax has been used in foodstuffs for a while since it passes the digestive tract unchanged, yet it is an open question whether it also creates microparticles that settle in the body and have a potential to affect our health. Impurities in petroleum and in waxes overall are a major source of concern, and it is a matter of time when somebody unscrupulous quietly swaps out a higher grade product for a cheap and nasty one.

The bottom line is that long term health effects of the wax ingestion on the human body are unknown, and – by extension – wax coated paper straws are probably not a solution, not a safe one anyway until proven otherwise.

Metal straws are the most inert ones, but even then aluminium leeching into food through cookware has already been implicated as a potential contributor to the onset of Alzheimers and steel has an amount (albeit small) of nickel in it… it just never ends.

If you really want to get rid of plastics, stop recycling them and start burying them.

If you have sensitive teeth a straw is really needed with some drinks.

And putting a collapsible one back in your pocket after it's sticky is a bit disingenious.

I'd prefer focusing on better recycling than replacing by worse alternatives (eg PFAS coated paper)

I would suggest either rinsing it in a bathroom somewhere, and/or carrying some sort of pouch or container you can stick it in so you don't dirty your pocket. Then you could clean it at home. In a pinch you could probably pour water from your water bottle on/through it outside if you carry a water bottle already. Could also wrap it in a handkerchief if you carry anything like that.

I don't normally carry any of that stuff to be honest. I don't usually even wear a coat. Just my phone, keys and sometimes a wallet.

I live in Spain so 80% of the year I don't use a coat. And water I would just buy when I need it :)

When I go hiking I do bring those things but then I don't come across places that sell iced drinks :)

That sounds like a lot more effort than just avoiding places that give you shitty paper straws instead of proper plastic ones

It doesn't have to be a life-or-death issue in order to moderately annoy someone. In fact, straws are not a life-or-death issue, so it annoys people when they are treated as a life-or-death issue. And nobody has ever been annoyed into agreeing with a political view. Politicians should understand these kinds of regulations just create new opponents and entrench people already against you.

I never use straws.

Straw bans irritate me because they’re such transparent bullshit - and so many people prop it up as actually real, useful, and ‘helping’.

Similar to folks pushing homeopathy as real medicine and getting folks to nod along so they can sell it to even more suckers.

The whole country seems to be devolving to scam artists selling increasingly ridiculous feel good scams to everyone to boost our numbers.

I consider it yet another paper cut in the ongoing erosion of rational thought and pragmatic thinking in the public sphere.

Straw bans alone? Not hurting anyone too bad.

The overall direction is going to get a lot of people killed though.

Yes, it is annoying, and its not about the straw. Its 100% about vapid environmental policies that do nothing for the environment.

-The soil quality is going to hell, is it the fault of nitrogen fertilizers? It probably doesnt help, but far worse is the over farming of corn, which is the direct result of farming subsidies that shouldnt exist.

-The chemical train crash in east Palestine Ohio? Operating per EPA regs; a company that had actual liability for harm would never transport chemicals without insurance, and the insurance company would base the rate on everything you would want them too, like installed safety features, rail upkeep, and training; instead, they are off scot free because they are protected by the people who are supposed to regulate them, as is only natural.

-We are decades behind in energy infastructure because of nuclear alarmism.

-Flint was an inside job, the government poisoned the people there and said it was safe.

-I almost forgot paper straws, which are also terrible for the environment and even worse for humans.

-We always ignore the biggest polluter, the pentagon.

I could go on all day. If the EPA set out a few basic guidelines like "hey, make sure people wear respirators!", "dont dump chemicals into the river!", no one would complain. Its just, that will never be the federal government of the united states.

I almost never use straws, but I know elderly people who like straws because they reduce their risk of spilling whatever they are drinking.

Metal straws are sturdy, but they get uncomfortably hot or cold depending on the drink.

> the actual effects of all these laws and regulations it just makes me mad and want to ignore or fight ALL environmental laws

Oh come on. How do you even make that jump?

All of that channels your emotions in a negative way. Carrying reusable bags and straws really isn’t that difficult let’s be honest, we carry around other things.

Also these environmental laws come from a place of non-rigorous fanciful thinking, ie. the paper straw push was pushed by some hollywood celebrity and never took into account that paper straws are loaded with forever chemicals, and are useless with shakes or drinks that take a long time to finish. The gas stove bans are beyond absurd, the claims are that they cause asthma and lung problems but I bought a few air quality meters and ran my gas stove at full blast with no discernible degradation registered on these meters. In addition going full electric leads to a non-redundancy in heating and cooling which pushes a greater strain on the electric grid and if said grid fails(see california) people are completly without heat or cooling. Lastly they push enormous costs onto individuals for miniscule gains.

I think the problem with gas stoves is the nitrogen dioxide they produce. Do you have a meter for that?

Yes, quite clearly it’s easy to measure nitrogen dioxide as well. A well ventilated stove has no problem with the nitrogen dioxide produced.

So it’s an example of illogic to push for banning gas stoves rather than incentivizing proper ventilation.

Comparing gas vs electric seems incorrect. Should be comparing with induction instead. It is way more energy efficient (altho not necessarily more cost efficient). It produces no combustion byproduct like gas (which your air quality meter may or may not be able to detect), and it is way faster and gives you better control. It also is safer without flames or leaks, and less likely to burn you. It is the way to cook in 2024 imo.

You mean Texas lol. 30 years in SF and there’s been a couple blackouts during the summer for a n hour or 2.

The idea behind the gas stove ban, is that it's supposed to be a gas appliance ban. Most of a house's gas consumption is heating and hot water, but people will keep gas because of the stove.

Gas itself has a lot of problems. Ignoring the safety concerns (oof!), the micro-leaks from gas pipelines is a major source of greenhouse gases. But we can't clean up all the pipes if everyone is still using gas stoves.

So its subversive. Nice!

> the safety concerns

I know a lot of people worry about gas, my grandmother wouldn't have it in the house. But is there any solid evidence that it is as dangerous as people think it is? I have been cooking with gas for all my adult life and I'm 68 with no problems whatsoever. And until I left the UK in 1986 we used gas fired central heating and hot water, again with no problems. I don't know anyone personally who has ever had a safety problem with a gas installation.

It only takes one Ronan Point to outweigh a great many people who never had a safety problem with a gas installation. The UK imposed a strict inspection and regulation regime (to the point that a common "life pro tip" is: if you're living in rented accommodation with gas and haven't received a gas safety certificate, never mention it to your landlord until you move out, that way you're always entitled to 100% of your deposit back and can avoid having to argue over wear and tear etc.) which has its own costs.

> ...a common "life pro tip" is: if you're living in rented accommodation with gas and haven't received a gas safety certificate, never mention it to your landlord until you move out, that way you're always entitled to 100% of your deposit back...

It's only a 'life pro tip' if you get to keep it. Keep your life, that is.

I do see your point but the Ronan Point disaster was principally due to poor building practices.

"The gas may have accumulated at the ceiling, explaining why the resident did not notice it. The explosion was not significant in magnitude. The resident’s hearing had not been damaged. This suggested that the pressure was less than 70 kPa (10 psi) (Bignell 1977). Items were taken from the kitchen of this apartment and tested. Results indicated that these objects had been exposed to pressures of less than 70 kPa (10 psi). The Building Research Station and Imperial College of Lon don performed an extensive battery of tests to discover how much internal force Ronan Point could withstand. The results indicated that the walls could be displaced by a pressure of only 19.3 kPa (2.8 psi) (Levy and Salvadori 1992). It was estimated that the kitchen and living room walls were moved by a pressure of only 1.7 kPa (0.25 psi), while the exterior wall was displaced with a pressure of 21 kPa (3 psi) (Griffiths et al. 1968)." https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?a...

If you ran a gas stove and couldn't measure anything, I really question your meters or method - it maybe your house is build like a cheese grater.

My meter was off the charts when turning on the gas range or oven. I didn't get a meter until after a trip to the in-laws when my wife noticed that cooking at their house didn't make her sick, but as soon as we were back home it was an issue.

We swapped the gas for induction and love it - especially the part where she isn't getting sick from using it. Our house is built very tight. The air quality meter also got me to put in an air exchanger. It was great to have numbers before and after these changes.

We had gas because I've always liked cooking on it and it works when the power is out. It was hard to give that up. Now we use a camp stove when the power is out.

I think a ban is too strong. It seems like building codes requiring a range hood that actually works could be enough.

If you have a vent that works or open a nearby window they aren’t an issue.

> ... going full electric leads to a non-redundancy in heating and cooling which pushes a greater strain on the electric grid ...

What else than electricity if used for cooling? Genuine question.

Gas, or any heat source really. Yeah I'm serious - for cooling. A certain Albert Einstein invented it with one of his students, a certain Leo Szilard, and patented it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein_refrigerator

Yes, you are right, this apparatus is invented. ... and banning it will "push a greater strain on the electric grid" (to use GP words) with the current level of adoption. :-) Really?

No need to ban this kind of fridge - it's already uneconomical compared to electric ones - people won't suddenly go buy one unless they need it to run where electricity isn't available. It's the type installed in most RVs for example, makes sense there.

> The gas stove bans are beyond absurd, the claims are that they cause asthma and lung problems but I bought a few air quality meters and ran my gas stove at full blast with no discernible degradation registered on these meters.

Have you checked for formaldehyde? I did, and a stove results in a real increase in its content.

> useless with shakes or drinks that take a long time to finish

I wonder how the ancients drank liquids, before the invention of the straw.

The straw is surprisingly old. There is an almost 5000 year old wax seal from Ur, depicting people drinking beer using long straws.

https://www.chaldeannews.com/features-1/2019/12/24/history-o...

Of course, back then, their main concern was not to disturb whatever settled on the bottom of the vessel.

They annoy people that already don't really care, and want an excuse to be vocal about it. It takes effectively zero effort to keep a reusable bag around, and you don't even have to use it every time to have a sizable impact.

The reason why these bans are effective is because people like me don't want a bag anyway, and before these bans were in effect, I didn't have a choice. And these things do not end up in the trash, in part, because they are so light weight.

The same thing happened when they banned smoking. Normalizing not using a bag unless you need one will feel normal for the next generation, but never feel normal for us.

When your concerns about environmentalism extend only to "unless it's inconvenient" then you're not actually concerned with environment, you're concern with feeling socially shamed.

Look, I have plenty of concern about faux environmentalism bullshit, like recycling plastic, but plastic bag bans are not one of them, because there are myriad alternatives that exist.

> It takes effectively zero effort to keep a reusable bag around

I’ve found it takes lots of effort. It’s a chore to keep track of and bring it back out to the car. I probably now have 10 reusable bags that I’ve bought because I keep forgetting them at home, or in the car when I wasn’t expecting to go to the store.

It’s not a huge effort, but it’s definitely non-zero.

Obviously, I should be smarter. But I’m not, sadly.

It's obviously not a habit for you, and that's fine. My point is that it's not physically difficult to do. It's just something you need to remember to do. This is what I mean by the next generation just being habituated to the process.

There are plenty of these types of "chores" we accept because they are something we see as worthwhile. Wearing a seat belt, brushing our teeth, stepping outside to smoke a cigarette, putting on headphones to use our phone on the bus, not using a phone in a theater, etc., etc., etc.

When this is normalize, nobody will notice, but the 20 years of transition will be slightly annoying, but my point is that, during that 20 years... we're not even materially changing our behavior. The stores have paper or slightly denser plastic bags for you.

The thing that drives me crazy about this whole debate is how trivial it is. It's effectively the least possible change we can make to substantially change the culture, and very same people seem to claim that it's both (1) not enough change to matter, and (2) so much change that it's harming environmentalism as a cause.

The entire point of doing it this way is behavioral economics. If you make it slightly annoying, most people will eventually change their behavior. The fact that so many people hate such a small change so much is exactly why I point out that the people who care so much about a slight behavioral change don't actually care about environmentalism, is that most folks haven't even begun to gauge the level of cultural change we need to actually fight climate change. If you think being asked to generally keep a grocery bag in your car is too much to ask, just wait until you're "incentivized" to take an ebike to the grocery store... If that's something you can't stomach even if it destroys the climate, then you don't care about the climate.

It’s not physically difficult, it’s mentally difficult. And that’s what’s more important.

Stopping smoking isn’t physically difficult. That’s not the part that matters. It’s mentally difficult.

I guess that depends on habits and preferences, but I much prefer my sturdy reusable bags over the basic plastic bags.

Sure I do sometimes forget to bring my reusable bags, but even environmental reasons aside I hate plastic bags. It makes it harder to carry groceries, where you might have 10-20 bags instead of two big solid bags. They also frequently rip, so you have to pick stuff up and your groceries gets damaged. Then you have to toss all of them (or store them somewhere "in case" where you end up with 100s of them).

> leading to resentment and rejection of environmentalism as a whole

I think people like this because it explains why the "other side" doesn't just listen to their arguments and follow their prescriptions on how to live exactly.

Meanwhile, these other people live _in_ the environment, and so they're obviously concerned about it at some level.

My read is that "environmentalism" is used as a "bully plank" and people are rather tired of being manipulated for the ends of elites without any accountability for their policy failures and so generally tend to react quite negatively when it is naively brought into any conversation.

This is just not my experience. People don't complain and carrier bags as street rubbish, littering everything from urban trees to the countryside, just disappears. Charging is enough; bans aren't necessary, but sure, add them, no problem.

Just adding a cost to plastic bags here (UK) has cut down on the number of plastic bags I see caught in trees or bushes by an incredible amount.

In Australia, New Zealand in recent years we've moved to reduce plastic bags from supermarkets etc.

I haven't actually heard anyone complain about it or get annoyed at some group of people - this whole concept of being annoyed at some group of e.g. environmentalists actually seems completely strange and alien.

Yes, it takes a bit of getting used to, but now it's simply a habit to take a small folded up reusable bag most places when we head out (just incase we end up shopping), or to think ahead and grab some bags when we know we're going out for a shop.

Really not a big deal.

Those thin plastic bags at checkout were phased out here in South Australia in 2009. I remember some resentment at first ("Now I have to buy bin bags!") but a few years later I don't think anyone cares. Anyone remotely prepared has reusable bags in their home/car, or collapsible bags in a handbag, and deliveries arrive in paper bags (which we then use as a bin under the sink). There are other single-use plastic phase outs in progress and the near-future also.

Previously, plastic bags discarded roadside were a common sight, stuck in fences and trees.

The number of people that I see taking their bags into the supermarket would be <10%. Many people, like me, just pay the 15c/bag tax each time for (heavier plastic) bags that just end up in landfill anyway.

the 15c/bag ones are made of paper in most supermarkets around me (NSW).

I just asked my Aunt who works on checkout, she reckons only about 20% of people remember to bring bags...

Even so, the alternatives here in NZ are paper bags or more expensive polyester fabric bags.

Exactly, and if you can't even do that little effort we might as well not even try

> it's simply a habit to take a small folded up reusable bag most places when we head out (just incase we end up shopping), or to think ahead and grab some bags when we know we're going out for a shop.

For us ADHD people your simple habit is an insurmountable problem. Even if I have them in the car I'll be halfway done with shopping before I remember the bag. Fortunately they just let me pay for a new reusable bag each time.

I resent it because it feels like token bullshit. Plastic bags were quite thin so there is quite literally 100x+ more plastic in the packaging of the products I'm buying than the bag it goes in. Environmentalists pushed the most inconvenient policy that has the least benefit instead of something that might actually move the needle enough to gain my support.

> For us ADHD people

How often do you forget your wallet or phone?

Not the same poster but... surprisingly regularly (glasses and keys, too).

Before I got medicated, I found myself missing something essential multiple times a week. For me, at least, that stopped happening once I got the right dose.

Strict routines and places for EDC items can help too.

For other things, like tape measures, buy a half dozen. Put them the first place you checked the last time you couldn't find it.

Recently got a little wooden valet tray, and it has done wonders for my routine. Everything has it's own little spot!

https://www.google.com/search?q=valet+tray

American here, so I’m automobile-dependent, but I most often just put the individual items directly in my trunk, without bags. I do keep a collapsible bin in my trunk that I use when I get home to carry in a bunch of the smaller items. My wife usually tries to give me a reusable bag to use when i head out until I give her a half confused look. then she realizes there’s near-zero chance that I’ll remember to take the bag in the store.

> For us ADHD people your simple habit is an insurmountable problem.

And for people living in the middle of deserts AC is not an option... when you start to cater to every little tantrum of every little human beings we are of course doomed. You have adhd, other are vintage car enthusiast, other love travelling every weekend to barcelona by place, &c.

The part that this article completely ignores is that you'd have to re-use a bag 50 times for it to have the same impact on the environment the old plastic bags had. The fabric bags it's about 7000 to 20000 for organic ones.

From a Dannish study

> add highly visible inconveniences with no actual benefit

Like quitting smoking, the benefit is not immediately obvious or universally effective (eg quitting at 70), but the benefit is still there.

Also remember that plastic bags were introduced as being more environmentally friendly than paper (which comes from trees).

There are good questions to ask about the pollution involved in making paper bags but:

1. That has to be compared against the pollution involved in making plastic bags, not against nothing at all.

2. Paper bags can use recycled paper, so it’s not really (directly) from trees.

You do realize you are in Hacker News, where we believe science and evidence are ever changing things and that innovations do exist?

