Plastic bag bans and fees reduce harmful bag litter on shorelines | Hacker News Reader

Plastic bag bans and fees reduce harmful bag litter on shorelines

science.org

263 pointsmiles184 comments

The study finds that plastic bags as a fraction of the waste on beaches increased in all areas, so that’s bad.

A more concerning issue is the nature of the bags being thrown away. California banned “single use” plastic bags (which we used to reuse as trash bags for the bathroom or whatever) but lets you buy “reusable” ones for a few cents at the checkout counter. The reusable ones are much heavier and contain 10-100x more plastic, and take even longer to biodegrade.

The study counts “items”, not weight, and reports a 25-47% decrease.

Assuming California is the region that hit 47% (call it 50%), and the reusable bags are better than the best available (only 10x worse than pre-ban) that translates to a 5x increase in microplastics on the beach. I’d consider this a disaster, not a win.

This matches older studies, which measured total plastic content of landfill waste before and after plastic bag bans like California’s.

Those showed sharp increases in plastic waste too. The studies in question were in places that did not allow the reusable plastic ones that California forced the stores to switch to. Instead, the authors found that people switched from using the disposable bags as trash bags to using kitchen trash bags, which are ~100x worse. If only 1% of households were using disposable shopping bags for trash, and no one reused the new style bags, then the policies ended up breaking even. In practice, the policies increased total plastic waste, despite being better thought out than California’s newer ban.

I’m all for banning plastic bags, but the current bans target the most efficient use of plastic, increasing overall plastic production and waste. The bans should only target things that have plastic-free alternatives, or at least that have less plastic intensive alternatives.

The anti-rugged bag stuff is propaganda put out by the disposable bag industry. There is no problem with them once they've been used long enough.

I think the parent is pointing out that empirically, increases in plastic waste are observed in places where plastic bags are banned.

You are correct there’s no problem with them if they’re used enough, but evidence suggests they do not receive that usage.

People still view them as disposable though. Public policy necessarily interacts with real people, and those interactions are currently a net negative.

You might fix that by encouraging properly reusable bags (e.g., by banning even the rugged bag sales), but that's problematic too. By many metrics, with normal usage, they're worse than the disposable bags people used to use (the break-even point is linear in the number of days between shopping trips, and unless we also encourage more frequent short _walks_ or something to the store you also have the issue of car-related expenses, not to mention that if your diet is largely meats and other animal products as is common in the US, walking is actually more carbon intensive than taking an EV the same distance (biking blows them both out of the water in efficiency)).

Got a breakdown on the walking calculation anywhere? I find myself suspicious of the argument, not least because such walking will likely displace exercise and idle time elsewhere.

Coming from an assumption of being overweight or otherwise needing extra exercise in your day the argument completely falls apart. In the US, on average, you'd have a ton of benefits encouraging more walking, likely reducing net CO2-equivalent production in the process (smaller bodies require less maintenance energy).

In a country like Vietnam or Japan (or when applied at an individual level rather than a societal level, each individual weighing whether they actuall need more exercise at the moment) we can get back to the simple assumption of walking requiring extra calories (which you'll eventually eat due to hunger and some sort of weight homeostasis) and just running the numbers (all slightly conservative for "typical" scenarios, favoring beef over gasoline to mildly steelman the argument):

- Beef produces something like 48 lbs of CO2 equivalent emissions per pound

- Beef is something like 1200 calories per pound

- Walking burns something like 90 calories per mile

This directly gives 3.6lb of CO2 equivalent emissions per mile. Under a homeostasis assumption, none is sequestered on average long-term in the person doing the walking, though actual emissions could be slightly higher or lower when taking into account the relative greenhouse impact of human emissions in response to that digestion/exercise (but this is somewhat negligible compared to a cow's methane production).

Even pretty crappy cars in city driving conditions can achieve 20mpg, which is only 1.02lb of CO2 equivalent emissions per mile, 3.5x better.

Most people aren't eating pure beef, but the break-even point (compared to that hypothetical extremely shitty car; the argument favors gasoline even more with more modern vehicles) is 28% of your calorie budget (assuming all other inputs have zero greenhouse impact).

Chicken is better at only 1.6lb of emissions per mile of walking, with a break-even point at 63%. Cheese and butter are _slightly_ better still. Nearly all animal products are much worse than gasoline, and basically any diet made from >=70% animal products (denominated in calories) will have higher emissions than a 20mpg car and driving habit.

If you compare it to more typical cars (my car is dirt cheap, from 2008, and still gets 30mpg city even after 17 years of wear and tear), the break-even point is much worse.

Counter-arguments include that the carbon impact of a car is much higher than just its gasoline consumption, but if you work through the math everything else put together is a rounding error compared to the gas over the lifetime of a vehicle (still 5-15%, but it doesn't substantially impact anything I've said so far).

I was curious what these numbers look like if people get their extra calories from carbs instead of animal products:

- A 100g cooked serving of pasta has 131 calories [1] - This random website claims that a 100g serving of pasta generates 0.58 lb CO2 equivalent emissions - To get 90 calories we need ~69g of pasta - This gives 0.4lb CO2e per mile when walking under pasta power

I'm not sure if the CO2 estimation for pasta is using a cooked weight or a dry weight, so I chose the worst-case scenario. If that CO2e number is applied to 100g of _dry_ pasta, the numbers get way better.

1: https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/food-details/169728/nutrients 2: https://www.co2everything.com/co2e-of/pasta

>People still view them as disposable though

No way this is true, not when the bag costs about 30% of what I usually buy per trip.

I promise you this is true

Especially with delivery services where a store will deliver your order to your door, you just keep accumulating more and more of those "reusable" bags. But the reality is that you really only need so many reusable bags, so when you keep getting more you have to do something with them

Bags should have a deposit and a "return excess bags for a refund" system like bottles do

Otherwise they are going to go to landfills, no question

I have only ordered groceries once because of all the "reusable" bags I got stuck with.

Those things are incredibly durable. I have two as my backup grocery bags and I've been using the same ones for nearly a decade.

Your country is just a little behind. Groceries and takeout food comes in paper bags now.

> No way this is true, not when the bag costs about 30% of what I usually buy per trip.

The price is normally the legislated minimum, 10¢. So your average shopping trip is ~33¢?

Reusable shopping bags cost about $10-$15. No one is buying them frivolously.

I think the issue here is one of semantics. The so-called "reusable" bags you're talking about are still classified as single-use plastics.

If you look at BC as an example, where ALL single-use plastic bags at checkouts are banned, people have adapted just fine. In some stores (like restaurants) you can buy paper bags for 25¢, but generally people either don't bother with bags at all and simply load things directly into their cars, or they bring their own bags or baskets. Now, pretty much the only litter I regularly see is paper coffee cups or candy wrappers. Bags have disappeared, and bottles and cans usually collected for the deposit.

Going up a few levels in the conversation, I think the question is about the extra-durable bags the store sells for $0.15, not properly reusable bags (hence me calling out encouragement of properly reusable bags as a potential solution).

The reuseable bags in my area are 10-50 cents for the plastic ones and like 5 dollars for the foldable cloth ones with a button.

Where are you seeing 10-15 dollar bags? I can only imagine that’s happening because your locality added a major tax to them

Also I get delivery groceries from BJ’s and they have been including piles of these giant reuseable bags in each order to the point that I have been donating them to a homeless shelter.

I produced less plastic waste with grocery bags back when they were the size and shape to be reused as bathroom garbage bags, anecdata and real data all points to them being used frivolously still

Reusable bags are $0.99 at my grocery store, and they give a coupon for a free one every few months. They last years.

