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Comment by mrmincent | Hacker News Reader

I would kill for this for when I’m buying fresh produce at the shops. Right now I just raw dog the produce into my basket as putting 4 apples into a plastic bag to ease the weighing and transport home seems like a selfish thing to do to the environment, but something that starts to break down soon after that sounds great.

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Why don’t you bring plastic bags from home? They are very much reusable, you don’t have to throw them out. They are also quite easy to fold into small shapes and keep on you, or your car, or whatever. I have plastic bags which have endured for literal years. I also decided early on that if I forget to bring a bag, I either do without or have to go back to get one. You start remembering really fast after a few times of forcing yourself to go back.

Another thing you can do is just take a cardboard box from some product in the store. This may depend on country, but where I live the shops leave products on their transport boxes on the shelves. Walking around the store I can usually find one empty box, or maybe one almost empty that I can move the products from into another box for the same product next to it. Then I just take the box and use it to transport my groceries. Stores just throw those boxes out anyway, so they don’t care if you take them (I have asked). At this point it’s a bit of a game for me, to guarantee I always find a box. I have a personal rule never do anything that would make the lives of the workers harder in the process.

This. HDPE lasts. So reuse it.

Cardboard not so much, but where I live one can just take how many boxes one can haul off various shops and they will just thank you.

You can bring your own, non-plastic bags. I do wonder if maybe some cultures just don't have this and so the deprecation of plastic bags has left everyone quite confused.

It's a very solved problem, has been for centuries probably. You can even get some with little wheels! If you absolutely can't handle the looseness of the fruits amongst your shopping, you could use string nets.

Reusable shopping bags have been a thing for a long time, but I think for many, they never went back to them after stores banned them as a Covid mitigation.

Oh interesting, I don't think we had that ban where I live. We had many, many restrictions, but not that one.

> You can bring your own, non-plastic bags.

For sure. But reusing the plastic bag you already have is cheaper and more environmentally friendly than buying a new cloth bag, yet many people never even think of using the same plastic bag twice. Even if some food juice spills inside, you can quickly rinse it off, hang it, and it’s good as new.

In my original reply I was trying to convey that you can be the laziest, most forgetful person, and still have an easy solution.

We farm trees for paper anyway.

Because I forget them at home most of the time on the way to something else.

Again, force yourself to go back or do without whenever you forget, and you’re going to start remembering really fast.

Additionally, don’t just take them when you know you’ll need them, do it before. Next time you need to leave your house to go somewhere, grab some and put them in your car. Done. Go put some right now next to your wallet or keys or literally on the handle of your house’s door.

Or just use the cardboard box approach I mentioned. You can’t forget to bring what’s already inside the store.

I have a cupboard full of bags at home I can reuse. It's right next to my door. Really easy to get to.

75% of the time I forget to take a bag to my car.

As well as all the single use bags (paper and plastic) I bought, I also have jute bags that I got years ago and are still holding up. I like them better as they are bigger and stronger.

Even if I managed to get a bag, the other 75% of the time I forget to take it into the shop and leave it in my car.

Even if I manage all of that, 25% of the time I will end up not having enough bags.

What I would like to see is some kind of deposit system with stronger bags (like my jute bags). Then when I actually remember I can bring them back to the store for someone else to use.

Would it make sense to keep those bags in your car? Or in some of your pockets even ?

The trick is to always have them where you will need them. I always have one or two in my backpack, in my car, in my luggage when I travel... Their size and weight is almost nothing and the only effort is putting them back after use. Which is where it occasionally fails, sure.

The trick is to not bother, just make sure your bag ends recycled not in the street or in the ocean.

Reuse is significantly more effective than recycling. Bothering is something we should indeed do. Though yes, disposing of bags properly is also much superior to just throwing them on the floor.

If you recycle then it's probably just going to a street or ocean somewhere else. Plastic recycling is more or less made up.

They could go into a furnace to get turned into heat, electricity and CO2.