What is your evidence it has caused backlash, or that it hasn't actually had a benefit? The whole article claims the contrary: that it works.

I do agree that some behaviors can be counterproductive, like those pests who blockade busy roads or glue themselves to paintings "for the environment". Not only do these privileged and spoiled punks unjustly impede people from living their lives and destroy culture (they seem to always glue themselves to things that still pass as art, never the banana duct taped to the wall), but they only foment antipathy toward anything environmental, harming legitimate concern, action, and legislation in the process. The social deficits and ineptness of these people is astounding.

The rest of this thread is some anecdotal evidence of a backlash, if nothing else.

> no actual benefit (e.g. bag or straw bans)'

Can you provide a source for plastic bag bans having "no actual benefit"? The article is saying the opposite.

Although this is also my impression based on personal observations over the years, I concur that it seems like a lot of activism in general is just a thin socially-acceptable wrapper around hating on other groups of people.

Take carbon-neutrality for example. There's no shortage of people who will rage against flyers, car users, cruise takers, etc, etc as the cause of all carbon related ills in the world. And of course, the complainer's personal use of polluting energy is always objectively correct and morally just. And there are extreme examples like the "Tyre Extinguishers" group, which is clearly just a group of individuals who want to damage others' property under some thin veil of "doing good for the environment".

I say all this as a person that actually does care about the environment, but have not fallen into the easy trap of thinking that hating on others is a solution.

Meaningful central solutions are the answer. If one cares about carbon neutrality, I'd recommend advocating for across-the-board carbon taxation that is directly and honestly tied to the cost of fully and immediately offsetting a product/service's carbon footprint. And then it wouldn't matter one bit if someone wants to take several cruises a year, or drive an "unnecessarily" large car. But the social justification to hate on those people would evaporate, and that would make some other people sad.

Can you say the same about cigarette smoking bans in restaurants? Just a socially acceptable way for people to hate smokers?

Smoking or emitting carbon, or using plastic imposes negative externalities on other people. Second hand smoke causes lung cancer, carbon in the atmosphere leads to climate change, plastic in our environment can cause developmental and reproductive issues. There are reasons to oppose these things that do not include hating people. Some of the tactics may be ineffective or misguided, but this does not mean that everyone who cares about stopping harmful things hates a particular group of people.

I like your idea of putting a price on carbon emissions. Many economists agree that it would be one of the most effective ways to eliminate emissions while allowing the economy to continue to grow [1]. Solutions are there, and they will be employed when the political will for it is built.

[1] https://clcouncil.org/economists-statement/

I stand by my (100% non-scientific) position that smoking bans would never have gained traction if cigarette smoke didn't smell. When all of this was being discussed in a serious manner, that was what I always heard in the background chatter, well more often than "it's unhealthy." If cigarette smoke smelled pleasant or had no odor, the bans would never have had enough support to get pushed through. I still don't support smoking bans in private businesses. I think as long as the business is up front and only hires employees that are okay with it, they should be allowed to decide whether their customers can consume a totally legal product in their place of business. Is it unhealthy? Absolutely. But the government should allow people to decide for themselves whether they want to take that risk.

> And of course, the complainer's personal use of polluting energy is always objectively correct and morally just.

Please tell me where it's possible to live in modern society right now without any use of polluting energy. Seems to me like https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/we-should-improve-society-som...

> immediately offsetting a product/service's carbon footprint.

What offsetting do you find acceptable? Most carbon offsets sold are complete bunk, thus costing very little. Stuff we can be sure about (like DAC) are well over 500€/ton right now, implemented now this would be sure to lead to riots, especially since it'll probably affect people with less income the most (relative to their income). A carbon price is a great mechanism, but one this high is (IMHO) unworkable and there needs to be accompanying measures to ensure that the carbon price isn't so low as to be ineffective, not strain citizens to much and not make local industry non-competitive.

If we only implemented it for non-strictly-necessary stuff (like meat, flights, big cars, cars outside rural areas, living and heating a larger dwelling over 18°, ), it would still be very unpopular (and probably lead to riots)

> they annoy people, leading to resentment and rejection of environmentalism as a whole

Sustainable lifestyles will be much more annoying than quitting plastic bags and straws. If this is the bar we can't overcome we're utterly fucked

Maybe I move in the wrong circles, but we banned both plastic shopping bags and plastic straws in New Zealand, and I don’t hear anyone complaining about it. Everyone I know uses paper bags (from the online supermarket deliveries) to line their bins.

It’s not plastic bags and straws that make it to the landfill that are the problem - it’s the ones that don’t make it to the landfill. I haven’t seen a plastic bag stuck in a tree for years!

I have to second this. No one I know complained when it was introduced, and I saw no complaints aired in the media of any noticeable degree. We still have too much unnecessary plastic in packaging.

My wife is Irish, and they started the removal of plastic bags over 20 years ago. It was carefully phased in over time. It led to a 90% reduction in plastic bag use [0]. They also weigh your trash (in Dublin, anyway) as a means of cost pressure to reduce waste and encourage recycling. It is stated to have reduced waste by 50% [1].

[0] https://www.irishenvironment.com/iepedia/plastic-bag-levy/ [1] https://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/why-it-pays-to-c...

> They also weigh your trash (in Dublin, anyway)

They weigh country-wide. In Ireland waste collection is done by private companies and they charge by weight. As I recall, they have something like subscription plans [1]. I'm Irish but I live in New Zealand now, and here the rubbish collection is paid for by your Council rates.

I was still living in Ireland when the plastic ban was introduced. There was push-back from some companies that make plastic bags, unsurprisingly, but it worked really well.

There was a bit of push-back here in NZ too, similar to what happened in Ireland. The usual grumbling, about interfering greenies, loss of freedoms, etc.

[1] This is an example of one company's offerings:

https://cportal.barnarecycling.com/signup/signup_page2.php?S...

When they banned single use plastic bags in New Jersey it increased the amount of plastic in use [1].

Starbucks straw less lids use more plastic than the old lid ands straw. With a lot of them ending up in the trash instead of recycling, it may not be a net benefit.

The changes being made aren’t having quite the impact people had hoped.

[1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/01/25/new-je...

The main goal isn't to reduce the amount of overall plastic created its to reduce the amount of plastic trash that ends up on the streets, beaches, rivers, etc.

I sometimes am not clear on what the goal is.

The article seems to argue that the goal is very narrowly to reduce the amount of plastic bags created/consumed and then claims a study shows that the bans do indeed achieve that goal. It's hard to imagine this goal not being achieved, but it's too narrow.

I haven't seen any study showing that total plastic trash, incorrectly disposed, is reduced. It could be hard to study, I admit. I'd love to know the amount of the reduction as well. My guess would be there is a reduction, but it is fairly small.

For example, in the San Jose survey: https://web.archive.org/web/20230512013405/https://www.sanjo... pre-ban creek and litter surveys only showed 9% single-use plastic bags and this dropped to 2%.

I'd imagine 7% reduction is the upper bound on the impact, but it could be smaller than that if other litter increased. Maybe that's high enough to make the ban worth the inconvenience, I don't know what the right threshold should be.

Broader goals could include reducing total plastic production, reducing fossil fuel mining, etc. I'm more suspicious that these goals are not being meaningfully affected by bag bans.

If that's the case, is targeting rich developed countries with efficient waste management and pickup the best approach? I live in a very clean, North American city. I rarely see plastic bags blowing around. We have residential garbage pick up, and public spaces all have public bins. Our landfills are, what I would assume, are well run. Does the plastic bag ban in my city make sense? We never had an issue with plastic ending up in lakes/rivers etc. Now look to developing nations where rivers and streams are overrun with plastic. Do they have plastic bag bans? Doesn't seem like it and seems like that is where there should be one.

If I was going to steel-man the argument, I’d suggest that you’re adding some kind of extra economies of scale to production of less polluting alternatives?

Also I note that mid-income countries like Thailand are also getting in on plastic bag reduction. The kind interpretation of that is that muang thai has finally discovered its eco-consciousness, but an alternative one is that they’re copying rich countries ‘cuz it’s fashionable, and that that effect might trickle down to the countries who are serious polluters

If the purpose it to keep plastic waste and microplastics out of your local environment and local drinking water sources, then local policies make sense.

Should other places that also have that potential problem also do that? Sure, probably, if it's practical. But people in country X usually don't get to make local policy for people in country Y.

Plenty of global south countries have plastic bag bans at various levels of governments, with varying degrees of implementation and success.

Eventually, every country in the world should have it. And one shouldn't wait for others to do good.

Building a wall around the Philippines would get you an overnight 10% reduction in ocean plastics

https://ourworldindata.org/ocean-plastics

Building a wall of that scale overnight would be quite a feat, almost as impressive as successfully getting people to start using paper straws.

Implementation details left to engineering, I’m just an ideas guy

Given that single use plastic bags are rather difficult to get recycled in so many metro areas (I remember reading a single digit percentage of it is even recyclable) it’s not clear if it going into the trash instead of recycling is not a huge impact. But increased use of single use plastics is certainly not desirable IMO similar to fossil fuels unless they’re compostable or similar types that at least can break down cleanly.

Plastic bags cannot be recycled, period.

Even worse, they clog up the recycling machinery.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2015/07/30/plastic-bags-a-hea...

The best thing we can do for the environment is to ban recycling, kill the bike movement, and fight any solution that involves consumers.

Some of it is maybe well intentioned, but it is an intentional distraction that we have to do thing to save the planet.

No. Sanction countries that have rivers of plastic flowing into the ocean. Put the CEOs of chemical companies in prison when they have accidents. Eminent domain the entire farm when some crusty old fart refuses to allow a 15 foot wide section of land to be used for high speed rail.

In the context of plastic lids vs straws. While you seem to suggest that there is more plastic waste now by weight mass or quantity. There are other considerations. A lid is likely easier to see and pick up. Also a lid is potentially more likely to be less problematic for fauna whereas straws are known for being problematic (e.g. that one popular video of a straw stuck in turtle nose).

I'm not saying we shouldn't try to do better though. But there are no doubt a lot of complex variables at play

So this whole thing is really about trash not the environment

That’s a good observation, except that the two are often linked of course.

The reduction in such litter is a boon in itself. However we can't allow it to distract from the bigger picture, for example with New Zealand :

https://www.consumer.org.nz/articles/how-does-new-zealand-pa...

"We were the second-worst country for packaging recyclability. Here in clean, green Aotearoa, 57% of the packaging we assessed wasn’t recyclable in practice. That’s not too bad when compared to Brazil (92%), but we have a lot of room for improvement. Especially when our Aussie cousins beat us by a mile with just 14% of packaging not being recyclable."

A big part of the problem is the commercial conflict of interest, which among other things means that robust data isn't available. For example, if we had year-on-year graphs showing domestic plastic production, consumption, sales, in different regions and industries, for different purposes, we could start to build a true big picture. Instead, the populace is reduced to arbitrarily celebrating visible wins, without really knowing whether we're winning or not.

> However we can't allow it to distract from the bigger pictur

I sometimes wonder if that’s the real agenda

Like recycling. Keeping us busy sorting things in to different bins. Without thinking about the absolute torrent of crap people order on a daily or weekly basis. But it’s ok because the cardboard and plastic packaging is going in a magical bin (which often isn’t that magical…)

There is too much of a focus on recycling, when reducing the amount of stuff we consume would be far more beneficial.

When I was at school they used to talk about the 4 Rs, reduce, renew, reuse, recycle (I'm sure different variations exist). With recycling being essentially a last resort as it's so difficult and inefficient. But now it seems there is barely any mention of the first 3.

A cynic would say that it’s harder for companies to make money selling products that reduce/renew/reuse.

it's not an agenda, it's 2 things.

you tell someone, "hey don't order so much, it's bad for the environment", and they reply "you can't stop me doing something i want", like all the plastic-straw fans in this post

given a person who will make the same order regardless, recycling is better than not.

we need both things

For sure, having seen the way Germans recycle, NZ has a long way to go still.

The plastic bag ban is a good start, but seeing how Germans reuse glass bottles is an eye opener, and I really don't understand why we have individual cucumbers wrapped in plastic?!

The plastic wrap on the cucumbers makes them last longer. You can argue whether it's worth it, but there is a reason.

Fwiw I haven't seen a plastic bag stuck in a tree for years either. I live in the UK where they're legal but there's a (mandated) 10p or something fee for them. (Personally I have a few of the slightly more expensive but much less disposable ones that I can reuse indefinitely.)

Weirdly I did see cassette tape stuck in a tree recently though!

Once I went on vacation to a tropical island. I went to a grocery store on the island. I didn't bring a bag because I was a doofus who had not previously lived or traveled to a tropical island.

There were no plastic bags. There were no paper bags. There was no option to pay money to get a reusable grocery bag like we see in the US. If you were a doofus like me who didn't bring some kind of bag, you only had two options. One was to miraculously carry your stuff home without bags. The other was to use the cardboard boxes that used to contain produce, if there were any left over.

We carried our groceries back to the hotel in a cardboard box that previously contained fruit.

It was a minor hassle in the moment, but I also realized that's how it should be everywhere. There are probably already enough bags in the world for all the carrying that humans need to do. Of course bags wear out, so we need to keep producing some amount of bags, but not many. Most stores should simply not have any kind of bag whatsoever. If you don't bring something of your own, you should be mostly SoL.

These days I keep a bin in my trunk, transfer my groceries from the cart into the bin, and then I carry the entire bin into my kitchen.

>Most stores should simply not have any kind of bag whatsoever. If you don't bring something of your own, you should be mostly SoL.

Yeah, because driving back to your house to get a bag and then driving back is so much better for the environment than a using a few 0.1mm thin bags.

If you're there by car you can't convince me you actually *need* bags.

People on tropical islands don't really use cars. I don't think most of the readers on HN understand the level of sacrifice required from everyone to avoid the worst of what's coming. It's going to require a lot more from everyone than using reusable bags while shopping or avoiding straws/using metal ones.

I agree these environmental laws are simply green washing. But if people think these generate too much resentment they're wholly unprepared for what the moment requires. Like not eating meat with every single meal every single day of the week. Not having two cars per family regardless of whether they're ICE or not. Eliminating short-haul flights and restricting international travel.

US consumers are used to overconsuming. Correcting for that will feel like a punishment to most. I don't see an alternative besides telling people to treat it like a world war. "Victory gardens" and all.

>I don't think most of the readers on HN understand the level of sacrifice required from everyone to avoid the worst of what's coming. It's going to require a lot more from everyone than using reusable bags while shopping or avoiding straws/using metal ones.

To be frank, I don't think we will avoid the worst of what's coming. Because a lot of it isn't in control of consumers but from business emissions.

e.g. wouldn't mind the ability to stop using my car tomorrow if I had reliable bus schedules that weren't separated by an hour per stop, but I have no faith that the transportation for my city will ever fix that in a timely matter. There's also negative inventive from stuff like ride-shares to want to fix that. WFH is another way to cut down on emissions to compute but instead companies are hunkering back down because they gotta justify their sunk cost on buildings.

That's 2 of some dozen problems that could prevent the worst but whose cards aren't completely in the hands of the person. It just feels so hopeless.

that's not business emissions though, that's a government problem

change in government comes from people. capable government looks at real societal problems and shapes the future of the state to address them. of course public transport is a huge one, especially in the US

> Because a lot of it isn't in control of consumers but from business emissions.

Businesses ultimately only exist to provide to consumers. Even those that sell directly to businesses of governments wouldn’t exist without consumers.

Consumers are either going to have to jump now or fall later.

> People on tropical islands don't really use cars.

They do and do so extensively in some places.

I have been to Wallis and Futuna islands, two very small islands in the Pacific being French overseas territories where the transportation around each island is exclusively by car and locals drive around all the time. They would only walk to the nearest fale and drive at all other times. Petrol was expensive (that was around EUR 2.5 a litre approximately a decade ago) but the French government nearly entirely subsidises it due to the two islands' economies being too small to cover extra costs.

> Eliminating short-haul flights and restricting international travel.

This line in particular is an extreme totalitarian view, good grief.

Keep some large blue Ikea bags in your car instead.

I have half a dozen of these and have never needed anything else.

Bonus: way easier to get everything inside at home.

Good point. This is why I keep reusable bags in my car for that exact scenario. It’s helped me a ton, you should try it.

There are stores in the us that do the cardboard box method

Yes, Aldi's does this.

When the pandemic hit in the US, and people were hoarding a bit, I had several times where I had to carry groceries home in a fruit box.

I would be fine with this outcome (even as someone who would find it personally annoying), but it's not the reality we live in today. You'd have to actually mandate this by law.

The half measures we currently have are the worst of both worlds. They inconvenience people and increase fossil fuel emissions.

Our Grocery Outlet does this, as does CostCo.

Costco seems to have perfected it by rarely having enough boxes at the cash, so forward-thinking customers do their job for them by grabbing boxes from the product shelves.

I think selling fully reusable cloth bags would be the right thing to do, but otherwise I agree that stores shouldn't offer single-use plastic bags any more.

