Same in Canada. The reusable bags that the stores sell are 5-20$. You get hit once with that and you'll start bringing your own bags.
It's actually really simple to influence human behavior with pricing!
It's actually really simple to influence human behavior with pricing!
Nutshell, it they may not be a net plus for the environment when so many poor quality bags which are more energy/resource intensive to make end up being single-use anyway.
I've seen several studies that dispute the efficacy of reusable plastic items (bags, cups, etc). The energy costs of producing the "sturdy" alternative are often high enough to offset the gain in reuse.
IIRC, one study showed that reusing the single-use grocery bag one time (as a trash bin liner) was enough to put it back ahead of the typical $1 reusable bags available at the check-out counter at most grocers.
I was shocked recently when I visited a shop in another european country and they had regular non-reusable bags, it seemed so primitive!
> Many are barely 'reusable', the are crap and don't get used again an get thrown out
there are thinner plastic ones, but even the lightest "reusable" bags we have last for months if not years. unless you're buying pineapples and throwing stars every time you shop they should last you a while.
It's all about vibes with you people.
Can you cite where this is happening?
Is this some sort of deranged lobbying scheme?
I agree things were easier when they delivered it in bags though.
I don't think so. This is largely dependant on each grocery delivery service, but of you look at it the worst cases are actually just continuing business as usual,which is hardly a regression. In the meantime, some services managed to completely eliminate the use of plastic bags.
As an example, for the past year or so I had a groceries delivery service use their old plastic bags, but they also implemented a charge-back service where they pay you back when/if you return them in the following delivery. This is clearly an improvement. In the meantime I had competing supermarket chains completely switch away from single-use bags to alternatives such as reusable plastic crates and even reusable cardboard crates. Behemoths such as Amazon Fresh completely switched to a mix of paper bags, for example.
Bonus: the KLT system easily offers enough assistance to automated/mechanized handling that the box delivery task doesn't require humans.
Could probably easily have a portal crane style 4-wheel robot to drive the new box from the van to your door, drop it, and bring back an empty box you put out for it.
Well, something about curbs, but the stair dolly (big wheel made of 3 smaller wheels) style drive can probably cope with most.
Originally the KLT boxes were made to elide re-packing and manual box handling in the many-small-supplier-companies car industry of Germany. They differ from the more widely seen euro boxes by having molded features to allow a robot gripper to "plug" into any of the 6 sides of the cuboid and get a solid grasp of the box suitable for (re-)stacking them as long as their nominal load rating is adhered to. Also at least one, if space a short and a long side though, have a slot to hold a DIN A-series piece of (tick/heavy) paper describing the box contents, such that the box won't be contaminated with sticky tape residue.
When they're eventually broken from old age or abuse, they can be recycled cleanly because they are normed to be a pretty specific plastic and to (for interchange at least) be one of that colors (grey and a dark blue).
I have seen a local service, picnic, using a small urban-only electric truck (if not even a tricycle) who's back is just a 120 cm (plus tolerances plus door thing) wide shelf to be used with 40x60 cm euro boxes. If they were KLTs you could just put the box as-is in your pantry instead of doing the "dump onto kitchen table" tactic, I guess.
The Aldi I usually go to has staff that are so ridiculously efficient that there are nearly zero empty boxes on the shelves, and the rolling "box cage" is nearly always tucked away somewhere unseen unless they're actively using it.
This isn't a complaint. It's a nice place to shop, and the stock is always very orderly compared to some other locations.
But GFS? They've got boxes at the checkout. I think the expectation is that the customer is supposed to box their own stuff, but they always do it for me if there isn't a line.
Their hardgoods tend to be tremendously high-quality for the price, too: Stuff is frequently ~half what I'd expect to pay elsewhere for something similar. Their buyers must be stellar.
It meant that when all other supermarkets stopped offering free plastic bags, most of the shopping populace was already used to keeping reusable bags in their cars or purses, so it was a pretty easy transition.