Some people on this thread are talking about things like canvas bags, which are more expensive and meant to be reused a lot, and others are talking about plastic bags that have a lot of material and are more durable than the old school "thinnest bag you can produce without it dissolving immediately when you look at it" which are not nearly as expensive to buy as the others.

Your are asserting a lot of facts here. Please provide some references so that those of us who are interested can learn more.

- The walking thing you can mostly calculate yourself if you only examine particular foods, but here's some study looking at the dietary impact in practice averaged across a country (walking has comparable emissions to a 22mpg car trip in developed countries) [0].

- For cotton reusable bags (very common for all sorts of reasons; all my reusable bags are cotton and not because of any particular intentional selection), you need 50+ trips to the store to hit a break-even point [1] in greenhouse emissions. Similarly with the 50x thicker plastic bags stores in CA sell compared to disposable shopping bags. That's 1-2yrs for the break-even point with weekly or biweekly shopping trips, worse if your usage distribution is temporally nonuniform (e.g., owning 5 bags but sometimes only using only 1-3 for slightly more frequent shopping trips and occasionally using all 5). Properly reusable bags are likely worth it, but it's not an immediate or obvious win unless you use them regularly and they're sturdy enough to not wear out too quickly (enough material is involved and the timescales are long enough that you should also consider the impact of the disposal method and a number of other things).

- Some of the other points like linearity in the number of days between shopping trips should be obvious. I'll leave investigating everything else as an exercise for the reader.

[0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-66170-y

[1] Not "source" so much as a summary of sources, so I referenced the smallest number in the article to give the argument more weight: https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/13/world/reusable-grocery-bags-c...

You are making the baseline assumption that the reason for reusable bags is to reduce greenhouse emissions, instead of reducing the number of plastic bags being discarded in public areas causing negative externalities like affecting wildlife. Heavier plastic bags have a greater chance of lasting beyond a single shop trip to make it long enough to be reused at the very least as a garbage bag. Paper bags desintegrate easily if thrown in the trash and are trivially recyclable.

I do think that we need to meet people where they are at, you can't expect people to over night start bringing a classic trolley and/or canvas bags to a local shop if they don't have a shop to walk to or dont have a way to keep a bag on themselves at all times, but we can slowly nudge people towards desirable behavior. And that's what charging for bags does.

I wasn't referring to the rugged bags. I mean the ones that are made of something similar to large trash bags, and that end up getting small holes in them on the first use about 10% of the time.

Rugged bags would be OK if they actually got reused. Canvas would be drastically better. I usually go for paper bags (they make good kindling, and are reusable a few times), but some chains here in California seem to be phasing them out in favor of the thick plastic ones.

My opinions:

* Leave my dang plastic straws alone or at least make any degradable replacement take longer than a week to degrade and __not crumple like a limp noodle__ during normal use.

* 1000% yes on this inanity of selling bags. Require standard grade carry out bags all be complimentary (this will drive stores to get the cheapest ones that don't irk customers), and just outright ban plastic for 'bags'. Do not specify exactly but require that any take out bag be (non commercially) compostable, or recycled (for real, not export to someone that just treats it as trash).

Have you tried Phade? They’re pretty much the same as regular plastic straws, albeit slightly more brittle

My kids use silicon straws. You can take them apart, wash them, put them together again and they work ok.

We use metal and glass, and they also work fine.

Silicon? That sounds really dangerous—what if it shatters while it's in their mouth? Are you sure you don't mean silicone?

If you're a bar or restaurant, please invest in metal, re-usable straws instead of humiliating your paying clients with paper ones. I just don't understand why a place that charges $50 or more for a dinner would do something like this.

Probably health regulations and existing infrastructure.

They have an Industrial Dishwasher. It's pretty good at blasting dishes, bowls, plates, cups, utensils, etc, things with all their surfaces easily exposed and no narrow inner areas, with hot water and a bit of chemicals like detergents to get things clean. Maybe it's some other device for smaller faster loads.

Cleaning a straw properly, _drying_ it properly. That sounds like a giant pain. Potentially a massive liability. (Detergents stuck in the straw? Someone's food and diseases not cleaned properly?)

I could see Silicone straws maybe working, but not as well in a lot of respects. They'd need a specialized cleaning process. Maybe boil in water with something to force (and measure) water flow through them. Then transfer to a baking chamber to dry and sanitize with heat. This sounds labor and energy intensive. Just gut instinct, I'm pretty sure it'd be cheaper to use some of that industrial compostable plastic to make a plastic straw. If some paper straw that didn't suck (as outlined in my other post) were used instead that'd be OK too.

"The bans should only target things that have plastic-free alternatives, or at least that have less plastic intensive alternatives."

There's also what I call junk plastic products. I'll illustrate with examples. Plastic products that aren't durable and have very short lifespans:

- Plastic storage bins and such that use so little plastic that they break when stacked thus become plastic waste long before they ought to.

- I bought three plastic buckets at the supermarket and the handles fell off two before I got them home. I nevertheless used them only to find that they soon cracked and leaked with normal domestic usage.

(BTW, there's an old galvanized bucket in our family that's well over 80 years old (it belonged to my grandmother), and it's still serviceable (the galvanizing is still intact and it's not rusty).)

- The use of polyethylene for containers, etc. Over time polyethylene leaks its plasticizers to produce a greasy coating on the surface. The polyethylene then hardens and cracks—thus more junk plastic waste. Polyethylene should not be used for such purposes.

Moreover, phthalate plasticizers have been found to have bad effects on human health. Phthalate plasticizers ought to be banned for use in domestic products.

I could go on, there are hundreds more examples.

The plastic waste problem could be fixed quick smart if high taxes were applied on plastic products that were deemed insufficiently durable.

No doubt, manufacturers, penny-pinching cheapskates and greedy profit mongers would cry foul over what's deemed as 'durable'. That's solvable with standards set down by an authoritative standards body.

Plastics need to be taxed for the external cost their waste causes.

Galvanised metal wouldn’t have such a tax if it has no impact (it doesn’t).

Well we did this for the bags (put a high price on them) and banned some others (e.g. straws). My fear is that taxing plastic items more (let's say of VAT is 20%, plastics could get 35%). Then our dear politicians on Year4 will pass a law to "redirect the extra collection for blah blah blah" and it will end up _not_ to the effort of mitigating the plastic pollution, and we will be stuck with one more tax _and_ the pollution!!

> old galvanized bucket in our family that's well over 80 years old

It's got lead in it. Not everything in the past is better.

I'm fed up hearing about lead contamination, so let me try and put this into perspective.

Zinc galvanizing generally only has lead in it as a impurity and it's in pretty small amounts (zinc and lead are often mined together so completely separating the two is expensive (one has to be mindful of the costs)). That said, there are some few exceptions where tiny amounts of lead are used as a wetting agent.

This obsession with lead contamination really has gone too far when we start worrying about the tiny amount of lead in galvanizing. It's on a par with the obsession with the harmless amount of thiomersal in vaccines (I know, I'll never convince the unconvinced).

Look at it this way, zinc is harder than lead thus it's harder to rub off than lead—so it traps any lead that might be there. Given that the galvanizing on this 80+ year old bucket is still intact, how much lead has it shead in the past 80+ years? Answer: stuff all!

Consider this: large parts of the world have buildings still covered in lead paint and that lead will be still hanging around for hundreds of years to come. And there's one hell of a lot of it. Some years ago I removed the flaking paint from my house before repainting it and I could hardly lift the buckets they were so heavy from the lead. Anyone in an old house that's not had every ounce of lead paint removed would get orders of magnitude more lead in their bodies from the paint than from my galvanized bucket. Moreover, just removing the paint will spread lead about no matter how careful one is. Is that residual lead relevant? Well, it depends on many factors, the fact is you can't remove every trace of it no matter how hard you try. Also remember lead paint sheds lead as an aerosol—lead dust, galvanizing does not.