In NZ after the single-use plastic bag ban some people argued against only having high quality reusable bags available by saying "but I keep forgetting my reusable bags, and I so I keep having to buy more! Now I have 15 cloth bags at home - this is far more wasteful than when we had single-use plastic bags."

But those complaints came in the first few weeks after the ban, and they dried up soon enough. Everyone learns eventually that they need to take their bags with them - at least I hope nobody is sitting at home now, five years after the ban, with 1000 reusable cloth bags.

P.S. I've found jute bags the best value for money. They seem to really last forever whereas the thin cloth type start wearing out after a while.

In Canada this is an issue. The 'reusable' bags aren't cloth -- they're still a weave made from plastic. And it can be tied to culture and availability. It's much easier to 'remember' your bags if you're making a dedicated trip to the grocery store from home. But, if you want to spontaneously stop in after work, for example, you would have had to remembered a bag before you left home or had one on you at all times. We should be encouraging the type of city design that allows for (and encourages!) this type of spontaneous shopping. We should figure out the bagging system to match. Recyclable/compostable paper bags seem like a good thing.

All of my of my on-the-go shopping without thinking about it beforehand have much smaller quantities than the one I specifically think about (especially because in Germany I usually take some bottles with me to deposit at the store), for that a smaller, foldable bag in my backpack has served me very well.

Yes, I have bought reusable bags just because I didn't bring one. :) But then I keep using it and over time this doesn't really create extra trash.

My town did this, and I immediately went from picking up 1-2 plastic bags from my yard every week to basically zero in the last 4 years. I have no idea what the net impact on carbon emissions or other factors was, but the reduction in visible trash in my neighborhood was noticeable, immediate and seemingly permanent.

Yes. I feel like people often solely focus on CO2 emissions as the only metric. Especially some detractors of ecological pushes and regulations. Like "it doesn't really decrease CO2 output, so what the point", or "it's such a tiny fraction compared to X industry of Y country, and such an inconvenience so what's the point". I just don't understand how producing less stuff whose sole objective is to end up, in the best case, directly in landfill, is bad

As a regular diver in the Baltic ocean, my experience is aligned with the finding that the ban on plastic bags and utensils did have a real noticeable effect. Before the ban I saw trash every dive. Now it is much less common, closer to 1/10 of how it was before.

Nowadays the most common trash I see are beer cans.

The problem at least where I live in Europe is that people stopped buying grocery plastic bags, which is good. But they were frequently re-used as garbage bags.

Now people instead buy plastic garbage bag rolls.

So even if the consumption of plastic shopping bags has decreased, the consumption of plastic garbage bags has greatly increased.

Might well be easier to recycle the garbage bags. One could hope.

Anecdotally, people in my life used to buy plastic garbage bags and use shopping bags as garbage bags (or dog poop bags) in smaller-sized garbage bins. Also anecdotally, despite the fact that I almost always grocery shop with reusable bags, I still somehow have plenty of plastic bags under my sink at any given time to use in my smaller trash bins. There are plenty of non-grocery places I get plastic bags: CVS, take out meals, Home Depot. These more than fill my need for small plastic garbage bags.

Where we live they don’t give free bags at CVS or other stores. I think restaurants may have an exception for take out, but those bags often get sauce spilled all over the inside, making them unsuitable for saving or reuse (except immediately, as a trash bag).

> Where I live (Silicon Valley), paper and plastic bags were both subject to the same treatment. In Menlo Park you can buy bags when you shop for $.25 each. The plastic bags at Safeway are much thicker (i.e., use more plastic, and are hypothetically reusable more times) than before. The paper bags are the same as before, but now you pay for them (the revenue goes to the store).

No, that type of thin plastic is not recyclable.

Thin grocery (and garbage) bags are sheet polyethylene, the plastic of which is just as recyclable as milk bottles. They are not accepted in many curbside recycling programs because the separation tech is not designed for them, not because the plastic itself is not recyclable. They are recyclable (and frequently recycled) via dedicated collection points. (Most of our grocery stores have them.)

Yes and no.

They are recyclable. But because of their low weight, high amounts of contamination, and constant ability to get stuck in conveyor belts... Thin plastic bags are more trouble than they are worth.

It's like Aluminum foil. Recycling plants are paid per ton of recycled material, and it takes lots and lots of aluminum foil before a ton of Aluminum is saved up.

Except plastic is way harder to recycle than Aluminum (requires higher purities).

It depends of course, on where you are and what type of recycling schemes are available. As a general rule, “don’t put plastic bags in with your regular recycling” is correct. But we have a very successful ‘soft plastic’ recycling scheme in New Zealand that results in useful products (I have 52 fence posts made with thousands of recycled milk bottles and plastic bags).

Yeah, my location also has special containers for clean plastic bags. But general recycling no longer takes them.

I never bought trash bags before these bans went into effect. Now it’s one of our subscribe and saves.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the net effect was that we are using more plastic now than before, even though we use reusable bags most of the time when we go shopping.

Plastic bags are banned here in Australia.

I too use plastic bags as rubbish bags.

I can say that despite the ban on plastic shopping bags there is never any shortage of plastic bags.

Admittedly I use small plastic bags but it's virtually impossible to buy food that doesn't use plastic bags - I use them.

grocery bags are made from newly produced plastic (sametimes clean recycled ak highest grade, because food requirements). Garbage bags, on the other hand, are made from the lowest possible grade recycl, which can't be recycled.

Littering is the problem solved by charging for or banning free carrier bags, not usage of plastic bags. If your rubbish goes to landfill, don't expect a reduction in rubbish bags as a component. They're very light though.

IMO it's better to incinerate them. That's what Switzerland does. I think it largely works, as long as you have enough routes to take dangerous chemicals (electronics and batteries mostly, heavy metals) out of the the waste pipeline.

There’s been some research showing the effect you’re seeing is real.

> We estimate that CGB [carryout grocery bag] regulations lead to an average increase in purchased plastics of 127 pounds per store per month, ranging from 30 to 135 (37–224) pounds for 4-gallon (8-gallon) trash bags.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10640-022-00646-5

Well you can always take biodegradable garbage bags. Built-In recycling, they just become soil again.

Sure, banning plastic bags means that there are less plastic bags. But that's a low bar to meet to call the result a success.

For example, did the ban reduce the total amount of plastic produced? Plausibly, no it did not.

From the report: > Because of the loophole in California’s bag ban allowing the use of thicker plastic bags, the amount of plastic bags discarded per person (by weight) actually increased in the years after the implementation of the ban.

Did the ban on plastic make a meaningful reduction in co2 emissions? Did it make people happier? Did it make a meaningful improvement to the environment?

> Did the ban on plastic make a meaningful reduction in co2 emissions? Did it make people happier? Did it make a meaningful improvement to the environment?

Those are the questions to ask.

Instead, many people focus on behaviour control fantasies & gotchas.

This metric is the only one that matters and it’s completely sailed over in the article to instead support their point

> Did it make a meaningful improvement to the environment?

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-06-07/most-plastic-bags-gon...

It's not completely clear from this article if the measurement includes the thicker bags, but my guess is yes.

A lot of people pointing out the various studies saying that plastic consumption increases after a bag ban; but isn't that expected in the short term? Everyone has to go buy 3-4 heavy reusable bags for the first time (or few times as they get used to the idea), that's obviously going cause a spike in plastic consumption, above a normal year of disposable bags. But the more meaningful question is if 5 years later, people are still buying excess heavy bags for a few uses or if the behavior actually adapts.

I wonder what level of additional waste is now caused by these reusable bags that we will continue to see forever. FreshDirect will provide 2 heavy reusable bags each delivery I receive each week. They claimed to offer to pick these up but that has been suspended for years. They now suggest to “donate” the bags. Obviously these end up in the trash.

The strange part of whatever law led them to this idea is that because these bags aren't rigid enough, products tend to be damaged and arrive organized like a trash pile where at least one thing spills all over everything else. Oh, and they still put frozen goods in thin plastic bags.

I recall the best quality delivery for my use-case being products in standard takeout delivery paper bags wrapped in plastic to avoid leakage. I’m certain far less plastic was used in those cases, and the bags themselves could be easily used to store trash for the compactor avoiding the need for the thicker trash bags.

Depends what's meant by "work".

In my country, single use plastic bags were replaced with thicker reusable plastic bags that many people discard after a single use. So the total volume of produced/discarded plastic probably increased despite the number of bags used probably going down. I don't have sources other than anecdotal evidence based on behaviours I observe.

I think it means “Billions of plastic bags were avoided in the US alone,” but that’s just me reading the headline.

And if your goal is to eliminate a specific type of plastic bag, that's great! It's also a stupid goal.

if your goal is to eliminate plastic, or fossil fuel emissions, I'm not convinced these bans have been effective.

Great! Can you show me the numbers that make you think that these bans were not effective?

https://www.freedoniagroup.com/press-releases/freedonia-repo...

Edit: Apparently this is commissioned by the plastic industry. It does match my anecdata of how many people I see buying "reusable" bags at the supermarket check out, combined with https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/grocery-bag-environmental...

I've been using the same reusable bags for years, so they have more than hit those numbers. Why are the cotton numbers so wild?

The goal is to eliminate trash in the environment. Thin plastic bags get discarded carelessly, then catch in the wind and get strewn around a wide area.

Plastic bag bans have been sufficiently successful that people have forgotten this was a problem.

If the goal was reduced emissions, these bans were an abject failure. Single use plastic bags are really efficient from an energy use perspective. Their replacements take significantly more energy to produce and the re-use is unlikely to ever balance out, as they often require hundreds or thousands of uses to be equivalent to a single use bag.

"Number of bags" is only one way to measure this. It's probably the only metric that went in the right direction, so that's the one they report.

> In my country, single use plastic bags were replaced with thicker reusable plastic bags that many people discard after a single use.

What country?

Most of them, I'd wager.

same thing happened here. it became illegal for grocery stores to give out single use plastic bags here so now they just give out thicker bags that they call multi-use.

I always thought the plastic bags deal was not seeing the forest through the trees. Most food comes in heavy plastic. The food is consumed in a day or so, and the plastic lasts FOREVER. Forcing the companies to use paper or glass packaging, or having reusable returnable containers would have a bigger impact than banning those thin plastic bags.

The main issue there, imo, is that plastic is the main technology used to protect and seal food items, thereby making them last longer without spoiling. A good part of the world's food trade and economy now relies upon it. There would be mass starvation without it.

Plastic has saved humanity insane amounts of energy over the short term, and has contributed to our population growth. The resulting environmental debt is mindbendingly massive, and I'm not convinced that the corporate world will willingly pay it. It will be paid though, one way or another, because Laws of Physics, entropy etc.

The smartest species is also the stupidest.

A bring your own bag/bottle/container store would be cool. Everything would be shipped in bulk to the grocery store, and people would take what they want in their own containers.

Some such outlets do exist. Its also reminiscent of older style open-air food markets. But globally speaking, the short term charms of plastics clearly won the economic race. The same cheap, low effort, high resistance elements that make plastics such an environmental problem are also the factors which dictated its use.

True, but who says laws stop there in the coming years? I sincerely hope these things will come aswell. Banning non reusable plastic bags however is a good and easy start.

Now my target bags use 5x the amount of plastic and cost me $.10 before I put them in the bin. If anything it seems like waste is increasing from them. Why can’t somebody make a paper bag with a handle that doesn’t rip in the parking lot?

Why don’t you just reuse them instead of putting them in the bin?

It seems like the waste is coming from you.

What are you supposed to do? Carry around bags with you all day in case you happen to go to the store?

If it is a planned visit sure, but if you are just out and about you don't want to be carrying around spare bags in your jeans pocket just in case.

Do you usually pop into target because you’re out and about, walking around with no access to a vehicle in which you might keep bags? And then you purchase enough stuff that you require a large plastic bag for?

And this happens often enough for you to be throwing away large quantities of these bags, and rather than reflect on your habits and adapt, you say something else is causing the waste?

Just leave them in your car? Most people drive to stores, especially in the US.

I also almost always have a backpack with me when I’m out and about, I just leave some cloth backpacks bags in it.

Realistically, how much stuff are you buying on trips to the store on a whim?

The vast majority of Target stores are not urban stores, they are big suburban stores where few people visit without a car.

But even in the city, I almost always have a small backpack with me, and in one of the pockets I have a very compact fold-up shopping bag that I use when I stop at the store on the way home.

I actually essentially do that, I have a reusable bag that folds up into itself with a zipper into a package about the size of a wallet. Fits well in a purse or jacket pocket and is more pleasant to carry when full than a plastic bag anyhow.

So really, there’s not even a small sacrifice involved for me, just a little bit of planning, to avoid making that waste.

And isn’t this kind of ingenious gadget based solution much more in the hacker spirit than throwing up our hands and saying, give me back the old traditional way regardless of the flaws?

Same. My bag's the size of half a wallet when folded, so it's not really a bother to carry a couple, let alone one. I tend to keep at least a couple in my car's glove box as well.

I'm not sure my plastic usage has decreased though, since I used to recycle the thin plastic bags to line my trash bins. Now I buy oversized white plastic trash bags to line my bins. I just can't wrap my head around e.g. having a bathroom trash bin without a bag protecting it. It feels incredibly gross, though I do know one family that does that. I guess/hope they wash their bins very regularly.

That’s cool that you do that.

I don’t like carrying things that I rarely use and try to minimize stuff I carry. And that’s basically just a phone and my clothes.

Even if you carry a bag, I frequently find that I need two or three or more.

I think a better solution is to just have decomposable plastic bags and solve the issue that way.

I'm a little surprised you don't bring a wallet or money into a store. I'm not being pedantic, but folded it's around the same size. A good reusable bag carries about what two to three plastic bags do. Plus, you only have to carry a bag when you're actually going into the store, anywhere else you can keep it in your vehicle.

I buy things with my phone. Sometimes I might have cash but that’s almost never.

Where are you before you go into a shop? Surely some times it's at work or home, or the car. Might help to keep a couple of fold-up bags in each of those spots. Usually habits lag these phased changes by a couple of years, but you get better at being prepared or anticipating times you'll need them.

I’ll give you an example from today. I was out for coffee and wasn’t expecting to go shopping. I walked to a book store and bought some books. They have me a plastic bag. I’d normally turn it down and just carry the books, but it was raining a little bit.

If it was important, I’d remember. I don’t think this is important so I don’t care enough to always carry a bag with me.

I'm not saying there are never situations where it's useful, just that they're uncommon and collateral damage in trying to change broader behaviour (whether by charging for bags or changing the bags on offer).

In your example where I live, they'd offer a paper bag which would cover the little bit of rain. If there was enough rain to cause trouble, people would have an umbrella.

Edit: stores outside of the US are accessible without a car. It is very common for people to go to local stores during lunch breaks or on their way home from work on public transport etc.

I personally don't have space in my jeans pockets after a wallet and the ridiculous size of modern phones to then also pack in 2 or 3 reusable bags too.

Sure if you drive to a store, keep some bags there. I do this a lot but I am not going to carry bags around with me on the off-chance I might go to a shop that day.

The answer is foldable shopping bags. Any intelligent person that regularly go to stores during lunch breaks or when commuting is either always carrying a backpack or a small foldable shopping bag. There are many folding bag designs that fit into your pants backpocket.

I have no car and I very rarely leave home with either a foldable bag, a backpack, a drawstring bag and when I don't have one of those that is usually because I am using my bicycle which is equipped with a basket and panniers on the rear rack, or my motorbike with its top case.

> Any intelligent person that regularly go to stores during lunch breaks or when commuting is either always carrying a backpack or a small foldable shopping bag

The problem is all the non-intelligent people, like me, who don’t carry this. I don’t carry a backpack around on my lunch break (or really anywhere other than when I’m hiking).

It doesn't have to be a backpack. A foldable shopping bag fit in the pockets of your pants. If this is something you do regularly, you would learn at the second occurence to have any kind of bag ready at your place of work.

I have a foldable shopping bag which is smaller than my wallet, you don’t need a full backpack. If I think I might want to pop into the shops while out, I’ll chuck it in my pocket.

Sure, if you want to do a big family shop then it’s a bit different, but that’s more of an event anyway.

Does it fit inside my phone? Because I need a bag about 1% of the time and I’m not carrying a bag for those occassions.

Keep a couple of fold up bags at work and take one on the lunch break if planning to shop or if shopping on the way home. I can't think of a time that I went out for a lunch break and then on a whim bought two full bags worth of groceries back to the office.

Most americans drive cars. You can easily keep them in your cars. How do europeans do it with higher public transportation utilization?

Most people I know tend to go about their business with some sort of bag on them.

Euro here.

I rarely get out of the house without some kind of bag and when I do that's because I take a bicycle which is equipped with a basket and panniers.

Reusable bags aren't an option for you? We have several of them and just put them in the trunk. If I forget to bring one (which happens 1-4 times a year) I buy a new one for 2€, replacing an almost broken one.

The amount of learned helplessness in this thread is astounding. I bought a pair of collapsible reusable bags years ago for $5. I use them every week and they're as good as new. The stronger construction means that each one is replacing at least three disposable plastic bags with every trip. You don't need disposable bags. And yes, I have a cat, and disposable bags are shite for litter, because they always, always have holes.

