Hacker News Reader

Comment by inpdx | Hacker News Reader

"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.

View on HN

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'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.

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.

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com