Lead is everywhere in the environment, in soil, in eves and attics—everywhere thanks to that ratbag Thomas Midgley Jr. and his tetraethyllead in gasoline. Lead from gasoline is still everywhere and isn't going away anytime soon.

Again, I'd suggest the average person would absorb orders of magnitude more lead from that source than they would from our old galvanized bucket.

I'm not finished yet, what about all that lead in building damp courses, in roofs, in church leadlight windows, etc., and in some places it's still used for water pipes. There's even lead in Flint's water supply.

Moreover, lead is still being used in buildings, especially in roofs where old lead is being replaced with new. Rain oxidizes the lead and the runoff continues to contaminate the soils and waterways.

Remember the fire in Notre Dame in Paris where hundreds of tons of lead melted and collapsed onto the cathedral floor. Well, that lead wasn't replaced with some safer material but rather new lead installed in exactly the same way as it was centuries ago.

No, that's still not all. For around a hundred years until only several decades ago fruit trees, especially apple and pear trees, were sprayed with the insecticide lead arsenate (lead hydrogen arsenate, PbHAsO4) to protect against codling moth and such. And as it's an inorganic chemical the double whammy of both lead and arsenic will be in the soils of thousands of orchards indefinitely (as a kid I used to spray our own apple trees with the stuff).

Oh, and there's much more, crystal drinking glasses, car batteries, lead in solder, and so on.

Lead is an important industrial metal and it's not going away anytime soon—we just have to get used to it being around us in the environment and in industry.

That's not to say it's not dangerous especially so to children. Nevertheless, we have to put this ubiquitous contamination into perspective, we have to channel our efforts where it's most effective—and that's not worrying about the miniscule amount of lead locked up in galvanizing.

What truly pisses me off is that the lead poisoning problem has been known about for millennia, since Roman times in fact, and yet so little has been done since the industrial age to protect people—ensure proper safety protocols are in place when working with lead, etc.

The trouble has always been that lead's industrial and economic value has always outweighed its dangers—that is, its perceived dangers which have changed over time. Whilst, today, we are more conscious of its dangers than in the past that should have been the situation well over a century ago.

There was absolutely no excuse for Midgley's tetraethyllead in gasoline as the dangers of lead were well known at the time.

By the mid Nineteenth Century the problem of lead poisoning was so well known that elders were teaching their kids of the dangers. No, this isn't hearsay, here's the evidence: download the PDF version of the 1858 edition of The Boy's Book of Industrial Information by Elisha Noyce from the Open Library: openlibrary.org/books/OL24144198M/The_boy%27s_book_of_industrial_information.

At the bottom of p57 is a discussion on the uses and preparation of white lead. On p58 is a statement that I find remarkable for the time (167 years ago), it's just as applicable now as it was then:

"White lead is a very poisonous substance, and produces the disease called painters’ colic, when taken into the system in minute quantities and for a long time, so that all who have much to do with this dangerous substance, as house-painters and artists, should be extremely careful that their hands are well washed frequently, and especially before going to meals."

And that's just a warning for boys—what else did the Establishment know about lead poisoning at that time? Much more I'd bet.

What's truly outrageous is that 68 years later Midgley and cohorts had the fucking hide and audacity to add tetraethyllead to gasoline in 1926. Moreover, by then not only that information from 1858 was known but also chemistry and medicine had moved on significantly. Clearly much more knowledge was known about lead poisoning by then. It's hard to believe they got away with putting lead in gas for so long. This is one of the great 20th Century disasters, as Wiki puts it:

"Throughout the sixty year period from 1926 to 1985, an estimated 20 trillion liters of leaded gasoline at an average lead concentration of 0.4 g/L were produced and sold in the United States alone, or an equivalent of 8 million tons of inorganic lead, [three quarters of which would have been emitted in the form of lead chloride and lead bromide]. Estimating a similar amount of lead to have come from other countries' emissions, a total of more than 15 million tonnes of lead may have been released into the atmosphere."

This isn't the only crime of this type, asbestos is a similar story but I can't cover that here.

As I said, lead is everywhere and eliminating it completely from the environment is impossible. The best we can do is to concentrate on things that truly matter, teaching kids the lesson from 1858, keeping them away from known large sources of lead such as flaky paint and so on. We haven't enough time in our lives to worry about sources that are in the noise.

Here's another perspective: it's said that there's enough naturally occurring arsenic in the average cubic meter of soil to kill a person but we don't worry about it because at that concentration it's not going to harm anyone.

Polyethylene only rarely contains plasticizers, and it doesn't harden or crack unless continuously exposed to sunlight—neither LDPE, LLDPE, HDPE, nor UHMWPE. It seems like you have your plastics mixed up. Possibly you're thinking of polyvinyl chloride, which does sometimes behave in the way you describe polyethylene describing, but not in all cases.

The plastic buckets I use in my house are food-grade polypropylene 20-liter buckets with hermetically sealing lids. Polypropylene, like polyethylene, does not need plasticizers to remain resilient to impacts; its biggest problem is creep. The handles do sometimes fall off, but they're easy to put back on.

"Polyethylene only rarely contains plasticizers, and it doesn't harden or crack unless continuously exposed to sunlight"

I beg to differ, and I'm familiar with polyethylene (I spent too many years studying o-chem not to know something about it).

I have hundreds of polyethylene storage containers ranging in size from 20 to 80 litres and their ages range from around 20 years old to new. They are stored in rooms with temperatures ranging from 15 to 25°C and an average RH of 55-65%.

They are mostly stored in the dark (lights off) and they mostly contain old paper files although some contain books.

For ages I couldn't figure out where the greasy, almost sticky film was coming from given the rooms are dry and the air is clean. (Mind you at first I didn't give it much thought.)

After washing some to remove the film with just dishwashing liquid they were repacked and several years later the film was back and that's when the brittleness was noticed. Container lids were cracking on the bottom containers in stacks of only four to six high (max height 1.5m).

Note, the washing had no noticeable effect, as containers of a similar vintage that were not washed were also brittle.

When I checked I could easily crack the plastic of older containers with little bending. That wasn't possible with the newer units—they would deform out of shape but not crack—not without a lot of effort.

That's a précis of a much longer story. Incidentally, there were several brands involved and all experienced similar problems with the greasy film.

Note I'm not mixing products either, new units of brand A were compared with old brand A.

I'd suggest my sample size is not insignificant, since the late 1990s I've had around a 1000 of these polyethylene containers and the evidence points to the fact that for this type of product polyethylene of that type is not fit for purpose.

BTW, I ought to let you know I'm familiar with polyethylene from my work in RF engineering. And HDPE and that standard polyethylene does not behave that way. Moreover, some of the polyethylene I've used in recent years was manufactured in WWII and is still a viable insulator although (new old stock) coaxial cables with PE dialectic from that era are no longer as pliable as they once were (plastic jacket insulation taken into account).

Is it possible that the companies that sold you these "polyethylene" storage containers actually made them out of PVC and didn't tell you? Are these those big plastic tubs? I've also noticed those getting brittle over time, although I haven't experienced the unpleasant syneresis you describe. So far my polypropylene 20-liter buckets aren't doing anything similar, but I've only had them for a few years.

First, I'm not in the US (I assume you are), so things may be different here. Until recently all were manufactured locally but the latest batch comes from China,

All containers are semitransparent polyethylene, I can mostly see the contents when looking from the side. The Chinese ones are slightly more transparent than the local product. They're not old enough to develop the film (6—12 months), so it remains to be seen what happens to them over time.

They're definitely not PVC—I've chucked enough of the broken ones on the fire over the years and they don't burn with the acrid fumes of PVC (there's no mistaking the choking smell of burning PVC).