I imagine all the "I can't fit bags in my pockets for my impromptu shopping trips" people posting when mobile phones first became popular: "Are they expecting us to put these in our pockets?! All the time!? Just in case someone calls???"

Seems like a broader resistance to change?

There’s a certain point where “I keep forgetting” is really just “I don’t want to”.

They started as £0.05 here in the UK. Now a few years later it is £1 for a plastic bag from Waitrose. Outrageous.

Even worse are the places that offer only paper bags, but charge you for them because they can now. 30p for a paper bag from Boots makes no sense when the whole point of the bag levy was to stop people using plastic ones.

I think the thought is that you should buy less bags. I'm seeing you in other comments, lamenting the fact that you routinely go shopping without any bags. I'll admit that there could be perfectly reasonable situations that are negatively impacted by the bag levy, however I think the entire purpose of this levy is to discourage you from buying bags. You should have a few, and re-use them when you go shopping. Eventually you'll replace them, but it'll be after a while and it'll be at negligible cost.

If you're buying so many bags that a £1 cost is "outrageous" to you, you are the problem.

I do reuse them, and I have a load of "proper" bags in the boot of the car. But I can't carry bags around with me on the random off chance that I will go to the shops that morning or afternoon or whatever.

Just let me buy paper ones for the actual cost, and not some price gauging plastic bag.

why shouldn't there be a cost? it's the best way to shape behaviour.

Maybe they should have a deposit that gets refunded if you return it. Say it cost $1 per bag, but you could get it refunded if returned on your next trip you get most of the convenience with little hassle.

In Japan, they're not banned but there's an extra 2 or 3 yen charge if you want one. This charge amounts to just about nothing but it was enough to get almost everyone to switch to "eco bags". I suppose it's not the "savings" of a couple yen here and there that motivated people to use their own bags but simply the awareness that there was something of an expectation that they would bring their own. Prior to this, you might have looked a bit eccentric bringing your own bag to carry your groceries in but now it's just normal and Japanese love nothing more than being normal.

Indeed, it also normalized walking out of a store bagless while holding your purchase. I like it. I don't like when I ask for no bag, and the combini charges for one anyway.

With that said, Japan never had a litter problem. Likewise our garbage system is highly developed with waste to energy using high temp incinerators. The ban-charge-requirement never could have had an environmental aspect. But if it can reduce oil imports, that's worth doing.

I've personally got more attached to receipts here in Japan since I refuse to pay for any plastic bags (I carry an eco bag in my backpack for big stuff). I just put my purchase in my backpack with a receipt just in case.

I don't know if it helps much because everything in Japan is wrapped in plastic it seems.

the replacement bags are usually made out of another type of plastic that needs to be reused 100+ times minimum to make the trade off worthwhile, which is rarely the case.

This is what superficial activism looks like.

Superficial is good in this case. One of the worst things about plastic bags is that they end up wrapped around every roadside bush in Africa, Southeast Asia and South America.

I’ve never seen one of those beefy reusable carrier bags blowing around on the side of a road.

How American plastic bags ban affects Africa, Southeast Asia and South America?

We ship our plastic to those countries

Instead they will wreck havoc on marine life because they decompose into loops of stringy rope that's difficult to break

Why does this comment feel like someone trying to vice-signal about their lack of care for the environment while attempting to manipulate the people who do by making up complete nonsense? No, reusable shopping bags are not worse for the environment than disposable ones.

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/03/13/world/reusable-grocery-ba...

"a cotton bag should be used at least 7,100 times to make it a truly environmentally friendly alternative to a conventional plastic bag."

Well it wasn't "vice-signalling" as they posted a source and had a legitimate criticism yet you assumed bad faith and attacked them based on that.

Exactly. It's like the straws. Something highly visible and conspicuous, with very small impact. The definition of tokenism.

It is literally a type of religious ritual to the Earth gods.

The point is not that it helps or doesn't help, the point is "we have to do something!"

Just like it is obvious from a breakdown of the data that is beyond stupid to send one giant diesel burning truck to pick up "garbage" then another giant diesel truck to pick up tin cans and cardboard at a net energy loss. Of course, it is impossible to stop this even if it would be rational thing to do.

"we have to do something!"

This is a preposterous talking point, I wish people would stop parroting it.

Reusable bags carry as much weight and volume as multiple disposable bags. And yes, you can use them hundreds of times. I have used mine every week for years and years.

Disposable plastic grocery bags are wasteful and pointless, and those defending them so virulently come across as bafflingly pathetic.

I'd prefer a _ban_ on plastic bags rather than the 10 cent ding for a dime routine.

Require the stores to offer a free paper bag, and allow them to offer an upsell to a handled paper bag.

The war on plastic bags (in the USA) was dumb. They are a tiny tiny percentage of plastic pollution and paper bags actually take up more space at the landfill and a LOT more energy to manufacture to the same strength and usability. The truth is even more so for canvas bags. I live where the war never happened and I just stuff them under the cabinet until it gets full and then I take them to the grocery store where they are properly recycled, and the store reports how that happens.

Sure, if you recycle them then that makes it much better for the environment. The problem is most people don't recycle them.

Not so sure on the energy usage, if feels like the manufacturing and recycling chain would be more energy intensive than creating something that can be reused for years.

>paper bags actually take up more space at the landfill

and are biodegradable

>a LOT more energy to manufacture

which could be done with renewables

But again, the point of all this is to get people to reuse bags in the long run. If you just assume that people will mindlessly always need bags at every store they visit, you're missing the point. It's a simple cultural change, and it has to start somewhere, and it will always be imperfect, and older generations will always be uncomfortable with it.

I use to travel around the world and the difference between European countries and USA is abysmal regarding trash. It turns obvious in a few hours. I am not an expert in garbage though but it is a trivial observation that anyone travelling to those two regions could easily observe.

I just felt a "denial of service attack" on Denmark trying to separate the garbage in different classes that I couldn't perfectly distinguish without some training.

This is such a red herring. The entire country is wearing polyester and other plastic clothing that breaks down and sheds microplastics in EVERY single laundry cycle into the water. Millions of cars driving every single day wear down tires shedding microplastics into the air, soil, and ground. Millions of packages with styrofoam padding are breaking down into tiny spherical plastic balls as we speak. We're absolutely systemically fucked and plastic bags and straws are genius levels of distraction from these unsolvable modern conveniences.

The biggest problem with these bans is that "single use" bags almost never are. Everyone I know reuses them for various things, and not just as bags.

The case against plastic bags is straightforward. Plastic pollution kills at least 100,000 marine mammals and 1 million seabirds every year and entanglement in plastic and other types of litter kills roughly 1,000 turtles per year.

That's something for littering laws to deal with.

Every country has littering laws, and they don’t work.

You mean that they are not effectively enforced.

How would you enforce them?

We'll simply put a serial number on every single-use plastic bag, and link it to a government-issued photo ID card when you accept the bag. There will be a mobile app allowing you to register the transfer of a registered plastic bag to another citizen, possibly using the blockchain. The police will then arrest the owners of lost bags in their copious free time. /s

The “perp” is given a ticket. Comes with a fine that helps pay for further enforcement.

So we need to hire more police just to mitigate littering? Doesn’t sound like a smart solution tbh.

In the short term yes, but probably not their only duty. Want the problem solved in the real world or not? Hoping doesn't work, as has been demonstrated.

Also, in country where societal trust has broken down, it could only be successful as part of a larger strategy to fix that first.

Presumably after a culture of cleanliness takes hold, "litter enforcement" would drop off.

I think it’s smarter to just ban packaging that will be around 100+ years.

Yes. You can find a bunch of estimates for how many times you have to reuse a canvas bag for the environmental cost of its production to net out. You generally have a choice between plastics, paper, and fabric, and fabric seems to be the worst of all the options, and the one the plastic ban encourages.

I think I like the approach I see in Chicagoland, which is just to charge for the plastic bags.

(We keep all our plastic bags, but then, we have two dogs).

Tyvek bags get sold commonly in my area, and Tyvek does not survive a standard washing machine cycle.

A canvas bag used for groceries should be washed between each use.

I wonder what the environmental impact of washing a bag 100 times is, compared to 100 single-use plastic bags (which may be reused as trash bags).

I can't imagine washing a grocery bag between every use. Why?

Salmonella are endemic to chicken. E. Coli have also been found in reusable bags. Fungus and yeasts are also a problem.

You don't want these on your salad greens, fruits, or vegetables.

Reusing the bags without washing risks exposure to pathogens.

https://polymerinnovationblog.com/reusable-grocery-bags-may-...

Somewhere else in this discussion you posted a study financed by a plastic industry lobby, and now from a plastic chemistry blog, don't you see a pattern?

Are these references good enough?

https://www.health.ny.gov/publications/2827/

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/plastic-bag-ban_n_2641430

"The study, released in August, found a spike in San Francisco hospital emergency room treatment due to E. coli infections and a 46 percent increase in deaths from foodborne illness in the three months after the bag ban went into effect in 2007."

authors received monetary support from the American Chemistry Council, a trade group representing the interests of plastic bag manufacturers.

> Are these references good enough?

Well, what do you think?

I think that if you don't want to wash your reusable bags, then you are very much free to refrain.

For the rest of us, there are reasons to consider doing so, as advised by the the New York State Department of Health above.

In general, because they are so stringent, the advice from the department of health don't mean much and are only relevant if you either:

- have a depressed immune system (including if you're old)

- are a young child

It's not something you need to follow blindly when you're healthy.

Heck half of the food you can find in the finest restaurant in France is recommended against by US department of health, for instance:

- raw milk cheese

- raw eggs

- “undercooked” meat

Sure, washing your bags can't hurt, but that doesn't make a good argument in favor of plastic bags either, and made up “studies” from lobbyist won't make it so.

(Department of health also recognizes plastic bags as a choking hazard for infants BTW!)

I don't know what grocery stores are like where you live, but where I live, raw meat comes pre-packaged in plastic, and it is conventional to put it in a 2nd plastic bag before it is bagged with other groceries.

Also, I don't know where you live, but it's generally a good idea to wash raw fruits and vegetables before you eat them, whether or not you put them in bags that also contain meat.

For all of those reasons and more, I would not bother washing grocery bags.

Ironically, a lot of "fabric" bags are just woven plastic, which is worse than blown film plastic in not being waterproof and also readily absorbing dirt. And for those who are scared of microplastics, they certainly shed fibers.

We should put a stiff price on the plastic bags, and then ban fabric bags.

They may get reused, but the data shows that:

* Sales of bin liners (for example) do not significantly increase when single use plastic bags are banned

* Plastic bag litter is significantly reduced.

If you want less litter, banning single use plastic bags is a great way to achieve that

Sources https://www.abc.net.au/news/specials/curious-canberra/2017-0... https://www.parliament.act.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/000...

Personally I can say I switched to just not lining the bin after the plastic bag ban. I have a separate compost bin for food scraps so the main bin mostly doesn't get too dirty, and if it does get some liquid or whatever on it, a quick rinse with the hose fixes that.

Yuck that would not work here in Spain.. you'd have cockroaches all over. And I don't have a place to hose things down :(

We use a paper bag (from grocery deliveries) as our general household waste bin under the sink. Also under the sink are a compost bin and then a recycling tub. The compost and recycling tubs fill up far faster than the general waste bag.

The evidence regarding sales of bin liners is mixed:

> The study found California communities with bag policies saw sales of 4-gallon trash bags increase by 55% to 75%, and sales of 8-gallon trash bags increase 87% to 110%. These results echo earlier studies that also showed increases in sales of smaller plastic trash bags.

But while sales of small garbage bags jumped after policies were implemented, sales of larger 13-gallon trash bags -- the size often found in kitchen trash cans -- remained relatively unchanged. [1]

1: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/03/220329142327.h....

Another major problem is that bag bans have been found in studies to result in bacteriological infection spikes.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/plastic-bag-ban_n_2641430

For myself, I (re)use these as trash bags, so I hope the ban never reaches my community. My grocery store also has a used bag deposit.

> authors received monetary support from the American Chemistry Council, a trade group representing the interests of plastic bag manufacturers.

End of the joke.

The joke could be on you.

https://www.health.ny.gov/publications/2827/

Do you really clean your fridge weekly according to official recommendations? Would you recommend to stop using fridges since listeria can proliferate in fridges that aren't regularly cleaned and people don't wash their fridge often enough to be safe?

Then why do you bring this kind of recommendation as an argument against reusable bags?

I'm not recommending for unusable bags.

What I'm saying is that the risk profile is transferred.

> What I'm saying is that the risk profile is transferred

And I'm saying it's mostly BS made up by the plastic industry to muddy the water.

On the one hand you have a real, significant risk to the environment.

On the other hand, you have a “risk” that doesn't really exist unless your immune system is depressed and is the same order of magnitude of risk as “using a fridge like literally everyone does”.

You are being manipulated by “Merchants of Doubt”, that's what happening here.

> That's something for littering laws to deal with.

How are littering laws supposed to prevent plastic bags from flying away from landfills?

A fair bit of litter I see (on roadtrips at least) is from overflowing bins at rest areas where the council is using poorly designed bins, people are over-stuffing them, animals are pulling things out looking for scraps, etc.

The small amount of local litter appears to come from rubbish trucks tipping bins into the trucks on windy days.

I found this article that seems to paint a contrasting picture. https://archive.is/BCd0w

"Commissioned by the American Recyclable Plastic Bag Alliance, the report acknowledges that the total number of plastic bags declined by 60% since the ban—as its backers hoped. But because shoppers still had to carry their groceries home, they needed alternatives. Mostly that meant switching from the thin plastic film bags to the heavier, reusable bags now sold in many supermarkets.

The problem is that most of these alternative bags are made of non-woven polypropylene, which takes much more plastic to make and isn’t widely recycled. And what about the supposed climate benefits? Well, the study finds that, owing to the larger carbon footprint of the heavier, non-woven polypropylene bags, greenhouse gas emissions rose 500%. The problem is compounded by the way people use these bags. Though intended to be reused many times, the report says 90% of the new reusable bags are used a mere two or three times. So they are piling up in landfills and homes. Think of your own behavior in misplacing bags around the house or forgetting to bring them when heading out for groceries."

Misplacing bags in your home is unlikely to continue indefinitely. If nothing else you would run out of room.

So it’s likely for someone to have many bags used a few times and lost and the remainder get used a great deal. Therefore what’s important is the average amount of reuse not simply what happens to individual bags. A single bag used 1,000 times makes up for a 9 used a 2-3 times.

Is it possible to use a bag 1000 times? California's SB 270 says:

> It shall be capable of carrying 22 pounds over a distance of 175 feet for a minimum of 125 uses.

https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml...

It's really not easy for me to compute how many times each of my canvas bags has been used. But it's probably about 200 on average, since I've been doing this for over a decade and I've only had one canvas bag fail to death.

I'd bet 1000 uses is within the realm of possibility, but you'll probably need to do some repairs along the way.

Oh, I wasn't thinking about canvas bags. What I was thinking about, and what the law is about, is the thick plastic bags I've seen at e.g. Safeway checkout that they charge 10 cents for.

Buying these thick plastic bags seems to be what the checkout line guides people to do. Buying a canvas bag would require extra effort. People generally take the path of least resistance.

Yes, when they take up too much space, people will throw them on the trash.

Or are you expecting a different result?

I guess I was hoping that eventually they'd throw a few in their trunk.

Why would one throw their trash in the trunk??

Reusable bags aren’t trash. So, by placing them in the trunk people save money compared to buying ever more of them.

> If nothing else you would run out of room.

Yes, from time to time you realize that the entire box full of reusable bags isn't going to be reused. Then you take one of them, stuff it with the others until it's full, and stash that as the "maybe I'll reuse those".

Then you take another one, fill that one with the rest, and put it in the trash.

I use them exactly once more - cat litter waste

I tend to reuse them twice: one more shopping and then becomes a trash can liner.

> Though intended to be reused many times, the report says 90% of the new reusable bags are used a mere two or three times. So they are piling up in landfills and homes.

I could see people forgetting these bags at home for a while as they adjust to their new normal, but the idea that they’re going to be buying these new bags ever other trip to the store because they’re piling up in a room at home for years is hard for me to believe.

Given that the conclusion of that article depends on people never getting good at reusing those bags and instead throwing them away or letting them accumulate forever at home, I have a hard time taking it seriously.

>>the report says 90% of the new reusable bags are used a mere two or three times. So they are piling up in landfills and homes.

>but the idea that they’re going to be buying these new bags ever other trip to the store because they’re piling up in a room at home for years is hard for me to believe.

What's likely happening is that they go out to buy something, forgot their bag, and is forced to buy a reusable bag. If enough people are forgetful, the "90% of the new reusable bags are used a mere two or three times" seems very plausible to me.

What happens to me, living in a walkable city without a car (something I'm proud of for environmental reasons):

• I'm walking to work / home / a social outing / etc, with no intention of going shopping.

• I pass by a store on the way.

• I now need a bag.

Could I always bring a bag with me when I go out? Yes, but I try to travel as light as possible because I'm walking.

• Bags aren't big or heavy

• What spur of the moment shopping are you talking about?

Bags are big enough that they don't fit in my pants or jacket pocket. I don't understand your second question.