In theory yes, in practice they will be "exported" to a thrid world country with limited processing capabilities and directly dumped into the ocean.

If you use single stream recycling for this, then this is actively bad. Plastic bags clog the sorting machines, and then get thrown out because (even if labeled) they are usually contaminated.

Plastic bags are made of polypropylene, and are garbage.

Plastic for the most part is basically garbage, there are so many types that it’s hard to recycle it. PET and HDPE can be recycled fairly easily if they’re sorted, the rest aren’t really worth it (polypropylene, low density polyethylene, PVC).

The only thing that is almost always economically worth recycling is metal, which is separated from the paper/glass/plastic if you have single stream recycling. Plastic should be burned in a cement kiln or buried in a modern landfill, unless it’s well sorted HDPE or PET.

> 75% of the time I forget to take a bag to my car.

Then take a bunch in the other 25%. You can just leave them in the car.

Grab a bundle right now, or whenever you’re at home and remember, and put them next to your keys, your wallet, or hang them on the handle of your door.

> I like them better as they are bigger and stronger.

Sure, use whatever you like. Just don’t let perfect be in the way of good.

> Even if I managed to get a bag, the other 75% of the time I forget to take it into the shop and leave it in my car.

Then go back to your car! It will be mildly annoying the first two times, and the third time it won’t happen. I mentioned exactly that in my comment.

> Even if I manage all of that, 25% of the time I will end up not having enough bags.

Then start bringing more. This isn’t hard. Leave the extras in your car.

Or just use the cardboard box approach I mentioned.

None of your mentioned obstacles is insurmountable. On the contrary, they are all exceedingly trivial to overcome with the tiniest amount of will to do so.

> 75% of the time I forget to take a bag to my car.

I put our reusable ones on the floor in the entrance to the garage and then that reminds me to put them back in the trunk whenever I go to the car for whatever reason. Then I always have them while out.

I've sometimes left them in the car but just excuse myself at the checkout and go fetch them while the groceries are being rung up.

We use a collapsible (plastic) shopping basket/tub-with-handles for wet produce, the stuff the grocery store insists on spraying periodically, and things like tomatoes where we don't care if they get wet. The store clerks are used to it now and prefer it because they don't have to scan through bags and just put the produce back in the basket afterwards.

If you go this route, keep onions and garlic separate. They last longer if they stay dry.

I quit using bags for produce--I just put the produce in my basket or cart and then straight into the checkout bag on my way out of the store.

The exception is small loose produce like snap peas.

Ugh. That's a REALLY bad idea for anything that you don't thoroughly cook.

That's such an American fear.

Wash it (as you should anyways) and you'll be fine ...

Just wash some forever checmicals over the pesticides, that'll do the job. Jokes aside, i raw dog with a quick wash and im yet to have caught covid so it cant be that bad.

I always find it interesting when I visit Italy. The supermarkets there do sell some kind of dissenfectent for produce, and everyone is really strict about using gloves (this was even before COVID). My country has none of that...

It's really weird how some safety regulations differs between countries - sometimes the rules are even the exact opposite like washing eggs before sale in the US vs. EU.

Makes you wonder how much of it is actually based on any kind of rigorous science and how much is done just because someone thought it was a good idea once and now its just how we do things.

Unwashed produce has essentially zero risk of COVID. Other various bacterial contamination, yes, though it's very rare for those to do worse than give you an upset stomach or cause any lasting damage.

I hate to break it to you, but the loose produce in store isn't clean. That's why you must wash produce before you eat it.

Any washing you do to the produce at home has basically zero chance of killing/removing anything. It's hygiene theatre. People typically don't wash their produce in bleach or soap.

Water is a great solvent! And, I'm sure you could use unscented soap if you wanted to. (I just use water)

Anyway, if water won't wash the food clean, then one may as well not shop at the grocery store.