Incidentally, on occasions when broken containers have left me short I've repaired them by running a soldering iron along the cracks to melt them together. As with Pb/Sn soldering I'll use a bit of spare material and apply it to the cracks. It melts just like polyethylene. You cannot do that with PVC (at least not practically), by the time it gets hot enough it bubbles and turns black and stinks to high heaven.

A final point, PVC is now banned here for household use—has been for several decades because of its choking fumes/toxic byproducts of combustion in house fires. Electrician friends who are old enough to remember the PVC insulation days still whinge at its loss, the new insulation isn't as robust or as flexible (stripping the insulation off wire isn't as easy as it was with PVC).

In the kitchen environment, there are no plastics that can outperform glass in terms of leaching and wear.

Even polycarbonate can't be run through a dishwasher or microwave like glass can. The only use I have for plastic in the kitchen is for blender jars. The shatter resistance is hard to argue with and PC doesn't emit particles when used with things like hard grains and ice.

It's nice to be able to transport dinner leftovers to work (or carry food on a hike) in something lightweight. If need be, they can then be decanted into a ceramic bowl for the microwave.

Glass (that won't easily shatter in a backpack) is just a bit heavy for food transport.

I used the old style plastic bags as trash bags. I use the new thicker ones as trash bags (cat litter). All the law did was increase how much plastic ends up in the landfill.

They should have required paper. Oregon did the same dumb thing. Portland has paper bags everywhere. Then they required charging for bags and everyone switched to plastic.

Paper bags are a pain. The stores that push paper have paper bags with no handles. It makes carrying more than one bag very clumsy. I tend to avoid the stores around here that only have paper.

100% agree though I'm curious how to fix things. If I go to any supermarket it's full of plastic. Of course many traditional products are often (not always) sold in plastic like milk, yogurt, cottage cheese, breads. But, stores are full of, packaged by the store or the store's company products. The easist place to see this is the prepared foods section. Veggie salads in plastic, pasta salad in plastic, hummus in plastic, cookies in plastic, nuts in plastic, sandwiches in plastic, ...

I have no idea what it would take to stop that and what the substitute would be. Examples: I like Japanese Milk Bread. It generally comes wrapped in a plastic bag, arguably because it's not hardy like something like sourdough which can be sold in an open paper bag.

Similarly, local markets sell Chinese sticky lotus leaf rice, 2 or 3 in a plastic container, they sell fresh tofu skin in a plastic container. I guess they could try to switch to waxed cardboard like milk is sometimes sold? Is that good or is that cardboard infused with plastic?

Has any "progressive" country banned plastic such that pre-sliced meat/cheese is not sold in plastic?

Not only that, they now sell all kinds of vegetables in plastic. I would like to buy 3-4 "loose“ carrots for a meal, I cannot.

I can only buy a 1 kg bag of carrot and it's plastic. One kilogram of carrot is a huge amount for my dietary habits, and I need to throw away usually half of the carrot. Now multiply it by about ten for the different vegetables.

Mangos? Wrapped in plastic. Other fruits? Often packaged in styrofoam. Meats? Styrofoam package or vacuum sealed plastic.

I sort my rubbish for what can be composted, is metal, what can be burned ecologically, and what must be thrown away. A normal household level of buying ingredients results in a mountain of plastic trash with no ecological way to dispose of it (other than landfills assuming the landfill is run properly, which they are where I live… but no way to guarantee it will stay that way for the next several hundred years).

I won’t even get into the nightmare of plastic toys, one of which I found had dangerous levels of lead despite being a newish toy from a responsible source (Melissa & Doug), and I was unable to get any government agency interested in investigating further.

The ban on single use plastic bags ignores the reality, which is that people often didn't plan to go to the shop or didn't plan to buy that much and so find themselves in need of a bag at the till.

I think it would be more pragmatic to have environmentally friendly single use bags available for a fee rather than wasting all those "reusable" bags.

People adapt though. I don't hear complaints about shopping bags anymore (except for American visitors), the way I still do about paper straws. Plastic bags at checkouts were only banned where I live a couple of years ago, and most people have learned to keep a few reusable bags in the car, and generally to plan better.

I actually worked in a hardware store for a while, and after the old supply of plastic bags ran out it was common practice for customers to either bring their own bags, carry stuff out in their hands, or use one of the hundreds of small cardboard boxes or trays that were set aside on receiving day when the shelves were stocked.

Well I am in Europe and people don't always drive everywhere.

I see it most days at the supermarket near my local train station: people get off the train and stop by to buy stuff. I see a good number of people buying "reusable" bags because they don't have any bags with them... it is ridiculous not to be able to have access to single use bags in this scenario. Mandate that they be paper or compostable if needed but "no it's banned" is not pragmatic at all.

I agree with your point. I saw a comment above they "solved?" this in some Scandenvian country by mandating the bags cost a ~$1 each. Not sure if that's high enough but I guess the point would be if you make the cost high enough people will quickly learn to bring their own bags.

I admit I am terrible at it. If I ride my bike then I bring something the carry the stuff home but if I take my car, even though I put bags in my trunk, it never even crosses my mind to use them :( Maybe posting this comment will help me remember next time.

On the other hand, my apartment complex demands we put our trash in plastic bags so I use the bags I get at the store for that ... sigh ...

Not sure if this helps, but I don't put bags in the trunk because yes, then it's super easy to forget them. I put them on the passenger seat.

For bags specifically, instead of just "banning plastic bags" (which usually leads to dumb outcomes, as GP notes) mandate the use of paper.

It drives me up the wall when I go to a store (Target comes to mind; I also see those stupid FreshDirect bags everywhere in NYC, even though I don't use the service), and the only option is a pseudo-reusable plastic bag, which I can only accumulate or discard. As long as you're charging me anyway [1], just give me a paper bag! Most of the time I have a re-usuable bag that I carry around, but for the times I don't, I save the paper bags I receive and use them to put out my recycling.

[1] I assume this is about cost to the retailer.

> Assuming California is the region that hit 47% (call it 50%), and the reusable bags are better than the best available (only 10x worse than pre-ban) that translates to a 5x increase in microplastics on the beach. I’d consider this a disaster, not a win.

You are assuming that people are throwing away more reusable plastic bags. Are they?

Where I live (Sweden) the extra plastic bag fee introduced made people also buy more single use plastic bags in bulk which were cheaper and flimsier. If they are making up a larger part of the "items" counted, and not the reusable bags, then the win is even greater than a 25-47% decrease.

What reason do you have to believe people are throwing away the heavier, reusable bags at that rate? Do other bags not exist anywhere?

We are throwing them away. "Reusable" is a term of art. We're not talking about the actually reusable canvas-like bags. We're talking about heavy sheets of plastic.

The situation is complicated, and nobody wants to have an honest conversation about it.

The reason why the switch to heavier bags is important is mainly to stop them from blowing away in the wind when people litter, where they end up in the water system. I don't think anyone really has any serious concerns about the density of plastic that ends up in our landfills, ideally, never to be seen again. The idea that plastic is bad, without concern for whether or not it ends up in a landfill, I think is misplaced concern. There are some decomposition GHG concerns, but again, those are insignificant compared to something as common as just driving ever day. Here we must remember that recycling plastic is generally a bad idea altogether if we care about GHGs.

The only people that seem to be pushing back against the bans are people with sudden and politically surprising (fake) environmental concerns because they are annoyed that they have to pay 10¢-25¢ for a bag (and absurdly trivial amount), and having to ask for one, instead of getting them for free without asking. This also has the effect of making paper bags competitive with plastic.

The entire debate is between most people on this issue seems to be people who either don't understand what it's about or don't actually care. Virtue signalling on the left or fake concern on the right.