Your comment is a textbook argument of perfect being the enemy of good.
Sure, some bags are thrown out. Sure, people use more than one. Sure, people can buy them if they feel they need them.
That's perfectly fine, as that's completely besides the point.
What you're failing to mention is that thanks to this push to adopt reusable bags the use of single-use plastic bags plummeted. You no longer see over a dozen single-use bags being thrown out at each and every single shopping trip. These bags aren't recyclable and disintegrate very easily, making it extremely hard to pull them out of the environment once they get there.
You're also somehow leaving out is the fact that some major supermarkets chains are making available reusable shopping bags made of natural fiber. It's not a given that you're replacing large volumes of single-use plastic with small volumes of reusable plastic, as you're also seeing small volumes of natural fabric being used.
You're also leaving out the fact that this push is taking single-use plastic out of the market but nothing forces customers to adopt the store's own offerings. Anyone is able to buy whatever type of shopping bag suits their fancy.
So no, you're not seeing plastic being replaced with plastic. You're seeing drastic reductions in plastic use by eliminating perverse incentives to consume single-use plastic containers, and the adoption of substitute goods that have a far preferable environmental footprint.
I don't see why caring about plastic bags is mutual exclusive from caring about automobile free cities. I'm 40 and have never owned a car. I'm a big NotJustBikes and StrongTowns proponent. We can for sure debate car dependence and what policies we should advocate for. But this was an article about biodegradable plastics.
Montreal is shutting down a ton of streets every summer to make them walkable, and we've built out an extensive bike infrastructure. All great things! We could make public transportation free.
I don't understand why you insist that we need to solve the "real" problems of pollution before we dare think about other smaller, easier to solve problems. It's not like we're playing a video game where society only has a finite amount of elbow grease to apply to this set of issues. We can reduce plastic bag pollution while also working toward reducing the pollution from automobiles, tire wear, and whatever else you on your own high horse have deigned to be "real problems".
These are not conflicting goals.
"We" are not working on solving those other actual sources of pollution. We're just making people's lives worse. People think they've "done their part" by not using bags, when they haven't done shit.
So, when you say
> So no, you're not seeing plastic being replaced with plastic.
I think immediately of NJ's attempt to wrangle this problem.
> While the state’s ban — which, unlike those of other states, also prohibited single-use paper bags — led to a more than 60 percent decline in total bag volumes, it also had an unintended consequence: a threefold increase in plastic consumption for grocery bags.
> How this happened is no mystery.
> The massive increase in plastic consumption was driven by the popularity of heavy-duty polypropylene bags, which use about fifteen times more plastic than polyethylene plastic bags.
> “Most of these alternative bags are made with non-woven polypropylene, which is not widely recycled in the United States and does not typically contain any post-consumer recycled materials,” the study explains. “This shift in material also resulted in a notable environmental impact, with the increased consumption of polypropylene bags contributing to a 500% increase in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions compared to non-woven polypropylene bag production in 2015.”
https://fee.org/articles/new-jerseys-plastic-bag-ban-backfir...
I'm supportive of the goal, but I really do think that making laws that are simple solutions to complex problems really can backfire and be a net negative, so we need to think several steps ahead.
Again: textbook example of perfect being the enemy of good.
I completely disagree with your take. I've seen whole supermarket chains switch from single-use plastic bags to multi-use cardboard crates in their delivery services, and also to paper bags/containers. That's pretty much the definition of the ideal outcome.
So you're seeing some plastic being thrown out. That's besides the point. The point is how many volume of plastic is being dumped onto the environment after supermarkets switched away from cheap single-use plastic bags.
I'm not seeing anything myself, and I cited no anecdotes. I cited a study that found plastic use went up after the ban.
Put a tax on them that funds an environmental initiative, whether that be decarbonisation, trash clean-up or better landfill management.
Cents, not dollars, right?