Some companies offer compact reusable bags that can be stored in a coat pocket. For example:

https://seatosummit.com/products/ultra-sil-day-pack - I've had a few different versions of this bag for years. There are also cheaper/bigger/different versions of the same sort of thing you can find online for "packable daypack".

https://nanobag.com/products/nanobag - I have heard good things about these, but I prefer a backpack because it allows me to be hands-free, or to use my hands to hold more items.

However, I would start by carrying a lightweight "single-use" plastic bag, and simply re-use it. Plastic bags are not as strong as these premium bags, but they hold up well enough to be useful in most scenarios.

Thank you, these look amazing, I'm going to get one! They don't entirely solve my problem because they don't get large enough (for the smaller sizes, the larger sizes are too large when folded) but they'll be useful to have.

The problem is one more unique to being a walker in a city. You're out and about, maybe just walking to the park or something so you brought nothing with you, but the park you like is a 15 minute walk from your apartment.

Near the park there's a great bakery. You see they're having a nice sale on a box of a dozen croissants, and their croissants are the best in the city. So do you:

- Grab a couple boxes, and a reusable bag to carry them in?

- Walk 15 minutes home to get your bag, then 15 minutes back, then 15 minutes back home (45 minutes total) just so you don't pay $3 for a bag?

- Carry around a bag all the time even though you had no intention to buy anything when you left, and use it only a few times over the hundreds of time you leave your apartment?

I’m not the person you asked, but I’d do none of the above. I’d buy the boxes and carry them. They’re presumably perfectly ordinary parallelepipedical cake boxes, perfectly suited for carrying in your hands. There’s no need for a bag.

This is certainly an option (as is not buying the pastries), but it gets pretty uncomfortable over a 15 or even 10 minute walk, because you have to keep the boxes level. You can't just hold them by your side.

It's even worse if you have to e.g. jump on a crowded subway.

And now you know for next time: “there’s a great bakery near the park that I like, better come prepared”. You now have two reasons to go there. Take a disposable plastic bag (hint: they are and always were reusable) folded in your pocket.

This not a hypothetical. I learned pretty fast to always bring a mostly empty backpack with me to the park. I pack a couple of beach towels, maybe bring a jacket, and an e-reader. Sometimes I may not lay down on the grass, or not read. Or I may meet with someone and have a towel at the ready for them. But I have multiple options and none of them is a burden.

Carrying an almost empty backpack for a recreational activity takes zero effort, and it can be used to carry groceries on the way back if I want. Each of the things I carry in it is the result of a previous time where I didn’t have it. People in this thread are acting as if this is an intractable problem. It’s not. Every time you’re faced with a problem of this nature think “what could I do to avoid this next time?” then do that.

If I had to bring a backpack or purse† everywhere I don't think I'd want to live in a walkable city anymore. It makes the experience of walking substantially less pleasant.

† Or whatever the latest euphemism is for a purse carried by a man

You don’t have to bring it everywhere. I gave you a specific example of somewhere you may want to bring it, and why.

Looks like you’re not willing to endure any inconvenience, however minor, to avoid buying the plastic bag and being a bit friendlier to the environment. That’s your prerogative, but let’s not pretend these “problems” don’t have simple solutions.

My feeling is that these laws are mostly advocated for and passed by people who own and drive cars, even as they make life harder mostly for people who don't drive cars. This is despite the fact that driving a car clearly releases orders of magnitude more carbon than some disposable plastic bags.

If more people were willing to give up their cars (or accept something like a 100% extra tax on gasoline to be put towards carbon removal efforts), I would be more open to arguments to give up my plastic bags.

Put another way: I would like legislation which makes walkable, car-free living as easy and painless as possible. Disposable plastic bags make car free living more pleasant, so they shouldn't be banned unless there is a very strong case for significant and meaningful carbon savings.

I don’t drive either, so I should be inclined to agree with you. But when I’m drowning due to the effects of climate change, it won’t do me any good to turn to the person drowning next to me and tell them it’s their fault.

Yes, we should pass better laws. Yes, we don’t have them now. But when (if) we do, I’d rather have a fighting chance than it being too late because the water is already up to my neck.

Yes, except that I'm not convinced these laws reduce emissions, and I'm concerned they do the opposite. I realize the study being cited around this thread [1] was commissioned by the plastic industry and is thus suspect, but just based off of watching people in the checkout line at the grocery store, I see far too many shoppers buying "reusable" bags for me to believe they're actually being reused enough times. [2]

The inconveniences I'm describing are personal gripes, but I don't believe they only apply to me! On the contrary, I think they explain all the not-reused reusable bag sales. You can say "these people should just do X Y and Z", but unless they actually do that, plastic bag bans aren't helping the environment.

(If we're exclusively discussing my personal carbon emissions, I used to reuse every single one of my shopping bags as trash bags. Now I buy separate plastic trash bags instead, so my emissions have gone up.)

And then there's the other way they harm the environment: we need more people to give up their cars and move to cities (or form new walkable cities). If you make city life less convenient, fewer people will do that.

---

1: https://www.freedoniagroup.com/press-releases/freedonia-repo...

2: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/grocery-bag-environmental...

> If we're exclusively discussing my personal carbon emissions

No worries, we definitely aren’t.

Unfortunately I have an early flight tomorrow so won’t be able to continue the conversation. Still, thank you for the discussion. Have a nice <your time of day>.

> Disposable plastic bags make car free living more pleasant

Nonsense. I haven't owned a car for years, nor have I used anything other than a reusable bag for years. Disposable bags are awful for carrying because they tear so easily and can't be carried on your shoulder.

If I don't put something heavy in my 20L backpack I literally don't think it anymore after a minute or two. Even more so with a jacket underneath.

really?

usually when i'm walking in a city, i'll have a coat with pockets or a small bag with me, containing things like a water bottle, a snack, an extra layer, a book, maybe laptop. it's not hard to fold up a small cloth tote and carry that too.

Carry around a bag all the time

As I was saying, this is not the hassle it seems like it is being made out to be. Setting that aside, a box seems like just as good a vessel to carry as a bag, so in this specific case, I really don't understand the issue. If this place has such good pastries and you know, you can plan ahead and pay full price.

If this really is somehow life changing savings on pastries I mean, yeah, taking some extra time walking won't do any harm.

>• What spur of the moment shopping are you talking about?

"Honey, can you get eggs on your way home? We just ran out"

If not being able to carry a carton of eggs in your hands a serious concern of yours, I think there are other issues at play...

Reusable bags are big and heavy to carry around everywhere. Ironically the old disposable bags are much better for this reuse scenario.

There are reusable net bags that are very compact.

If you don't already carry a backpack or other bag, you don't have anywhere to put grocery bags. It's not like they fit in your jeans pocket.

And I do a lot (the majority?) of my grocery shopping spur of the moment. Basically when I'm on my way home and realize I have extra time and it's not so late that the grocery stores have closed. And my life is such that knowing whether I'll have time to shop that evening is entirely unpredictable.

The reusable bags in the UK certainly do fit in your pocket (when correctly folded up)

Can you please link me to something I can buy? I've never found something both small enough when folded to be pocketable and big enough when expanded to be useful.

Not recommending this specific one, just an example of the category: https://www.amazon.com/Reusable-Shopping-Eco-Friendly-Waterp...

Search term was "pocket shopping bag"

The normal bags from a UK supermarket fit just fine in my back pocket, smaller than the wallet I used to carry around

In a pocket on your bulky winter jacket? Sure.

In your jeans pocket? Not unless you want to look... well let's just say that bulging pockets on your butt, or on the front of your pant, are not a good look... not to mention not being particularly comfortable.

They aren't heavy, but they are big/bulky. You can't just stuff them in a pocket. Ironically, the "bad" plastic bags (thicker and bigger than standard US grocery bags, but still a single layer of soft plastic film) could be folded into a pocket, while the new "reusable" ones can't, making it harder to actually reuse them.

> What spur of the moment shopping are you talking about?

Groceries. It's common around here to shop often but in small quantities, because the grocery store is likely somewhere on the footpath from work to home, from work to public transit, or from public transit to home.

Which means you're either carrying the bulky bag with you all day, or using single-use bags. Or, of course, you could buy a car to follow the "stop whining just throw a few in your trunk" suggestions always posted /s

This is incorrect. There are reusable bags that fold into pocket sized. Ikea has them, among other brands. Now that you know, I'm sure you'll reevaluate your outlook on them, right?

Additionally, if you're coming back from work, you probably already have a bag to carry stuff you need for work that you can use to carry a "spur of the moment" amount of groceries or other bags. However, this sounds more like a regular occurrence you are neglecting to prepare for rather than a spur of the moment thing.

My technique is simply to ask myself if I might need a bag while I'm out, and if so, take one with me. Works great!

I'm also in a city without a car (and am proud of it), and also struggle with this. One thing that helped me a lot is to buy a few ultra lightweight packable bags. Ones that can be packed into a pocket in themselves. Then I put these in every backpack I normally carry with me. It helps that I rarely leave the apartment without a backpack.

Why do you need a bag to begin with if you carry a backpack? Is it always full?

mine mostly is. It's a tight pack for carrying my laptop and similar paraphernalia. It's not really means for storing more than a few small pieces of groceries

(note: this is rendered null anyway because I do need to drive everywhere in my suburb).

Taxing the sale of reusable bags to fund a PSA campaign might be in order.

Our city banned single-use plastic bags. The result is you can have paper bags for 5 cents each, or you can buy re-usable plastic bags for $1-$2.50 each (usually tilted towards the higher end.) Nobody is forcing you to buy re-usable plastic, and it's expensive enough to dissuade people from buying too many.

BTW, the biggest outcome is that I use fewer bags in general, and just don't take a bag when I don't need one.

For some reason, a lot of retailers around me in New York seem to only sell the "reusable" bags, with no option for paper. I don't know why, it's very annoying.

My other problem is I can't reuse paper bags as trash bags (because even a tiny amount of liquid will leak through). So now I have to buy plastic trash bags, which sucks because I do in fact care about the environment.

As far as I can tell, that's a retailer decision and not something mandated by the state or city.

But the real problem with single-use plastic bags is that they blow out of dumpsters and landfills. They're incredibly bad for the environment, in ways that re-usable bags and even larger trash bags are not.

The paper bags aren't that reliable though. They're fine if you're just carrying the groceries to/from your car, but then you're also likely to already have a bunch of bags/baskets laying in the car. They also suck for cold stuff (eg milk), as the condensation quickly renders them useless.

I'm confused, in all the places that I'm aware of (3 countries) supermarkets sell paper bags for cases like these.

Moreover if it is such an issue for you why don't you buy one of these soft thin fabric bags that essentially roll up into their own little bag and are small enough to always carry around?

Like these https://www.ulsterweavers.com/collections/roll-up-bags

The problem with the roll up bags is they're still too bulky to fit in my pants or jacket pocket.

I wonder what the environmental impact of paper bags is? The paper has to come from somewhere.

Paper is literally renewable and also easily recycled

Sure, the disposal side of the story is probably better, but as I understand they require more energy to produce than plastic bags (at least the old thin ones), and anecdotally they get reused way less, partly due to frequent tears, but also ironically because people instinctively shove them straight in the recycling when they get home

The renewable bit is not straightforward because it means greater land use to produce. Similar problem to biofuels.

Certainly in Canada where one time use plastic bags are banned the supermarkets do not provide paper bags. They will sell you reusable bags which are larger (and therefore more resource intensive to produce) which are often not reused. I have a huge collection of them at home.

I've got some colleagues who live in apartment buildings in an area of Canada that's like that.

About half a year ago, they were telling me about how they're seeing more and more of those thicker bags in their buildings' large shared garbage dumpsters, rather than the much thinner plastic bags that used to be used for bundling garbage back when they were still readily available.

I wouldn't be surprised if it has gotten worse since then, as people have gradually used up the thin plastic bags they'd previously collected and used for bundling garbage.

> If enough people are forgetful, the "90% of the new reusable bags are used a mere two or three times" seems very plausible to me.

Sure, and this definitely happened in my region of Canada where plastic bags were banned already, but eventually people will stop forgetting once their closet fills with too many reusable bags.

We need supermarkets to provide places where people can donate or sell their excess reusable shopping so other people can pick them up and use. That should put a big dent in the necessity for people to make use of new bags if they didn't bring their own reusable bags

> the idea that they’re going to be buying these new bags ever other trip to the store ... is hard for me to believe.

Have seen these "reusable bags" that the store gives you? They are basically the same as before, just a lot thicker and more plastic.

They are not nice woven bags or something. People then seem to keep using them as trash can liners.

I reuse them once and throw them away, exactly the same way I did with the thinner bags.

Really? Why? I have a bunch of thick Sainsburys bags that I bought probably 5 years ago and I still use them for shopping every week - they will have been used probably 200 times each, easy. No idea why I'd throw them out.

I just use them like trash bags /bin liners. I have fabric reusable ones I just forget or are unable to bring half the time.

Re: throwing them out vs recycling them, our bags you can only recycle at the store themselves...so just a bit too much friction to bother with. I can't recall ever seeing or hearing of anyone recycling them that way either.

I have a feeling we might be talking about different things. I'm talking about bags like these:

https://www.google.com/aclk?sa=l&ai=DChcSEwjk8p3YqZKEAxVQZZE...

They sell those kinds of bags here too, but these are the ones that a lot of people in this thread are talking about

https://www.northjersey.com/gcdn/presto/2019/06/07/PNJM/74a3...

Is this something you are proud of?

Suggestion - reuse them.

Exact same thing here. I reused the thin plastic bags as trash can liners. And I use the new, thicker ones, the same way. I'm contributing exactly the same number of bags back into the environment, they just have a whole lot more plastic in each bag.

> the idea that they’re going to be buying these new bags ever other trip to the store because they’re piling up in a room at home for years is hard for me to believe.

One of the things that pushed me away from using Instacart was that they'd always bring groceries in the heavyweight bags.

I reuse them now that I stopped using Instacart, but I certainly collected a whole pile of them.

Super anecdotal but when i first moved to Austin Tx and went to a Walmart, they told me i had to pay for plastic or paper bags. I was completely thrown off and the cashier told me they did a "ban" on plastic bags, and that many people buy the "tougher" plastic bags and resuse them.

A week or so later i had bought resuable bags, like 2-3, and would always leave them in my car. It became 2nd nature to me almost instantly. Since them I've always used reusable tote bags until they break. I even have one from a party i threw more than 6 years ago that belonged to someone esle lol

Ive since move back home to a city that has no plastic ban and im literally the only person who brings tote bags into stores. The only downside now is i can sometimes look sketch as hell but yea idc i support resuable bags hopefully more people can minimize their plastic footprint in plastic bags or other ways

I had a great time at the party you threw but I really need my bag back. you keep ignoring my calls

Now that I got used to reusable bag, touching plastic ones feels disgusting

If I’m driving in my car, no problem. But I often go to the store by foot from somewhere else and am unprepared. The disposable bags are only like 8 cents anyways.

In the UK, Waitrose sell a re-usable bag or £1 ($1.25). It's a good quality bag and you're not going to throw it away.

Not sure on the actual data but other grocery stores have gradually increased the price of re-usable bags to the point where they are cost enough to make you think twice about paying for them.

Seeing people awkwardly carrying random items back home without a bag is not uncommon.

I do reuse those but not all that many times.

I do still buy a lot of bags and I sometimes do not have one on me.

https://i.imgur.com/GKMjP7p.jpg

Maybe I’m an outlier but I have another 3-4 of these bags of bags at home with reusable bags. Most people I talk to have the same.

I do refill my car with them occasionally, but I either forget to bring them or do grocery shopping at unanticipated times and don’t have a bag with me.

They do pile up though even if you use them. I've never purposely purchased one of these bags, but have acquired way too many of them just from getting deliveries or picking up things I order in advance. I've disposed of so many of them after only a single use because I don't have room and will never use them.

On top of that, I've made the problem even worse because they are just horribly bulky to carry around if you aren't driving to the places you shop. Due to this bulk I went out and purchased some nice thin nylon bags that are easily pocketable so I actually use them. But they came in a package of like 30 when I've needed maybe 5 of them including the ones I've given to people.

My reply will probably be lost in all the comments, but when they banned plastic bags here, many stores (Target, Safeway etc) introduced fairly thick plastic bags that they sell for 10c. The way they get around it is they label them as "reusable" - because they're quite sturdy/thick.

But other than being thicker and stiffer, they look just like the old plastic bags.

Most people I know don't know they're reusable (and probably don't care). So they use them as single use bags. It's only 10 cents.

Textbook case of unintended consequence of regulation.

Here's an example from WinCo:

https://peopleinparks.com/2019/02/07/dear-reusable-winco-bag...

> Though intended to be reused many times, the report says 90% of the new reusable bags are used a mere two or three times. So they are piling up in landfills and homes. Think of your own behavior in misplacing bags around the house or forgetting to bring them when heading out for groceries.

I have a hard time believing it's 90%. Seriously?

They aren't that cheap and it's easy to keep track of them.

People aren't buying new reusable bags because they lost them. They're buying because they went to a store and forgot to bring a bag, and therefore forced to buy a "reusable" bag, even though they already have 10 at home.