It’s hard to understand why couldn’t just have ecological canvas or jute bags.

It’s hard to understand why we can’t do a lot of sensible things, like not blasting tiktok on the bus or not speeding on local streets the in our cars.

Most people are happily ignorant of anything that doesn’t reinforce their priors.

Because they are about 400 times more expensive to produce than plastic bags with comparable characteristics?

But then the people using them can pay that 400x price rather than making society as a whole pay for the externalized environmental cost of a plastic bag.

There is no externalized environmental cost of a plastic bag.

I don’t know what kind of reusable plastic bags you have over there. Our fee was introduced in 2020. I bought two reusable plastic bags (made from some plastic-tarp-like weave) then and have been using them for five years without issue.

You still have no proof at all on the table for your speculation about the plastic items on the beaches.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adp9274

In terms of microplastics, I would think 100 of the old flimsy single use bags would be much worse than 5 reusable plastic bags, even if the total mass is the same. The heavier reusables have less surface area per mass, so they'll be degraded more slowly by the sun. They also are less easily blown by the wind, so it's more likely someone will dispose of them properly or that they'll naturally end up buried somewhere that does a better job of containing the eventual microplastics. Fewer bags in total would probably be better for sea turtles than thinner bags as well.

I'm not sure if that makes the reusables better overall, but I don't think we can say they're 10-100x worse based on weight alone.

I agree with most of your comment, except that microplastics come from paint, tires, and washing synthetic garments, not plastic bags, and I'm dubious about your photodegradation point.

My anecdotal experience as a diver in Sweden that do a few ocean clean days per year, and who have operated during the periods of before, during and after a plastic bag ban, my experience has been that the ban worked greatly in reducing bags and plastic eating tools to a very major degree. Before the ban we saw plastic garbage practically every single dive, and the days we were cleaning we picked up bags of it by the end of the day. In contrast, plastic garbage is now thankfully rather rare to see, maybe once every 10th dive, and the effect has continued after the ban was lifted (so far). On cleaning days we might get like a few items in total. Plastic is no longer a major thing we pick up, and focus is instead on e-scooters and cans of laughing gas. In the couple ocean clean up events we have found more scooters than plastic bags.

I have seen a few canvas bags, but they don't seem to last long under the water.

It worked in Sweden because the bags you can buy (used to) cost 7kr (about a US dollar in purchasing power). So even though those bags are heavier and sturdier people do reuse them. I cringe every time I have to buy one because I didn't plan ahead.

I think its the same here in Australia. Whats more, a lot of the bags you pay extra for are paper anyhow.

There really needs to be a ban on single use eating utensils and most single use plastic food packaging.

It would require a tiny bit of planning ahead, such as people would need to carry around a fork, knife, metal straw, and perhaps a cup or coffee mug.

Considering how minimal the cost of forks and spoons are, eateries could simply sell metal forks and spoons to people who forget them.

An easy way to implement this is a tax / user fee on single use plastics for mitigating waste that ends up in shorelines or in the ocean, and make the fee enough to actually mitigate it + set the fee so that reusable metal or wood cutlery is price competitive.

> The bans should only target things that have plastic-free alternatives, or at least that have less plastic intensive alternatives.

I find this very interesting. It’s basically saying that unless there is a better way that’s just as convenient, one has the right to buy these disposable bags. Who gives us the right to pollute the environment?

One might easily argue that nearly everything has a plastic-free alternative anyway.

True. Less convenient though, e.g. reusing a box from the store, bringing reusable bags, skipping the shopping when without bags, buying more expensive less disposable containers.

> California banned “single use” plastic bags (which we used to reuse as trash bags for the bathroom or whatever) but lets you buy “reusable” ones for a few cents at the checkout counter. The reusable ones are much heavier and contain 10-100x more plastic, and take even longer to biodegrade.

We have the same problem in the UK. Single use bags not available but you can buy heavier ones, so while people throw fewer bags, they are heavier ones.

Paper bags have also become a lot more common. Obviously no plastic pollution but I do not know what other impact they have. They are often reusable and obviously very biodegradable so I would guess its a win?

If the cost of the bags covered the cost to clean up I wouldn’t mind. As it stands, ten cents seems pretty arbitrary and frankly not even a decision factor.

At the grocery store they ask if you want to round up your bill to donate. On average that is 50 cents, way more than a bag costs.

> and take even longer to biodegrade

I didn't think they did at all, but turns out to do so slightly: https://biosphereplastic.com/microbes-that-biodegrade-plasti...

Arguing about which bags are worse for the environment is a waste of time and resources, since littering is the root problem and huge fines regarding littering invested in enforcement and prosecution of such acts should be much better for the environment

There's something to be done there, certainly, but I wonder how much of the problem is due to the fact that these bags easily blow away in the wind, etc. It's one thing to say "don't deliberately litter" but to insist that everyone watch every bag like a hawk to make sure it doesn't blow away, fall out of a pocket, etc. is a bigger ask.

As someone who lives on the beach and lived on the beach since before these bans, plastic bags never seemed much of an issue and the real issue is that most people who visit the beach think nothing of leaving their garbage on the beach. Before the ban people tended to leave their garbage nicely contained in a plastic bag, now everyone just leaves it strewn about because they don't want to put garbage in their reusable bags that they use for their groceries which also would mean they would have to deal with the garbage instead of "forgetting" their plastic bag of garbage. The worst is the massive increase in sodden diapers, no one has a disposable bag for the diapers so they just leave them on the beach.

The garbage bags and plastic bag that wash up on the beach are insignificant compared to the garbage beach goers leave on the beach and people who don't live on the beach don't realize how much garbage that is because those of us who do live on the beach spoil our morning stroll and swim with picking up the garbage so the beach can be clean and ready to be spoiled all over again.

If this is the behaviour of people in a community, it seems absolutely necessary to institute top-down rules on which materials are permissible and which not.

That is to say, the problem here lies mainly with the attitudes and behaviour of people in this community than with specific policies.

I suspect it’s mostly tourists leaving the garbage. People usually don’t literally trash the places they frequent. Tourists don’t follow rules.

Well, that depends very much on the tourist and their own community culture.

Although I understand your point, it is easier to be selfish outside one’s community.

People are entitled and lazy. I’ve seen many locals litter, especially dog poo, but the majority outside my house is from the temporary sleepers whether tourists or van lifers. Substance users are the worst offenders - I pickup so many cigarette / joint butts and beer cans.

But like do tourists even have a community ? I don't think you are making sense here. Tourists are from everywhere, every one of them think the problem is the other tourists.

They hopefully have one at home :)

I really do wish people treat these places like their home. However, even people in my immediate circle, are just expecting other people to clean up for them when they're on vacation :). I don't know, something about traveling just turn on switch.

Beaches are tourist attractions, at least in my experience during beach season, tourists outnumber locals by an order of magnitude, and locals elect to go when they aren't so crowded.

Is this a US thing? I was kinda shocked at how people use the beach there. Very loud music, driving on the beach, lots of rubbish. Never seen that in England and Germany

I’ve been to the beach more times than I can count, over a lifetime living in Florida . Loud music, yes, cars and especially big trucks, yes. But I’ve never seen people just pack up and leave their trash when they’re done. There are ample trash cans and they get used. Take this anecdote for what it’s worth.

Agree. Grew up near a beach and have been to beaches many times in different spots. Definitely have seen trash before but never as described, not to say it never happens. People are generally pretty good at throwing their trash away or taking it home.

People were trashing the beach long before bag bans. Even when they had ample access to plastic bags in every size, people would elect to leave their garbage on the beach because they just don't care enough to pick it up and bring it to a garbage can 20 yards away.