Well, I use dishsoap

What are you basing this on? If I buy something like parsley and don't wash it then it tastes a bit like fly killer, but if I rinse it thoroughly then it doesn't. Is that just placebo?

I’m pretty sure I’d rather remove the dirt from my vegetables, but you do you.

You can also read the studies that show mechanical action (brushing, rubbing) under running water effectively reduces the bacteria count https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0362028X2...

It’ll never be sterile, but it doesn’t need to be for a healthy human. Probably shouldn’t be either.

That link makes my day and confirms so much I wondered about food cleanliness theater.

It's gross but I tend to leave a tiny bit of dirt on my potatoes. I think it's an emotional callback to your point that it might not be great for our food to be completely sterile.

Sorry--I don't understand the risk. Are you concerned about germs? Pesticides? Other?

As someone who works in a market, eating anything without cooking or washing it first is a bad idea. Most of it is fine, but people are disgusting and there's no way of knowing how many people have touched your apple, if someone's kid managed to lick it without you noticing, or someone managed to push everything off the shelf onto the nonslip mat before they got stopped. Bagged produce can be even worse, given the amount of condensation inside the bag after it warms up on the loading dock and then sits in the cooler. The mister above the fresh greens and such doesn't do much and they regularly get touched and knocked out. The potatoes are probably the best, as the dirt on them is obvious.

If you live in an area with entitled people and spineless corporate rules that don't allow stores to confront people over pets, that's instantly worse than everything else combined. Pets like to lie on the floor, someone's dog has peed on the floor, 5 different random people have petted hugged or picked up that dog and 3 others since they left the house. One of those people is probably a cashier who then handles every item you've bought. And then someone inhaled pet hair and sneezed.

People dramatically over weight how bad plastic is for the environment. The impact of a 10 min car ride = 10,000+ plastic bags of emissions. And in first world countries almost no household plastic ends up in the environment.

Can't imagine this survives napkin scrutiny. A ten mile drive isn't using nearly as much hydrocarbon mass as 10k plastic bags. While most of the plastic hopefully winds up in a landfill, most of the gasoline is water and carbon dioxide by the end. It's tires versus bags. While tires shed, the mass lost in 10min is definitely quite a bit lower than 10k bags or the fraction that escapes the waste pipeline.

30mpg, 10 miles, means two pounds of gasoline, 910grams, knock off or add 100g for ethanol per your preference, a google says about 5grams per bag, so nearly 200 bags.

Nowhere close to 10k, but nontrivial. And, this gets reduced and sometimes outright negated if you reuse the bag. Doesn't mean we shouldn't evaluate if plastic shopping bags are the beat choice though.

I don't think replacing them with store bought doggy poo and cat litter bags is better. It's not a reduction and theres no reuse. If you find yourself discarding them outright, then find an alternative I guess.

I think your math is wrong. Most of modern cars do up to 150g of CO2 per 100km, there are other emissions too, but they are in way smaller numbers.

I think the units there are off, a Camry hybrid is about 100g direct CO2 per km. One widely repeated calculation has total direct + indirect emissions for a grocery bag at 200g. So 1km driven vs 1 bag is a similar magnitude of emissions.

Please be careful of such "metrics/statistics." Their very nature means they're politically and financially incentivized lean towards a higher or lower number than "the other guy." And, of course, a big number is scarier in a vacuum. What if a paper bag is 250g of emissions?

The poster child for me for this is low-GWP refrigerants. Sounds good, right? Well, think about how CO2 captured filtered and compressed compares. I'll leave everybody to argue with their-self on this. Does co2 vs r-whatever use more energy? Less? Does it somehow justify the emissions and pollution of manufacture?

My conclusion is... I don't know.

We have enough data to estimate the reasonable range of possibilities and exclude the upthread assertion that a ten minute car ride is similar emissions to 10k plastic bags. A degree of uncertainty need not make us helpless in the face of loud ignorance, that's how we end up giving equal weight in the media to common consensus of professionals in whatever field and political operatives with fringe beliefs but no evidence.