You learn how to avoid that after it happens a couple times.

Many don’t. Also, even if it’s only one in 10 times that you forget, it’s still much worse for the environment than using paper bags

> They aren't that cheap and it's easy to keep track of them.

I think some folks may be thinking of different types of reusable bags. Where I live the "default" reusable bags at the grocery store, which are basically pretty similar to disposable but bigger with thicker plastic, are 29 cents. They do sell hardier bags that you can by that are like $1.25. But I think tons of folks throw away those $.29 bags after one or two uses.

Here, they're only 8 cents each -- not much incentive to treat them as reusable. Plus these "reusable" plastic bags are magnets for dirt and difficult to clean.

Exactly this.

Heavy duty plastic bags might work great if you always keep them in your car.

But I live in NYC where you carry everything by hand -- and people certainly aren't always carrying empty bags with them, the way you might if you had a trunk.

There are two supermarkets I go to where they don't have paper bags, but will charge you $0.25 to $0.45 for a heavy duty plastic bag (two sizes).

I'd say that about a third of the time the person in front of me buys between 1 to 3 of them.

So at least at those locations, the overall usage of plastic has gone way, way up compared to the old thin plastic bags.

There was just an article about how this happened in New Jersey as well.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/01/25/new-je...

Oh wow -- "New Jersey's plastic consumption triples after plastic bag ban enacted, study shows".

And most people drive there. In NYC it might be even worse than just tripling.

That article sources the same report commissioned by the plastic industry lobbying group, so take it with a large grain of salt.

...wait, wouldn't the plastic industry be delighted that people are using more plastic?

Indeed, which is why it is strange they are pushing this narrative that reusable is "bad", rather than keeping quite.

Maybe the narrative is obscuring something with statistics. If reusable doesn't really make plastic use go up, and that bag bans are effective in reducing plastic use, the industry opposing them has an incentive to make it look like they are ineffective. They're using the same tactics the tobacco industry used to counter the facts about cigarettes.

Yes, which is why they'd have a interest in publishing studies that make bag bans look useless or counterproductive, because they want to persuade people not to pass or to repeal bans.

But I live in NYC where you carry everything by hand

In the NYC I've been to (and large city I live in), everything is carried in a back pack, laptop bag, shoulder bag, etc.

That's what I meant by carrying by hand. In bags.

But a lot of people aren't stashing 2 or 4 reusable grocery bags in their laptop bag. And people often aren't carrying any bag at all.

Why would you ever unexpectedly need four bags in addition to your backpack or whatever? Or two for that matter.

When wouldn't you?

When I go grocery shopping, I'm buying probably 20 pounds of veggies, meat, milk, cheese, eggs, etc. along with bulky items like tortilla chips. If you use the woven plastic bags that you carry in your hands (like the old plastic bags but twice the size), you need 4 -- two for each hand.

There are also the jumbo super-heavy bags you get from e.g. FreshDirect where you only need one and you sling it over your shoulder, but those things are huge even folded up and I don't want to be carrying around one of those regularly. Folded, they're thicker than my laptop...

Do you not plan to go grocery shopping or do you always do it on the spur of the moment? I'm not sure what the issue is. If you need to pick up something small from the store on the way somewhere you can definetly get a small always carry on you bag that will fit in a pocket. When you're going to actual go grocery shopping just bring the bigger reusable bags. If the purpose of the journey is shopping it's not inconvenient to carry those bags and you'll have to carry the grocies back anyhow.

I get that it's less conventient to have to remember a bag but it's not some insurmountable task and it does seem to reduce the amount of plastic bags that get caught by the wind and blow around as trash.

Spur of the moment -- my schedule is always changing. I know I need to go sometime during the week but it's totally going to depend on when I happen to have free time on the way home, and I generally won't know that until I'm heading home. It might be Tuesday, or it might not be till Friday.

Always having a bunch of bags on me just isn't a thing, not when you walk and take the subway everywhere and don't want to be lugging around a backpack when you go out for drinks and have nowhere to put it when you're standing around a bar.

I'll take the big bag when it's on the weekend and I'm making a special trip to the supermarket, but there isn't always an opportunity for that either.

I live in NYC and I don't carry a bag when I go out, which is the problem. I don't think this is entirely uncommon.

Now that you understand the problem, you can address it :)

Yeah, at $0.50 I’m just going to buy a few and throw them away after. It’s not worth $1.50 of my time to shlep a bag to the grocery store. You’d have to make the bags a lot more expensive to influence primary behavior.

When I went to Germany for the first time in around 2009 they didn't have any bags at the grocery store checkout. You either carried you shopping in your arms or took one of the cardboard boxes they brought out from the deliveries, if there were some left.

You remember your own bags after that.

At that time in the UK free disposable bags were in full force. Although i do remember when i was young we used to take shopping home in cardboard boxes stacked at the front of the store in the same way as they had in Germany still.

> It’s not worth $1.50 of my time to shlep a bag to the grocery store.

We keep a few reusable bags in the way-back of the (cross-over) vehicle; it's now a habit to grab the bags as we're getting out of the car in the grocery-store parking lot. Then after we get home and put the groceries away, we return the bags to the way-back of the car before closing the garage door.

So it's not a big deal.

There are a number of bag that pack down to self enclosed things smaller than a phone. When I lived in Chicago, and rarely drove anywhere, I had two of them in my coat pocket.

Summer time I was always biking anyway, and used my backpack.

> There are a number of bag that pack down to self enclosed things smaller than a phone.

Are the bags of a reasonable size when expanded? Can you please link me? I've never found anything both big enough to be useful and small enough to keep in my pants pocket at all times.

Ijust linked above. I never used these specifically, but similar. Plenty big enough (definitely better for carrying things than disposable plastic bags)

https://www.ulsterweavers.com/collections/roll-up-bags

Those are too bulky unfortunately. If I walked around with one of those in my pants pocket, it would look like... well, you know what.

These are the type I use:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Zuimei-Reusable-Waterproof-Lightwei...

They fold flat and wouldn't cause much bother in a pocket but I personally don't like anything at all in my pockets. I keep them in my satchel and they are unnoticeable in one of those flat pouch sections that are pretty useless for anything even as slim as a wallet or phone.

They won't last forever but good for a few years so far. They have survived when I have stocked up on canned goods.

Why doesn't NYC have paper bags?

Some stores in NYC do, but it's up to the store.

In my experience, higher-end national chains offer paper bags for $0.05 each (Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, etc.) and don't sell the $0.50 plastic ones at checkout, while the local chains (FoodTown, Associated, etc.) only sell the plastic ones and don't offer paper.

I have no idea why.

Couldn't imagine buying a damned plastic bag every single time I went shopping for groceries. I've been using the same fabric bags for 15 years. It is such stupidity, being to lazy to pack a bag, that humanity wastes resources on.

>It is such stupidity, being to lazy to pack a bag, that humanity wastes resources on.

It's spending resources for convenience. It's not fundamentally different than buying coffee at starbucks (therefore necessitating a plastic lined paper cup).

Both can be true. Either way, both are the reasons why we are where we are with regard to the climate.

you can bring a reusable cup to Starbucks and they will fill it for you, this is not anything new

What percentage of people do you think actually do this?

wow where'd those goalposts just go? I was over here, at "buying at Starbucks *necessitates* (OP's term) using a plastic lined, paper cup". Which is false.

The OP (who was not me) should not have said "necessitates". However, I don't think the distinction is significant given how few Starbucks customers use reusable cups.

until California (it's always California) bans paper cups.

It’s convenience. People are paying a $1.50 surcharge to avoid the advance planning. That’s a no-brainer.

why would you cite a "study" that's commissioned by an industry trade group where their entire purpose for existing and for which they are paid millions of dollars is to ensure that plastic bags are not banned?

oh right, it's odd numbered days that HN is all "There's a reproducibility crisis! 85% of studies are complete garbage!" this is an even numbered day, HN is all "this study done by a fully biased source that's by definition a conflict of interest is fully iron clad and irrefutable!"

know your days on HN when each version of reality is in effect!

I have 3 Whole Foods reusable bags I’ve been using for over 15 years. I just don’t believe people are using these only 3 times and throwing them away.

If you go Whole Foods and watch a checkout station, what percent of purchases will reuse a bag vs buy a bag. I think the ratio of reuse:buy will be less than 3:1.

I've thrown away a ton of polypropylene bags because stuff leaked or you just accumulate too many.

Those bags are so thick that throwing away one is like throwing away 500 of the other super thin plastic bags. There's no way the equation makes sense for most people no matter how much we want to believe it.

You throw them because something leaked. Why not clean it with a cloth?

I've used the same 3 long lasting plastic bags for the weekly shop for around 4 years now. I take a couple of thinner ones I reuse when just going to get a few things. Ive had some of those for years as well.

I'm in the UK, we went to Canada last year. It was crazy how much disposable plastic i saw walking out the doors of Costco and other large grocery stores. Also, Costco put milk in a plastic bag in Canada! Why not a rigid plastic container that can be recycled?

> Why not clean it with a cloth?

How much does it cost to clean the cloth? How much time and effort relative to the cost of the bag?

This is why targeting specific products to reduce consumption is stupid. Just hit all fossil fuels with higher and higher taxes if you want less fossil fuel consumption. Or all products an externalities tax if you want less waste.

They can just get nasty though.

When the inside has gotten coated with sticky chicken salmonella juices because of a leaking package, and the bottom has gross dirt from sitting on the sidewalk and subway, and the bag is made of a woven plastic so that the juices and dirt seep in...

...it's entirely understandable that you just trash it rather than attempt to clean it. This is what you carry food and fresh produce in, after all.

Sure if it is horrible it might be necessary, if warm water and disinfectant spray don't sort it out. We have not had our grocery shopping leak that badly that I can remember.

It really depends on the supermarket. If they sell the expensive chicken that comes sealed in rigid plastic from the "manufacturer", it doesn't leak. But that's double the price. When you're buying the normal-priced chicken that the supermarket apportions out into those yellow styrofoam trays that they then seal in plastic themselves... ugh. Chicken juice everywhere.

I see, meat packaging is different in the UK. Styrofoam trays are not used in any major stores, they all use the same rigid sealed containers, even the cheap options.

Butchers cutting meat for you is much less common in store now, those that do have a butchers counter wrap it in a plastic bag which seals it pretty well. Small independent shops might do it differently.

I think in general those styrofoam trays are not used much because they can't be recycled. You still find them used by some takeaway food places though.

Funny, in the US it's the opposite. Styrofoam still used for store-prepackaged meat, but I don't think I've seen it used for takeout in over a decade.

Because cleaning it is a PITA and I've accumulated dozens of them when I went shopping and didn't have a bag/didn't have enough bags and was forced to buy another heavy "reusable forever" bag because the lighter options were either banned or removed to appear more green.

I don't think you should throw away polypropylene bags because they got a little dirty. They're easily washable.

That said, the main benefit of these heavier bags is that they tend not to blow out of dumpsters and landfills in the wind, the way thin single-use plastic bags do. A bit of plastic in a landfill isn't great, but entire forests and waterways choked with plastic bags is vastly worse. E.g.,: https://www.frontiersman.com/opinions/spectrum-plastic-bags-...

A few quick searches suggested that only silicone snack bags are dishwasher safe.

Why would you wash bags in a dishwasher? Put them in the clothes washing machine on cold. Don't put them in the dryer.

There's no way the average person is washing their grocery bags in the clothes washer.

Sounds like that could coat your washer with microplastics that might end up in your clothes and against your skin all day. That may not be the best idea.

Pretty much any synthetic fabric, which includes most fitness wear, is going to fill your laundry and washer with microplastics. However the real problem occurs in the dryer, which heats the stuff and produces dust. Running some relatively solid plastic bags through a washer (only) is probably 999 on a list of 1000 things to worry about regarding microplastics in your home.

As far as what “the average person will do,” I’ve never personally had a hygiene problem with reusable plastic bags that couldn’t be solved with a sponge or a Lysol wipe in 30 seconds. But if the OP is really suffering with large numbers of dirty bags, a gentle wash with detergent is the simplest and most effective answer. At a certain point, it feels like this discussion is more about preferences re: reusable bags and less about trying to solve problems.

That "study" was commissioned by a trade group whose sole purpose is to lobby against plastic bag bans, and whose members consist of entities who have a direct profit motive in disposable plastic bag sales.

This is, almost literally, equivalent to citing a press release by Big Oil as evidence against anthropogenic climate change.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Recyclable_Plastic_Ba...

That's reason to be suspicious, but not a reason to dismiss it outright. Trials for covid vaccines were done by the manufacturers, who certainly have a profit motive in claiming they're safe and effective. Do you dismiss those trials for similar reasons?

Is there an equivalent of the FDA for plastic bags?

> Trials for covid vaccines were done by the manufacturers, who certainly have a profit motive in claiming they're safe and effective. Do you dismiss those trials for similar reasons?

One is a set of clinical trials, conducted with prepublished scientific methodology peer reviewed, independently evaluated by a regulatory agency, and subsequently independently studied by independent researchers. The other is a self-published press release.

Anyone who tries to draw an equivalence between the two either has no idea how the scientific method actually works, or is simply not arguing in good faith.

This is about as biased a report as one can get! An opinion piece by a Rupert Murdoch editorial staff citing a threatened industry conducting research on itself.

I’m highly skeptical of the idea that people are throwing away their reusable bags after 2-3 uses.

They’re also hand-waving away the concept of alternative lower carbon disposable materials, because it’s a plastic bag industry association.

"the report says 90% of the new reusable bags are used a mere two or three times."

I'm deeply skeptical of this. Who buys a reusable bag then tosses it? I've only ever thrown away one or two that got rips.

I'm not skeptical at all. There are a lot of reusable bags like this, https://www.heb.com/product-detail/h-e-b-reduce-your-boot-pr..., which cost about a quarter (so not something that would really affect people's saving behavior).

My guess is it's something like that famous "daycare late fee" study that was widely discussed after Freakonomics reported on it, https://freakonomics.com/2013/10/what-makes-people-do-what-t.... Essentially, the fee wasn't high enough to cause parents to need to be on time, instead the fee was more like something to pay off their guilt, so adding the fee caused more lateness in parental pickups. I.e. before there was a late fee, parents would feel somewhat guilty if they were late. After the late fee, they didn't feel bad - after all, they were basically paying to be late.

My suspicion with these kinds of bags, which are very cheap and honestly feel just a bit sturdier than disposable baggs, is that the same dynamic is at play. People feel like "I'm a good environmentalist for reusing this bag once or twice" and then toss them.

Me. I've tried again and again, but they all wind up in a pile at home. I forget to empty them and take them. They're never in the car when I need them.

I probably have had twenty to thirty reusable bags. Most of them get thrown away.

Not everyone is built the same way. I think this is hard/impossible for people with ADHD to manage.

FWIW, I have ADHD, and once I amassed like 30 of these things, I kept as many as possible stuffed inside one of them in my car. Then, I had like 30 opportunities between then and when I ran out to remember to bring all my bags to the car again. It worked out well. Now my grocery store has a give-a-bag, take-a-bag stand which is even better.

The scenario is this: you show up to the grocery store and you don’t have a reusable bag today. Maybe you forgot to re-stash it in your car after bringing in groceries last time, maybe you walked there and don’t carry a bag on you.

If you live in a state with a single-use bag ban, your options are: buy a reusable bag for 50 cents, or travel 15 mins round trip to grab one of your bags.

Once you get home, you note that you already have a dozen reusable bags so you throw it away and stash one of your existing ones for next time.

I use reusable bags a lot, and did even before single-use ones were taxed, but maybe 5% of the time, I show up to the grocery store having forgotten one. I’m almost certain if I were in a state with a single-use ban my footprint would be higher (especially because I normally use paper bags when I forget, which have a negligible environmental impact).

IMO, the entire ban was a gift to the plastics industry. I’m sure the margins on these reusable bags are much higher.

I live in CA where we have a ban on single-use plastic bags. We still have single-use paper bags. So your footprint would be the same here, not higher.

That makes sense and I’d support that. In New York and New Jersey all single-use bags are banned and I’m almost positive it’s counterproductive. Especially in NYC where many people aren’t using cars to grocery shop and can’t keep a bag stashed

Yikes. I occasionally forget bags, and appreciate that we can get paper bags here for 20-25 cents. I also reuse those paper bags once or twice, and then use them for collecting compost on my countertop, and then throw the whole bag in the big city compost bin. This system means I don't need to clean or line a proper countertop compost container.

We absolutely should price reusable bags higher then.

If I forget my bags and I don't have many groceries I'll just not use bags at all. Otherwise I'll use paper, which isn't great but it's not adding to plastic trash.

Also plastic bags are generally around a $1. I'm not throwing those away, economic reasons and on principle.

The plastic bags in places like NYC are usually 25-50 cents. It’s stupid to force those on people when paper bags exist and barely have an effect on the environment. Also, half the grocery stores in the US only stock things like spinach in plastic containers or bags. There’s much lower hanging fruit than banning single-use paper bags.