It took enforcement of carry-in/carry-out policies with tickets to make some progress on that. Possibly getting fined and having to go to court for littering or illegal dumping changes behavior.

Source: I live on the beach in a place where a bag ban went through.

"It took enforcement of carry-in/carry-out policies with tickets to make some progress on that."

Not only do we need heavy fines to deter these sloppy morons but we also need to develop a culture of shame. Shaming people for such cretinous behavior ought to be the norm.

These are the same people who drop things in a supermarket and don't bother to pick them up or change their mind and leave goods at any place instead of putting them back where they belong.

> Not only do we need heavy fines to deter these sloppy morons but we also need to develop a culture of shame. Shaming people for such cretinous behavior ought to be the norm.

I think one of the primary issues comes from the fact that the majority of those who litter are just visiting the beach for a day trip or short vacation.

Even being known as the guy who kicks puppies wouldn't really matter to tourists since they won't come back or only visit once a year.

He may not care or come back but with that attitude he'll eventually get caught out on his own turf. Such people are chronic recidivists.

Out of curiosity, whereabouts are the beaches you're talking about?

I live in New England, and I haven't noticed people treating beaches this way.

Not OP but San Diego has this issue. Especially in summer with tourists. My local beach gets disgusting around the fire pits / area closest to the parking lot. I was blown away by the trash yesterday morning when I walked through the main area to surf. People suck sometimes.

I think a lot of the time this is just because there aren't enough bins provided or they don't empty them frequently enough.

Unfortunately not true. They empty the bins daily and people litter literally 2 feet away from them. Unfortunately I think some people just feel entitled to make others pickup after them.

No, its because people are slobs. I see it all the time, people tossing shit into the streets in view of a garbage can.

I can't agree with this. If you can't find a receptacle for your trash take it home and dispose of it there. Being responsible for your own trash seems to me like one of the most basic social obligations for adulthood.

The majority of plastic on beaches comes from the sea, not the land. Most of it comes not from people using the beach for recreation but from shipping, fishing, industry and also arrives washed down from rivers and via drainage and sewage. Needless to say of course there is lots added by people using the beach too but its worth looking at the whole picture.

https://www.mcsuk.org/ocean-emergency/ocean-pollution/plasti...

I know these types of comments are frowned upon here, but I find it really sad that posts about video game sales, for example, have many more upvotes than a post about positive efforts to reduce plastic waste. It shows where priorities and interests lie for the majority.

I comment like this because I understand that the struggle is not only to stop this kind of waste--and on a larger scale the environmental destruction of our planet--but also to engage and motivate the public at large to want to make these changes.

I believe leisure is the end goal of all technology, so it makes sense that something advertising a form of end result is more appealing than another contributor to realizing them. Consider advertising sweetrolls versus more effective less harmful pesticide. The latter will contribute to the former, but the former is much closer to what you're likely actually interested in.

> --but also to engage and motivate the public at large to want to make these changes.

Are you raising awareness?

You can be judgmental all you want but I don’t think it’s controversial that video games are more interesting than plastic bags politics

It’s not cool, seen was woke / soft / feminine to care about such things so “real men” don’t bother.

No idea how you can motivate people. Glastonbury Music Festival has always been huge on messaging it's audience about not being wasteful but if anything the amount of abandoned camping stuff as well as general litter has been getting worse.

> No idea how you can motivate people.

As market driven as the US is, I'm surprised they haven't adopted more EU ideas to keep things tidy. The euro to get a shopping cart tends to keep parking lots clean.

I went to an event in Germany once that had re-usable plastic beer mugs. 5 euro/beer with 1 euro back for the mug. They were also easily stackable, so if you saw a mug on the ground you would pick up. 5 mugs == free beer. Simple idea using money that kept the event relatively clean given the number of people partying.

The only store in the US where carts aren’t a problem is Aldi specifically because a cart deposit is $0.25

The deposit on cans and bottles in some states seems to work perfectly with little to no cost. I'm sure it could work with plastic bags.

I think it might be because this is a tech / start-up forum and not for all topics.

Some of the most important issues facing us right now are simply not allowed and moderated before we even get to vote.

This "struggle" leads to the erosion of institutions, their discrediting, and will end with the fact that in 50 years anyone who mentions ecology will be looked at in much the same way as Jehovah's Witnesses are now looked at.

We wear plastic, we walk on plastic, we build and decorate with plastic, we drive with plastic. Fighting plastic bags is like fighting matches because forests are cut down for them, they emit CO2 when they burn, and they can start a forest fire.

The only reason people tolerate with this is because they are dumb morons on average. But even dumb morons can't be fooled forever - and when society realize the extent of the lies and uselessness they've been fed with, good luck telling them even one thing about ecology, even if it's critically important, because they still remain dumb morons, only with zero trust in the ecology.

So yes, definitely a good strategy to put the future of humanity and the existence of our environment at stake for tiny short-term political gains.

You make some good points, but then what is one to do? I'm hearing from you that short-term efforts, especially ones with political aims, are, at best, misguided and, at worst, capable of exacerbating the ecological problems they are trying to solve. Do you see anything we can do right now to help save our environment? Also, are there any long-term things we could do that you'd recommend?

They investigated plastic bags specifically and found that plastic bag litter specifically went down (according to reading before the Conclusion).

Yeah why? Because you get the choice to take a plastic bag with you or not at the checkout. That’s why. That’s you choice. You have much less (just indirect) choice when it comes to how much plastic the stuff you buy is wrapped in. But wait. That’s a lot of it. Even most apparently cardboard wrapping makes me second guess if there is a microfilm of plastic over it.

So we have to hyperfocus on this type of plastic. The one that is the consumer’s choice. And plastic straws of course.

Even less of a choice is commercial fishing equipment being dumped in the ocean. Or things being dumped from other commercial activities.

They got data from citizen-scientists from plastic cleanup. Were those volunteers?[1] If so, plastic pollution propaganda is so important that the important work of plastic cleanup is given to concerned citizens as a bleeding heart hazing ritual. Is that how serious we are about the issue?

The nearest small sports arena is made of synthetic grass which is pellets of plastic. But that’s fine. Plastic bags.

[1] Or that might just be a stereotype by me

Plastic doesn't actually necessarily end up in the ocean. Most plastic in the ocean comes from certain countries, like the Philippines, while other countries contribute basically not at all. The problem here is mainly the law and law enforcement in certain countries which fail to prevent dumping plastic in the sea. But that's not an overly hard thing to prevent, because many countries are doing it successfully.

Purely anecdotally, when plastic bags in my country started costing 5-ish SEK I switched to fabric reusables (which I already had lying around from conventions and stuff) almost immediately. In the uncommon case where I don't have one handy I go for the 3 SEK paper bag. I think I now buy maybe 2-3 plastic bags a year in some rare instance where one of the other options isn't practical.

In Australia we never had plastic bags on our beaches or plastics straws on the ground. Now we have to buy paper bags at the shop and use dodgy paper straws. The developed world is trying to fix a non problem that actually exists elsewhere.

I wonder if plastic bottles are charged/taxed anywhere? Because I bet they're #2 if not #1 in pollution.

And straws, oh yes. I noticed after covid they're in individual packaging!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container-deposit_legislation

> Because I bet they're #2 if not #1 in pollution.

Why?

That's my guess. Wherever I go outside of cities, I see plastic bottles, bags and other wrapping of sweets, candies, cigarettes, etc.

I never get why people will drop plastic garbage somewhere in nature or just at the roadside. I always associate it with the Alaska Highway in Snow Crash, don't know why :-D

Because you’ve not visited Sicily.

Many places have mandatory deposits on them, ranging from ineffective (California - you pay 5 or 10 cents but there is no practical way to redeem it so it's just an extra tax and there's no extra incentive to dispose of it properly) to very effective (Germany, 25 Eurocents, IIRC any shop that sells drinks in PET bottles has to accept returns of PET bottles).