I think one thing that may be misunderstood is that many of these chains have "reusable" bags that are very hefty plastic bags but are not the very durable reusable bags made of cloth/canvas or materials, the ones which are basically tote bags. I think the people who buy these more expensive bags tend to use them more than 3 times. But the ones that cost 99 cents at the register end up getting repurchased everytime someone forgets their bags. It took me a while to get into the habit and I know I have about 60 of those accumulated from the last 10 years of occasionally forgetting them. The bags I do reuse tend to get used many many times, but the rest might get used just once, because I already have a pile of them. If i remember my bags, I take the nice ones. If I forget, I have to buy new hefty "reusable" bags.

This seems like a setup to counter the bag bans by the plastic industry.

It’s not like paper bags, which are incredibly compostable and recyclable, didn’t exist before this entire plastic nonsense came to fruition. And they are readily available, domestically produced and work great.

All we need are better handles because they aren’t great for carrying long distances and break catastrophically instead of stretching like plastic. Not great.

> This seems like a setup to counter the bag bans by the plastic industry.

The "study" cited was literally conducted and written by the plastic industry, so that's exactly what it is.

> Commissioned by the American Recyclable Plastic Bag Alliance

AKA the lobbying group for plastic bag manufacturers, a group whose entire purpose is opposing plastic bag bans, quoted by the WSJ editorial board.

This is about as bad a source as one could possibly imagine.

This is an interesting attempt by the industry most affected by the bans[1] to reframe the problem. Plastic bag bans address the nature of the system by applying a systemic solution, taking the responsibility off the individual. Here we see the industry lobbying group trying to reframe it to put the responsibility – fault, really – back on the individual. The report more-or-less is saying that the systemic solution doesn't work because individuals are irresponsible. The WSJ editorial doesn't even try to hid its bias. "Think of your own behavior", it says.

1 The ARPBA is connected to the Society of the Plastics Industry, an industry trade group.

That all makes sense to me, but I'd just add that another issue not discussed there is litter. I used to live downtown by a big grocery store, and close to the store there was a creek that ran by. Before the bag ban there were always tons of plastic grocery bags in the creek and along its banks. After the ban, I'm not saying the creek was pristine (it is an urban creek in a major American city, after all), but there was way, way less plastic bag litter after the ban, and it made the walkway that ran alongside the creek much nicer.

Sounds like a failure of not enforcing a broken windows policy.

Never a fan of suggested "solutions" that are laughably implausible. Even if you support public canings for everyone ever caught dropping a plastic bag, can we not pretend that something like that could ever be implemented in the Western world? Plastic bag bans can.

>can we not pretend that something like that could ever be implemented in the Western world?

it says a lot that we simply dismiss "don't break stuff" as am impossibility in the western world. Wonder what the Easter world does so differently.

I was referring to a legal solution to plastic bag littering, which is what "broken windows theory" refers to.

The differences in littering in, say, Japan, have nothing to do with legal differences, because they're cultural. Cultures differ, and they have benefits and downsides. Trying to implement a legal solution to bag littering in the US would work about as well as trying to implement a legal solution in India to get people to stay within their lane when they drive.

A lot of times litter is not from littering. A home trash can's lid blows open in a strong wind and litter flies out. Trash escapes from an urban trash can. Trash flies out of the back of a garbage truck, etc.

The biggest cause in my neighborhood is the pickup process itself: the machine lifts the can in the air, turns it upside down, shakes it, and hopes that it all makes it into the truck.

A lot of smaller stuff doesn't make it in, especially disposable plastic bags, which are basically little parachutes.

So, maybe Ogden, Utah's cleanliness was due to bear-proof garbage containers?

How do cities in Japan avoid these problems?

The people and culture.

How does that help if a trash can lid gets blown off?

I don't know, I haven't spent much time there and have only visited 3 major cities. But in each it was evident that they prioritize cleanliness and order, so I might guess that they generally use cans with better lids.

At around 9pm in downtown Tokyo I stopped to watch a clean up crew scrubbing something of the sidewalk. So perhaps it's partly due to where their tax money goes.

To be clear, I asked this question because I was considering the claim "a lot of times litter is not from littering." It occurred to me that, if this were true, you would expect culture to have less of an effect on the amount of litter in a particular city.

I suppose tax dollars and trash can technology would also be a plausible explanation, but it leaves me less convinced.

Because Japan just has less trash can lids to blow off.

https://livejapan.com/en/in-tokyo/in-pref-tokyo/in-shibuya/a...

And as you see with the design of their cans they aren't just holes with some plastic top loosely strewn on it.

But yes, I'd chalk up a society used to carrying their trash until they find a sparsely spaced trash can "culture".

fewer outdoor trash cans. People carry trash home or e.g. to a storefront with an public indoor trash.

The D Foundation had our annual conference a few years ago in Ogden, Utah. There was something unusual about the city, something it took me a while to figure out.

There was an almost complete lack of litter.

I don't know how the city did it, but I was impressed, and it made the urban landscape much nicer.

I bought rather large plastic totes. Way better than bags. Not as easy to store, mind you, but that’s actually beneficial cause it makes me bring them back out to the car. Forgetting my reusable bags was a major problem.

And no one was surprised.

Still a wide success for the Environmental Theater: focus all attention on plastic bags (why so specific? plastic is used in way, way too many things already), which is used by consumers. It doesn’t matter if the use of plastic is reduced.

Just spin the wheels and point fingers. It’s much simpler than solving environmental problems.

Along those lines: instead of banning plastic bags, or bottles, or straws, or whatever, why not simply ban plastic altogether? People managed to do without until the 1950s. Is there any use case for which there are no alternatives?

That's very interesting finding. I can see how people buy the reusable bags more frequently than might be originally though. I often forget that I brought my bags in from my car and have to mentally remember to keep a couple in my trunk for the times when I'm out shopping. To be honest, because I have a car, when I forget, I just forgo the bag entirely and load everything in my trunk anyways.

I've settled on using the catering bags from Panera because they

- come with catering orders anyway

- are incredibly heavy duty, I've used them dozens of times and they still are in great shape

- are very large

- usually just get trashed after the lunch

My workplace caters lunches once a week or so, and so there's been plenty of bags leftover at the end so...

edit a quick look on ebay shows that there's a secondary market for the bags where they go for around $10 each.

> American Recyclable Plastic Bag Alliance

This is a lobby group. Their goal is to produce and sell as much plastic as they can. The more people reuse plastic bags, the less money they make. Their argument is worth as much as that of the tobacco lobby. That doesn’t mean they’re wrong, just that they sure won’t quote any ideas or statistics in favour of reuse.

Don’t forget, folks: “recyclable” is an extremely low bar. Most things are recyclable. But many recyclable products are still so expensive (and energy-hungry) to actually recycle that the term is borderline meaningless.

Reuse trumps recyclable by a wide margin and anybody telling you otherwise is either working in a very narrow set of industries (eg paper) or malicious.

Lobbying groups are important. Great work was done by the National Frozen Pizza Institute to educate us all on the health benefits of eating frozen pizza => https://web.archive.org/web/20120704101823/http://www.frozen...

Very healthy except for 6-8th graders, you mean

Can we get to the fact without first pointing out they are your dislike? This is a very bad argument and gets you no where.

In this case, which part of the statement in the above claim is not true?

Pointing out that research was paid for by an organization that has an inherent conflict of interest is an extremely valid argument. It doesn't necessarily mean that the research was biased or shoddy, but it absolutely should cause us to take their conclusions with a healthy helping of salt.

You will still need to point out the actual ignored facts or false claim to substantiate the bias claim, otherwise it is an extremely cheap argument that everyone else could use the same argument as most people represent some interest group.

It's not really about the claim being "true" or "untrue". It's about being clear from the outset, based on their obvious conflicts of interests, that this organization is only going to report on study outcomes that benefit their perspective, even if they are true. For example, given all the evidence I've seen on this topic, I believe all of the following are highly likely to be true:

1. Disposable plastic bag bans significantly reduce plastic bag litter and its effects on urban quality of life and the environment.

2. Most reusable plastics bags are only used once or few times before they are discarded.

3. Given #2, the amount of fossil fuels used to produce the reusable bags makes them a net negative in terms of greenhouse gas emissions.

The basic problem with all discourse these days is that depending on your "side", you only talk about the items that benefit your viewpoint. American Recyclable Plastic Bag Alliance only talks about #2 and #3. At least the group referenced in the original article agrees that the current situation leads to more plastic being generated and should be corrected:

“Grocery stores, restaurants and retail shops should not be permitted to distribute plastic film bags of any thickness at checkout. Stores should be required to charge a fee of at least 10 cents for single-use paper bags. A 10-cent paper bag fee will limit the expected increase in paper bag use after a bag ban is imposed and may even reduce paper bag consumption altogether.”

It doesn’t matter nearly as much as you think where they are coming from as long as yourself follows on logic and facts. Almost every one in such a discussion is biased. You can still point out what they ignored or misled than merely stating a universal argument when you disagree.

The point isn't that the original commenter doesn't like them, it's that this is a lobbying group. As such, they have no credibility on this topic. So, in any discussion involving them, everything they say needs to be looked at as a ploy in support of their agenda, because it is their job to do that. To treat their word the same as anyone else's on this topic would be very stupid.

If I remember correctly, the effects of that study were driven by grocery delivery. People would have the bags pile up due to a lack of a bag-return process. (Please double check, though.)

>Though intended to be reused many times, the report says 90% of the new reusable bags are used a mere two or three times.

This is easily fixed. I know because I fixed myself and if I can change this behavior anyone can.

I've been using the same three cloth bags to carry my groceries once per week for over ten years.

That's, at a bare minimum (because they hold more), 1,560 plastic bags not used.

How does the carbon carbon footprint and greenhouse gas emissions of 1,560 plastic bags compare to the three "Earthwise EXTRA LARGE Grocery Bag Beach Shopping Tote HEAVY DUTY 12 oz Cotton Canvas Multi Purpose 20" x 14" PROUDLY MADE IN THE USA (Natural)" that I purchased for $13.99 for in 2012?

Yes, it took me a while to get in the habit of using them. A frustratingly long time. But it happened.

My county recently banned ALL plastic bags so for the occasional drug store or gas station purchase that used to come in a plastic bag I purchased a packable tote that stuffs down to the size of a pack of playing cards and keep it in my center console of my car.

That habit was established instantly.

I know for an unassailable and irrefutable fact that bans work because I am a volunteer watershed steward. It is my job to poke around storm drains and shorelines in my little section of the Chesapeake Bay to make sure they are clean. Less than 90 days (four big cleanup pushes per year) after a styrofoam ban was enacted several years ago the amount of styrofoam I was personally responsible for picking up off the shoreline plummeted from "a depressingly large shit-ton" down to almost nothing.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/grocery-bag-environmental...

Single use plastic may be more friendly environmentally.

New York banned plastic bags at grocery store checkouts a few years ago, at least in the area I live.

I don't think it did that much because they didn't ban plastic bags in the fruit and vegetable section where you can peel bags off from a roll. They also require you to individually bag each fruit or vegetable type at most grocery stores I've seen. They're always free too.

That means if you buy a few apples, oranges, avocados, cucumbers and tomatoes you're using 5 plastic bags of substantial size. If you get fresh romaine lettuce or something bushy they have plastic bags that are bigger than the old plastic bags they used to provide at checkout.

You're also not limited to fruits and vegetables. Some people will put bread and other lighter items in these plastic bags in case they didn't bring a bag of their own into the store and have a couple of things to carry out but don't want to use a cart.

The only thing the ban did was to get most grocery shoppers to bring their own bags to carry or cart your items out at checkout. In this case, sure you saved a number of bags no question about it, but in the grand scheme of things I don't think it solved much.

Would most of that not have all happened before, and then those plastic produce bags would have been put into plastic grocery bags at checkout?

The same process for buying fruits and vegetables occurred before and after the ban.

It really depends on how you shopped:

Example 1: You buy 5 assorted fruits and vegetables types and have 5 plastic bags with you at checkout. I can't speak for everyone but I'd typically walk out of the store with these bags in my hand because the bags are usually thick enough to not break. I wouldn't use another bag to bag all of the bags because I generally only buy 2-3 of each type at a time.

Example 2: You make a decent grocery run (fruits, vegetables, bread, meats, snacks, drinks, whatever) where you'd probably have 4-5 plastic bags before checkout and then another 4-5 bigger and thicker plastic bags (pre-ban bags) to hold everything at checkout.

In example 2's case you're saving a number of plastic bags with the ban but example 1 isn't or even if you got 1 additional bag to carry everything out you're talking about 5 bags vs 6 here which isn't that big of an impact.

Not all places used plastic bags too. Costco never had bags and some places have paper bags although I rarely see places with paper bags in my area.

When the ban hit in my area the grocery store started to sell their own bags which are pretty robust, these bags will outlive all of us.

In the UK, we don't have those rolls near produce any more. Instead you would be expected to buy a reusable net bag.

Once forced to buy or carry bags, you quickly realise you don't actually need to keep everything in it's own little baggy fiefdom. Nothing bad happens if an onion touches a cucumber! You can just put loose produce in a basket, weigh it with it's friends, and put it into a reusable shopping bag.

I've been using cloth bags for decades, but in 2020 I switched to grocery pickup rather than going into the store myself. This forces the use of plastic bags -- no amount of pleading will allow any other option.

It's a giant step backwards.

My grocery delivery uses exclusively paper bags (and biodegradable compost bags for chemicals/cleaning materials). Although I mostly still go to the store (and bring one of the many paper bags I received)

This is a joke. I go to my store and now they give you beefier “reusable” plastic bags. There is many times more plastic in these bags than the old ones.

The point is that you aren't reusing them. Comments like this are after they banned people smoking indoors, complaining "all this did was make us walk outside, which is a huge waste of time."

The point is to change behavior. If you're choosing not to change your behavior, that's fine. Most people are changing their behavior.

I’ve always preferred paper, and it’s a carbon sink. Instead of a plastic ban, I’d like to know my paper bags are coming from a sustainable logging operation or where the forest is being protected from fire by targeted logging operations.

Do you have a source on it being a net carbon sink? I'm skeptical bc there's a lot more effort to make and distribute paper bags than cutting down a tree

Plastic is about the best carbon sink you could imagine, locks up those Cs for hundreds of years, unless it gets combusted.

I can imagine a better carbon sink: not extracting the carbon to begin with.

Those Cs were already locked up.

Maybe if you're only looking at the environmental impact angle. From a utility angle paper bags don't handle moisture well, the handles aren't as strong, and are more bulky than plastic bags.

Paper is only a carbon sink until it breaks down.

Plastic bags bans work at banning plastic bags, granted. But banning plastic bags is not an end to itself, and is pointless if the end result is not reduced plastic pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Ideally, those reductions would be commensurate with the effort involved in the ban, compared to other actions you could take with the same costs. I note this article doesn't say anything about the actual impact. It's consistent with the hypothesis that we banned plastic bags as a token gesture, because we mistake movement for progress, and now we're patting ourselves on the back while nothing is actually improved.

Wow, for an HN comments section, this feels weird. How can people be so annoyed of a plastic straw / bag ban? It is a minor inconvenience. Yes, those environmental rules continue to ban stuff we liked, and I get it, but it is not like we have much of a choice? This stuff is everywhere, including inside our bodies. Let's try to reduce it at least a little.

Nobody would care, except that conservative politicians latched onto it as fuel for the culture war machine. It's an emotional response based on imagined grievance and retroactively justified via motivated reasoning.

> Wow, for an HN comments section, this feels weird. How can people be so annoyed of a plastic straw / bag ban? It is a minor inconvenience.

HN hates minor inconveniences when we feel they're unjustified. Look at how many complaints we make about e.g. password rotation policies. No, it's not hard to rotate your password, but it's infuriating because it's a stupid counterproductive rule.

Two puzzling things to me having read most of the comments: -‘It’s just a minor inconvenience/ why do you care so much?/…’ ~it’s just manipulation and social shaming ritual with questionable outcomes, that we’re going to eventually ramp up for your own good. It’s meant to be annoying so you do what we want and when you get used to it we’re going to make it painful. Why are you annoyed?

And is it so hard to think: maybe there a lot of nudging going on in all directions and someone fed up with ‘one minor thing’ might have had their camels back broken?

One of my aunties goes neurotic over bags, and every other ‘issue’, so much stress brought to her life trying to do the right thing. ‘It’s just a…’ I don’t read all my memos but I think nudging is everywhere, thousands of little ‘it’s just a little’s’. She’s much like a left version of the Fox News watcher trope.

It’d be like trying to follow all the laws, surely impossible, at least a huge strain. Except it’s cultural shaming, largely manufactured, which makes it worse.

Which is all to say: how can it be sincere: we want to annoy you into change, and cannot perceive that you won’t smile and thank us while we’re doing it. You must answer for your insolence.

Second is the plastic industry having skin in the game: it hardly seems surprising, wouldnt we also expect the yes plastic ban studies to be from environmental/other industry? I see less plastic bags, therefore anything not supporting must be industry lies. Like, huh?

A local news story had a ‘speeding’ cyclist run over and kill an old ladies dog on a walk way. So weird, comments were like bike and cars, cept bikes comments were saying car things and ped comments were saying bike things. So many things are just say what ever fits for now. But we’re just meant to go with it.

Straw anecdote: when the ban came into place, walking past a skip (big dumpster?) at work full of unused plastic straw, easily 50 cartons, making way for the new paper ones. The worlds funny.

That’s what I’ve been thinking about, sorry for dumping it under your comment.

Ah, that's a thing I hear in Germany aswell. "they..." Who is they? It is a very dangerous narrative, somehow implying that a small minority controls everything and its only purpose is to undermine "our" freedom. Even worse, everything that is annoying / dangerous / anti freedom is the result of this one group "they". What a big pile of BS. Yes lobbies exists, but it is not a single entity. Yes, political parties exists but they do not have absolute power. All these annoying things are the result of several parties and lobbies arguing and finding compromise. There is no they. It is the outcome of thousands of people thinking.

The straw anecdote is flawed. It is a one time transition. Why do you not take the plastic straws (which I guess are still sealed) out of the dumpster? We did the same thing. We are using those during private parties since years. When guests come to me asking why we are still using these, the awnser is to save the environment ;).

> Yes lobbies exists, but it is not a single entity. Yes, political parties exists but they do not have absolute power. All these annoying things are the result of several parties and lobbies arguing and finding compromise. There is no they. It is the outcome of thousands of people thinking.

Thousands is still a very small number of people to control a country. Yes there are multiple parties and multiple lobbyists. But they're largely from the same handful of cities, the same social class, and representing that class' interests. Politics really has become a lot more centralised, placing a lot more power in the hands of a few people, not necessarily for nefarious reasons (or at least, not any more nefarious than the normal human desire for power), but nevertheless something that urgently needs to be fought against.

Tbh I think ‘they’ can still be used to describe what you say. I don’t mean it as a far out thing, just an abstraction. AFAI figure, there’s lot of different people doing lots of different things for lots of different reasons. Rather than the dangerous narrative, is it ok to word it as more like: there are ways to control/direct society, a lot of them have been figured out, various people use them, to various effect. Is that kind of they ok?

For example, there exists people that use addictive strategies such as by casinos to hook people into their app. Leaving at that level of abstraction I feel as though that group can be a ‘they’. It just feels like an easy way to reference a group as long as I’m sincerely not trying to pull a fast one on anyone… which I hope I’m not :s

I would have liked to have taken home the broken escalator too, or the lifetimes of toner from the xerox-Kyocera change, but I worry about becoming a horder always thinking ‘well it’d be a waste to throw it away.’ Poverty trauma I heard it’s called.

I hope the straw thing wasn’t flawed, not as in ‘so why bother’, coz yeah it was a one off thing, more like the priority was to print off a bunch of advertising to get on the straw change goodwill bandwagon. It was just one of those funny such is life moments, walking past all the plastic core-flute signs about doing what’s right for the environment knowing there’s a million straws in the bin out the back you know?

This is an incredibly disingenuous comment section, even for HN.

Bags in my area have always been at least double-use, first you bring groceries from store, and then you use the bag for collecting trash to take it outside. In places where plastic bags are banned, what do they use to collect the trash? Plastic trash bags?

I also read that you need to use a cotton bag between 7000 and 20000 times before it becomes even environmentally neutral depending on production technology. So is it really useful to ban plastic bags, maybe an improvement in technology is needed, some new polymer formula which decomposes faster but still cheap to produce?

I can’t believe what is ultimately slightly more than paragraph on the subject gained so many points in HN. The point is not to ban plastic bags but to limit pollution which has been largely unsuccessful when it comes to bag bans. Fabric and “multi-use” bags have to be used 100+ times to show any environmental benefit over regular plastic bags. Studies have shown that, the thicker bags people have to buy end up being used just a couple of times. So while yes, people are using less plastic bags, the environmental impact has either remained unchanged or gotten worse.

I suspect it’s more about cost savings than environmental concerns, but the grocery store we frequent doesn’t provide bags at all. However, you can take boxes from the pile they have set aside that usually contained produce originally. So, the boxes are used at least twice, and then we drop them into recycling. On top of that, I find the boxes more convenient to load and unload since it only takes 2 or 3 versus handling dozens of bags. Obviously this won’t work if you don’t have a car, or perhaps a cart, when you go grocery shopping.

Like others here have mentioned, I reused the grocery store thin bags for lining small bathroom trash cans or when scooping cat litter. Now I need to buy special trash bags instead so no environmental savings. I also have a ridiculous number of the reusable bags as I forget to bring them when going to the store sometimes, or end up stopping by the store unexpectedly.

One thing I never figured out was why they made the original bags so thin that in the end, the clerk needed to double-bag everything.

A lot of skepticism in the comments, including my own.

Instead, let me steelman this as having the goal of reducing litter, rather than reducing plastic. Viewed through that lens, this probably does have a beneficial impact. Even if the replacement bags take much more plastic to produce, are not recyclable, and are not reused much anyway - they are still less likely to blow around in the wind and accumulate on sidewalks, open spaces, rivers, oceans, etc.

The single use bag ban in California had a rather unfortunate loophole - stores can charge you 10 cents a bag for a “reusable” bag now which is really just a much thicker single use bag. No one really reuses them.

Why not just ban the manufacturer and sale of plastic shopping bags in general? There are plenty of cloth replacements and they are less likely to be discarded.

They really need to ban plastic drink bottles since those use a lot more material than your standard tissue thin plastic shopping bag. They could market this along the lines of... "you wouldn't drink wine out of a plastic bottle..."

I buy those plastic bags in bulk instead now. I use them as garbage bags, just as I used to do when I could get them with my groceries, and if I had too many, back then, I could bring them to the grocery store for recycling. They are perfectly sized for garbage.

The US has a unique problem in that major chains like Target only charge ~$0.10 per reusable bag. If that price were bumped up to something more reasonable, like $1, you can bet more people would actually bring their own bags.

My best guess is that this reduced litter, but increased actual plastic use (via increased plastic in 'reusable' plastic-weave bags, and increased use of dedicated garbage bags for trash).

Downtown, on a rainy day, I've witnessed the occasional disaster with someone taking home their fashion purchase in a paper bag only to have it disintegrate while crossing the road.

I think a lot of folks commenting here think these bans are an attempt to reduce plastic usage or CO2. The bags are a litter problem, and the bans solve it.

Note the complete absence of any mention of carbon footprint in the article. If the facts don't make your case look good, just ignore them I suppose.

I’m willing to bet that willingness to ban plastics and not dumping plastics into the ocean in the first place are highly correlated.

What needs to be banned is the packaging of most things we buy in stores.

We don't need to have pastas, cereals, coffee beans, etc already stored in tiny small plastic bags. We can go to the shops with our own containers and get them filled. The worse are the shops that sell vegetables in packaging? why oh why do they do that? Your tomatoes don't have to be separated from the celery or the leek, they can be carried happily together in your own bag.

You know, or not.

"This shift from plastic film to alternative bags resulted in a nearly 3x increase in plastic consumption for bags, which is not widely recycled."

https://www.freedoniagroup.com/press-releases/freedonia-repo...

Hilarious. Wait until people think critically about what solar panels and lithium ion batteries (for their "green" EVs and homes) demand has done to the environment.

Well? What’s it done?

The opposite of what it purports to do.

That study was paid for by a plastic industry trade group. Funny how their press release leaves out that detail.

In terms of cleaning up roadside litter in my area, I would anecdotally agree. But echoing the other comments, the alternative reusable bags I get mostly just wind up being shoved in the closet or thrown away when the handles inevitably rip on the 3rd use. At least the old style bags were waterproof enough double as handy trash can liners.

The design of handles is a shame for most of the cheaper reusable bags. Not intended to be strong at all.

one thing which doesn't seem to mentioned here is that paper bags are not a one-to-one replacement.

a plastic bag is a useful item that is used over and over again.

a paper bag is an awful noisy, loud and inflexible item that is immediately discarded after use. even people that would be willing to use them more than once (i am definitely not), cannot do that due to how easy they get torn.

so, instead of buying a handful plastic bags per year, i now have to buy hundreds of paper bags.

even accounting for improved recyclability, is it really a net-benefit if the amount of required items (paper vs plastic) increases for a factor of around 20 - 40?

Paper bags are much heavier than plastic, which means more CO2 emissions when you're shipping them to the stores.

All these complaints about laws banning these bags are kind of whiny considering how not a big deal this is. C'mon.

means nothing when literally EVERYTHING you buy comes in plastic containers. people jump up and down about a victory when it is like taking a teaspoon from the ocean. it means nothing, it's not a start and makes ZERO difference in the grand scheme of things. the only reason for it is to impose most taxes and regulations on the masses.

If as a society we can move away from plastics, the world will be better for it.

They are making more and more engine parts out of plastics which is going to drastically reduce the useful lifetime of cars.

https://www.assemblymag.com/articles/86440-plastics-under-th...

Between that and the subscription shenanigans, touchscreens for everything, and data spying I am not sure I ever want to buy a new car again.

This assumes avoiding plastic bags is an important goal in the first place.

Many of us don't agree with that at all.

It doesn't really matter if they work when they're ballot box poison for anyone who implements them. In western Canada there are large groups of people who are absolutely wildly outraged about plastic bag and cutlery bans. They're a constant refrain in the right wing rage farming ecosphere here, because you're exposed to the (very, very mild) negative effects of the ban almost daily, but never to the positive outcome. It's a very easy lever to pull if your goal is to paint any environmental or climate change action as pointless posturing, and it's being used as such.

Some people are just complete and utter snowflake softies. Having meltdowns over their plastic bags or whatever and then shouting “fuck your feelings” is the pinnacle of irony.

I think they're only ballot box poison in western Canada, which is not going to vote for anything other than conservative MPs regardless.

Having grown up in Western Canada, no one does more whinging and complaining than Albertans. Every little thing, from taxes to masks, is a huge imposition. But the whinging is then rationalized as "defending freedom".

Plus the added irony of having to put all your recyclables in a specific type of single use plastic bag for collection.

The back of my house looks (and smells, in the summer) like a recycling center. The thing that really pisses me off is that after all that work it all ends lumped together more often than not, and the only thing that is really valuable (metals) is quite frequently lost because there is no separate way to collect them.

In my childhood days everything got recycled. Glass bottles, metals, paper, clothing, vegetable matter (skins, off-cuts) and so on. People made a living going door to door to collect them. Single use plastic was absolutely unheard of.

So I don't know Canada but when the ban was first bought in in Scotland a lot of people, albeit still a minority, had similar views but within a year or two no one really cared.

I suspect that'd be the case here, but there's a cottage industry of social media rage farming to keep it at the top of mind.

I've just started importing my parents plastic bags from out of state, or doing more shopping across the state line.

Definitely not actually BUYING dog poop bags.

every time someone tries an intervention like this, it somehow always makes us worse off

My boomer father in law won’t shut up about reusable bags and how they are worse for the environment, and a bag ban is tyranny. It seemed to really amp up as of late.

So the solution to plastic bags, is heavier and sturdier plastic bags. Does anyone think this is a bit of a farce. I like the heavier bags, just feels bad to throw them out, since they keep piling up, I'll have to. My dog likes tearing them apart. I associate reusable bags with communism, since I literally had to use reusable bags living in a communist country. And I now associate their introduction with a parallel decline of living standards, and inflation in Canada. Much like I experienced in a communist country which my parents escaped from. This association is not just me, but many fellow Canadians equate the carbon tax with it as well. Since most likely the decline in affordability of life, people going hungry and cold will lead to voting people out that brought in these policies. Will the people that brought in these policies resolve to do away with democracy to keep them in place. It's something I'm not excited to see. So having a plan B to escape just like my parents did, would seem prudent at this point.

I associate re-usable bags with caring about not wasting things. You seem to value the ability to waste things. You do not seem to think it's worth preventing your dog from destroying your bags. You do not seem to exercise care to actually re-use the bags, since you say they are piling up in your home. If the standard of living is facing such a precipitous decline that you are potentially planning an escape, why would you casually throw away useful items, and continue to spend money on new items when you don't actual need to? What would you think of a person that leaves their car idling at all times and complains that they are oppressed by an increase in gas prices?

The bags are my property, I worked for them. The collectivists fail to understand this very important part. If you want to re-use yours, you're free to do so. Mandating me to do so, is opposite of personal freedom.

At this point in time, Canadians are getting taxed on taxes. If you fail to see that this is unsustainable, maybe you'll understand that for all the taxes you're paying, should you get sick, the government will more quickly offer to end you than to give you an MRI. In fact, they just passed a law that promises to jail for 10 years anyone that try's to dissuade you from letting them end you. So it has been my experience that the collectivists don't really care about human life, as much as they say they care. Collectivist utopias never are... So I am looking, like many fellow Canadians, for a second home, in case things deteriorate any further.

Personal freedom is weighed against the freedom of others. That is why you cannot dispose of your waste in a water reservoir that supplies drinking water. The life of any product has an impact on shared resources that your work has not earned. Policies that aim to protect these shared resources are a logical solution for people who care about their country and the people in it.

yes, but I already paid taxes for the recycling plant & the garbage dump, taxes on the oil that made the bag, the store I purchased the bag from, and I paid money for the bag.

At what point will the bag be finally mine, and I just be able to bag my groceries in peace ?

No really, what do you people want from me?

The more taxes I pay for things like this, the more I empower people that think like you, to just hire more ideologically alined people to fill government and academia positions. It's worse than a clergy take over.

This sounds great, but there’s just something about a shopping experience with plastic bags that just warms my heart. Life is a human experience, and localities shouldn’t legislate away all the fun.

I’m old enough to remember when, even outdated at the time, one would see people carry (or push, or pull) a basket between shops or stalls engaging with others. To me that was a better human experience than currently experienced at a supermarket.

How many plastic coated “reusable” bags that are in everyone’s closet, car, and boat were imported during the same period? These cloth / plastic / bags are full of evil chemical dyes and surfactants from manufacturing in India !

Still seems like a shift from single-use (well, often double-use) plastic bags to multiple-reuse bags is a net win. I know I use my reusable grocery bags for all sorts of activities.

This depends. Sometimes the reusable ones have so much more plastic, that you would need to use it a 100+ times to make it worth it, while at the same time, they last maybe 10, 20 uses, before the handle snaps or something.

I feel like cotton canvas ones should be the thing we move toward. No plastic, and they last for so long. Never had one wear out before.

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/03/13/world/reusable-grocery-ba...

> According to one eye-popping estimate, a cotton bag should be used at least 7,100 times to make it a truly environmentally friendly alternative to a conventional plastic bag.

Only if said plastic bags are used as trash bags and incinerated.

Yeah I've never been a fan of that study. They take a bunch of categories where the bags basically all have negligible impact regardless of material (ozone depletion, ionizing radiation, etc) and compare them on those without using a particularly reasonable weighting scheme. And in all those categories, none of them really have anything to do with the actual reasons we want to move away from plastic bags (terrestrial and oceanic plastic waste, microplastics in water sources, etc).

I guess I think it just sort of misses the point. It's like if they were to say "oh we should keep burning fossil fuels instead of solar because solar uses 1000x more land" but then didn't mention or compare CO2 emission.

Cotton bags must be used 7100 times to be less environmentally impactful than single use thin plastic bags. Organic cotton bags 20,000 times.

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

(First time I've posted hoping I'm wrong and get down voted and yelled at for spreading FUD, haha. But I've seen this figure a lot)

I think that is possible. My mother has had the same cotton canvas grocery bags for ~40 years. They are faded from washing, but are still strong, and she still uses them.

The other advantage is that cotton bags do not shed as many microplastics (the thread is almost always synthetic).

Many of the "re-usable" woven plastic bags I've acquired in recent years are of extremely poor quality. I have had to re-stitch many of them, and some had to be discarded after a very short service life.

I agree, certainly possible if you are diligent.

Most people are not though, for various reasons, most commonly not caring enough. Plastic bag legislatures should keep that in mind if they want to do more than pass a feel good law.

I responded to a sibling comment, but basically I think that study sort of misses the point. The reason to move away from plastic bags is due to plastic waste and microplastics, and the study doesn't touch on that really at all. Their analysis is based on stuff like ozone depletion, eutrophication, resource depletion, and other things that just aren't really meaningfully impacted by shopping bag material choice.

I don't think it's FUD exactly, I think it's just a bit of a weird analysis that focuses on the wrong things.

I use the disposable plastic bags as insulation for the windows in my apartment. I use them for trash bin bags. I use them for catching the hair when I save. Etc, etc. I'd be sad to see them go but find it very doubtful they'll ever be banned in my US state.

> Still seems like a shift from single-use (well, often double-use) plastic bags to multiple-reuse bags is a net win.

Is this based on your feelings/sentiment, or do you have some hard data to back up this baseless assumption?

Also, how many more trash bags were sold in the meantime? I used to never buy trashbags until the random bans and charges, and now I have to buy them.

Same, though the "biodegradable" plastic bags stores tended to use lately would end up completely teared apart after a single use.

Also it seems like every store around only has non machine-washable reusable bags. Any meat or vegetable leaks in there and they'll quickly become disgusting.

People cannot seem to handle psychologically even the most minor inconveniences. Educated people too. We’ve built a word of convenience and it’s telling if things went wrong suddenly a lot of people couldn’t cope or adapt. Truly shameful.

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