The German system has interesting side effects: If you litter, a homeless person will soon pick it up, making this double as an additional social system with a built-in needs test. However, a downside is that if you know you won't be returning it, it's actually cheaper to buy and trash a reusable bottle because the deposit on a reusable beer bottle is 8 cents, vs. 25 cents on a can. The production cost for the bottle is around 35 cents I think.

The deposit was introduced as a punitive measure for the industry for failing to keep the percentage of drinks sold in reusable bottles high enough. As soon as the barrier was broken and the threat/incentive gone, glass bottles almost disappeared for anything except beer (and maybe some mineral water).

Even with one of the main benefits (easy disposal) removed - since you can't crush the bottles before returning them and have to drag them back to a store - they are much more popular than glass because unless you go shopping with a car (uncommon in cities in Germany), having to carry twice as much weight (and then drag the heavy packaging back) matters.

> California - you pay 5 or 10 cents but there is no practical way to redeem it

I once brought my cans to a recycling center and got paid. This was in the Bay Area. For the cost of driving it is uneconomical unless you bring hundreds of cans. Someone with a bike and trailer could make it work.

Yeah, the problem is that they aren't required to take them and pay you. Most recycling centers don't have that system. You have to go a long ways out of your way (for most residents), leading to the problem you described.

> Yeah, the problem is that they aren't required to take them and pay you

Yes, they are.

https://calrecycle.ca.gov/bevcontainer/consumers/

Oh, fun, thanks. And it has a link to the form I'm about to fill out from a recycling center who denied that. Excellent.

This page https://www2.calrecycle.ca.gov/BevContainer/InStoreRedemptio... says regular stores take them too.

And the recycling center I went to was right smack in the middle of South Bay. Not inconvenient.

Same. They’ve recently brought CRV charges into Ireland and almost every supermarket has a machine you can get your refund, so much more convenient. I’ve only noticed one of these near me in the Bay Area, and it’s almost always out of order or has queues of people waiting.

With over $800m in unclaimed CRVs[1], I’d wonder what kind of motivation there is to actually improve the service over “pocketing” the money. [1] https://www.kpbs.org/news/environment/2024/06/20/californias...

> California - you pay 5 or 10 cents but there is no practical way to redeem it

There are CRV redemption centers all over the state (concentrated in the same places people are concentrated, basically), many of them in-store ones in retail stores.

I am all for complete and absolute ban on plastic bags.

I think plastic bags, like most things in life is more nuanced than is or isn't bad. We should look at the whole lifecycle costs and usage patterns of not only the bag itself, but it's effects on the people using them. Does a type of alternative make it hard to carry them by foot or by bike? It could be worse if a bag promotes car usage

I've seen some people start using those durable big bags as disposable ones instead of basic plastics in many areas where normal bags weren't available, causing potentially over a hundred times more energy to be consumed and thrown away, the opposite of what was wanted

I think one issue with these plastic bags is that they're very light and not attached to anything. So, even if they end up in a landfill, they can still get blown away and end up in a body of water.

A plastic bag that is used as a garbage bag, on the other hand, will remain where it is because its contents weigh it down.

I'm not sure how to solve this, though. Perhaps standardizing the size of these bags to make them easily usable as garbage bags, and then marking them to indicate reuse, would be helpful.

Counter-anecdote, my county banned disposable plastic bags some years back, effectively ending the former plague of feral plastic bags flapping in the wind everywhere, but I basically never see people buying the cheap bags by the checkout counter.

People really did adapt by bringing their own bags.

(I live in suburb hell -- unfortunately, I'm probably the only person who walks to the grocery store, so car use is unaffected)

> People really did adapt by bringing their own bags.

Maybe it is just my family, but in Eastern Europe, my family and some people do the same. We have re-usable bags that are not made out of plastic, but fabric, and we re-use them every time we shop. The reason for this is that bags are too expensive for what they are, so we do not continue re-buying them due to their high costs. No ban in place from what I know.

Where I live single use plastic bags have been banned for several years now. People either take reusable fabric or jute bags when shopping or have to buy paper ones, which are good enough for a few uses by themselves.

I always keep a bag on me that folds up quite small. It’s a change but easy to adapt to.

>Does a type of alternative make it hard to carry them by foot or by bike?

Just last night we were having family pizza night and realized we didn't have mushrooms. Grabbed a reusable bag -- one that I have used dozens to hundreds of times -- and stuffed it in my pocket and hopped on my bike to the grocery store.

It is an utter non-issue. Indeed, in that case I would never have trusted a classic thin plastic bag but the heavy duty reusable one gives me no concern when it's swinging on my handle as I biked home.

When we first got rid of plastic bags here in Ontario, Canada, early on I'd often find myself at a store with no bags, so I went through the period of accumulation. Not to mention that a lot of stores went through a malicious compliance where the bags they sold were terrible and barely lasted more than one use.

Eventually habits changed and now we as a family pretty much never get new bags, and the options stores sell are significantly better, and are truly reusable.

And like someone else said, plastic bags (and plastic straws for that matter) were an absolute scourge, litter wise. Antisocial litterers, blowing out of garbage, etc. Now I never see them. From an environmental perspective -- meaning I like walking my neighbourhood without seeing trash blowing around -- it is a massive improvement.

How about just reusing them and teaching others to do the same?

We tried that for more than thirty years.

We tried public awareness campaigns, major environmental and educational groups were part of it, celebrities and television personalities held galas on prime time which some estimated 40% of the population tuned into, frequent ad campaigns, via sports clubs and scouting, lobbying, partnering with ski resorts.

It barely worked. Plastic pollution still increased.

The population also increased, but plastic pollution is really a nothingburger to distract us from the real problems, especially with several countries bombing the hell out of others now.

Plastic pollution increased even when taking population growth into account. For example beverage manufacturers have largely moved from reusable glassware to single-use bottle over this time period.

You may want to research the carbon footprint of glass. No only for production but in the transport of goods, where heavy, relatively fragile containers require more energy to ship.

We did do extensive research, and glass came out significantly ahead in the long term, even when accounting for transport and manufacture, this is because glass is multi-use where bottles are re-used hundreds of times before needing to be replaced.

Plastic: <8% reusability via energy-intensive melting and re-shaping.

Glass: >95% reusability via washing, and of the remaining 50% > 99% can be reused via melting and re-shaping.

Over the average lifespan of a glass flask (n≈18 million), it released about 40% less CO2 equivalents compared to the amount of plastic needed to fulfil the same role.

They feel disgusting after you get used to normal bags.

p.s. today I had to buy plastic water bottle for the first time in years. The reason - no water fountain in the park I was visiting. Easiest way to stop it to make alternatives available and affordable.

After the ban on plastic shopping bags in Australia I bought a box of 3000 of them online for rubbish bin liners. I use 2 or 3 a week.

And the biggest contribution to plastic in the oceans is fishing nets. We all ought to do our part and buy less fish.

Driving OTR semi trucks has been 90+ percent of my exposure to the US. While out west, I'd take every opportunity to restock my berth amenities. Being from Florida, I'd never imagined paying for a plastic bag in the process.

I found it a feeble but amiable concept. I'd not be disappointed if my state adopted the practice.

I've always been awkwardly before my time, and seldom redeemed. As a teen, I vituperated against recycling, suggesting a drastic overhaul of the system altogether, for high frequency low volume consumer product containers. Milk, big gulps, H2O, rice, whatever -- it should all be purchased through brilliantly designed, stalwartly sanitary vending systems in a world where we have heirloom water bottles and shopping bags from granpa, made to last and used for ages.

That hasn't happened.

I do my part though. This includes occasional confrontation. One example is what I've coined the Beer Birka.

I sometimes purchase a single beer. While the degree of fervor on the clerk's behalf varies from indifferent to mortal combat, there is a bizarre assumption that the beer must enter a bag, for if not, some unspoken terror is imminent. In some cases, depending on the jurisdiction and endemic insanity thereof, the beverage must accordingly be veiled. In other territories, it's optional, but questioning is discouraged.

There have been many occasions where I exerted eloquent dissent and rational resistance. Again, depending on the coordinates of terrain, reactions range from politely insistent to bellicose.

I often remark that I'll accept the bag, just to spare the beverage from the inevitable beating implied, which would almost certainly affect the opening ritual upon arriving home, suds on the countertop and so on. Lost beer.

I'm not a nudist, but most tinned products shouldn't excite a healthy person to the point of violence or moral crisis.

And for fucks sake, there's a sufficient amount of plastic out there already. So why crusade for more? Just relax, and let people buy shit without invoking unsolicited waste. Back off, you deranged bastards! I'll take the bag and deposit it in back of the facility for you to retrieve after work. I'm willing to compromise.

The petroplasticidal matryoshka paradigm extrudes far beyond though. Anyone east of the Mississippi has been asked, indirectly or point blank," do you want a bag for your bag, sir/ma'am?”.

I often accept, because the difference between their religious artifact and the dwindling roll under my sink permits approximately equal utility, and so, a pile of dog shit or something else fits in just fine, for free.

counting bags instead of measuring total plastic weight is peak policy theater. yeah fewer bags on beaches looks good in a chart, but if each one's 50x thicker now, congrats you just upgraded the pollution class without fixing the problem. are we're optimizing for optics again. where's the data on mass per capita per disposal cycle?

You have a point but it's also kinda flawed. The marginal cost to pick up a thick plastic bag is the same as that of a thin one - perhaps even a bit less as it is less likely to tear and disintegrate, and more likely to either be reusable or return some of its stored energy if burnt.

So if there are only half as many bags to pick up, the cost of mitigation goes down proportionally.

"Let's ban everything that could be remotely harmful" is the way to further rampant authoritarianism, not that we aren't already on that path...

What about “let’s ban things with demonstrated negative impacts and reasonable alternatives”?

Or should we just sacrifice everything on the alter of vaguely defined “freedom”?

"reasonable alternatives"?

Look how well paper straws work... and they're still coated in thin film of plastic anyway. Total stupidity, except for those who are making $$$ from convincing us that they're somehow better.

Plastic bags fulfill a need for a very lightweight, flexible, waterproof container. The alternatives all require more energy overall, which eventually results in CO2 emissions, so if you believe in climate change, that's not good either.

The only argument I've heard against them is "they look bad littered everywhere", which is a purely subjective opinion and one that is better handled, should one want to tackle the problem, by other means than depriving the majority who doesn't litter.

My country switched to reusable bags almost 25 years ago by introducing a levy on their use. Plastic bag litter has basically been eliminated by this change. I don’t know what alternative you have in mind but the research and experience is there to say levies work to reduce litter.

I’ve been using the same bags for about 20 years and they will probably last until I die. The alternative would be around 20,000 disposable bags. I have a hard time believing the lifecycle cost of my 3 bags is higher.

By one of the 7 metrics analyzed, the lifecycle use of 3 organic cotton bags would have been considered higher by the Danish study (https://www2.mst.dk/udgiv/publications/2018/02/978-87-93614-...), but that's obviously the most extreme example and not representative.

I also think that you reusing the same bags for 20 years and never forgetting them is an extreme example and not representative, and when you're at the cashier and realize you forgot your bags, the only realistic option if single use bags have been regulated away is buying another reusable-but-will-see-a-single-use bag.

I have a drawer full of those, and I think I've already thrown one bag full of those out during my last move. More importantly, the annoyance from this and dissolving paper straws has made me swear to never vote for a "green" party that pushes these performative bans (plastic bag litter has never been a major problem in my area), even though I would agree with many of their other policies, both social and environmental. But I'm not going to vote for someone who will go out of their way to add annoyances to my life.

From the study: Conventional cotton bags: Reuse for grocery shopping at least 52 times for climate change, and up to 7100 times considering all indicators; reuse as waste bin bag if possible, otherwise incinerate.

50 times seems real easy, all of mine have been used more often than that. 7000 seems hard to accomplish in a lifetime, though, to me anyway. If I forgot to bring one at a store, I buy a paper bag (which get good grades in the study) and reuse it for paper recycling. Or I reuse discarded cardboard containers available in the store.

I do occasionally forget a bag and have to but a biopolymer or LDPE bag. That doesn’t really impact my totals over a lifetime since it’s a rare occurrence. My bags are woven polyproplene, which the study you linked indicates I need to use about 50 times. I have certainly used them many multiple times more than that.

I think your stance on green politics is quite odd. I’m unaware of any Green Party pushing a ban on plastic straws, in my country signature Green Party policies have been levies on single use plastic bags, plastic container deposit return schemes, the phase out of incandescent lighting, development of renewable energy and reducing the cost of public transport. All of which have measurable impacts on energy use and pollution. In my experience the notion that they push “performative” policies just isn’t true.

> and have to but a biopolymer or LDPE bag.

As long as those still exist, that's fine. I'm talking about the scenario where they have been regulated away (or companies have removed them to look more "green" and make more profit on more expensive bags), so each time this happens, you have to buy a new "reusable" bag. Which quickly nullifies the benefit.

The LDPE bags also have the advantage of being quite awesome for (limited) reuse. They certainly are no "bag for life" but they can be reused a couple of times, and fold down much more compactly than many of the other types.

> unaware of any Green Party pushing a ban on plastic straws

The EU actually passed that as legislation in 2018 or 2019, which also makes it hard to find sources for who pushed it (the final agreement was a compromise so it passed with wide support, and the initial proposal came from the commission which isn't very transparent).

The best I can give you is this press release by the Greens/EFA (the EU parliament fraction encompassing many of the green parties) https://www.greens-efa.eu/en/article/press/single-use-plasti...

This is directly related to the ban that is now in effect.

In Switzerland, I've not seen attempts to ban straws, likely because they've seen how unpopular it is and it would likely get overturned by a referendum, but the Greens repeatedly show up with demands or attempts to ban plastic bags.

You forgot to mention that paper straws can explode!

If the only argument you’ve heard against plastic bags is they look bad, you need to listen more.

Most uses of plastic do not have a reasonable alternative. Glass and metal have properties similar to plastic but require more energy to produce, more material and are heavier which increases freight costs.

Pretty much. We need better alternatives! Better in many ways. Cheap to mass produce, convenient to use, must be reusable, has to be light, has to be biodegradable, should not dissolve after a while (like these cardboard boxes they put my food in).

Those are unfortunately conflicting requirements.

lazy slippery slope and strawman argument is lazy. If you think banning plastic bags are significantly contributing to authoritarianism then your understanding of the term is probably skewed.

And instead we kill a lot more trees and plants to make expensive cotton or polyester bags that are much worse for the environment as a whole. It’s typical left leaning feel good logic instead of actually improving something. Not to mention the inconvenience

Cotton bags are not "much worse for the possibility environment". They only need to be used 131 times to beat out 131 plastic bags.

That's three years of weekly groceries. I plan to shop much longer than three years. Closer to 30.

You expect people to keep these bags for 3 years? No way

Troll somewhere else

I’m not trolling I care about the environment. Cotton bags are just a form of moral licensing and predatory ways to get more income. Same with plastic straws.

Most of my cotton shopping bags are 15+ years old and still going strong.

The cheap plastic-based fiber ones have not held up nearly as well.

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