Sorry, I screwed up and misread what you wrote- primarily, a simple "we can do way better than 30mpg." And theres not a lot in the way of wiggle room to debate with any integrity the amount of CO2 burning a set quantity of gas produces. A couple percentage points for NOx and friends and thats it.

I am confused why everybody mentions emissions though. In a discussion on paper/plastic/reusable bags, in a response to a call for napkin math for a claim of "10,000 bags from the fuel needed to get to the store" (essentially the argument made)- CO2 isn't relevant: just the mass of the gas used to get to the store.

I'm not pleased with how this turned out. to be told I'm wrong? That's fine, its the internet. I'm disappointed and alarmed with how badly wrong the suggested corrections are... it's deeply frustrating for me as well.

Also most of that weight is oxygen. The mass of carbon from the gasoline in an apples to apples comparison to plastic would be much lower.

It doesn't really make sense to be comparing plastic waste to CO2 emissions though. These aren't fungible.

Thats comically wrong. Human Resting metabolism is on the order of 20grams of CO2/hr.

See: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S036013232...

As for a kilo of gas per 10 miles- see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline - says 0.71-0.77g/mL, standard conversion table says 3.785L per gallon. (https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/volume-units-converter-d_...), and finally- since we're comparing burning gas for a car vs using it in plastic: the figure of merit is petroleum usage, not greenhouse gas emission. Technically, plastic and gasoline aren't going to be 1:1. But that's not napkin math anymore unless you're a petroleum engineer/chemist.

10 miles in a 30pmg vehicle uses only 1/3 of a pound of gasoline, or roughly 150g. So, nowhere close to 10k or even 1k...

150g is only equal to about 1-5 of the reusable bags in CA grocery stores, depending on the store.

I can breathe CO2. I don't want plastic in my brain. These two things are not the same.

Cars don't only need gasoline to exist and work.

Don’t forget that a lot of carbon went in to making the road, the parking (deforestation or other land destruction for those should be considered too), the car itself, emissions from tyre wear, brake dust, some plastic for the single use medical devices necessitated by treatment of people struck by drivers, etc etc.

Though what is often forgotten is the insane amounts of plastic used in farming. Occlusion fabric for weeds, polytunnel skins, silage wrap, etc

I didn't forget, its just awfully hard to fit all that on a napkin.

>People dramatically over weight how bad plastic is for the environment.

I can only give a: what in the fuck are you talking about?? Modern medicine is literally finding microplastics in men's testes. "People" are dramatically underestimating how completely and utterly screwed the next dozen generations of humanity are with the plastic waste we've blanketed the earth in. Assuming humans survive that long.

At least microplastics don't make you angry and violent that we can tell.

On the other hand, it's going to be around (relative to pre-emission levels) for a lot longer than the lead (paint gets chipped off and disposed of, we stopped using it in end-consumer products, etc)

There's some concern that microplastics in the brain could contribute to depression, anxiety, executive function disorders, autism, Alzheimer's etc.

As the amount of plastics in the brain increases who knows what it'll do to us.

Sure plastic aren't great for the environment when we're just dumping it out there without much care. Obviously reducing waste and reusing is what we should strive for on all fronts. Demonizing one thing results in overcompensation on the flip side and we know for a fact that that's not where we want to end up either. Remember when we tried to reduce paper use as much as possible because of deforestation? Or saturated fats?

> Remember when we tried to reduce paper use as much as possible because of deforestation?

No, I don’t. I do remember a push to recycle paper which was a net win for everyone.

> Or saturated fats?

Great counterpoint. Remind me of the benefits of having microplastics in your testes. Which part of that had scientists questioning historical data?

That's emissions. The problem with plastics is not emissions but their biodegradability (or lack thereof).

it's about rubber tires that shed a lot of micro plastic

I cycle to the supermarket and every bush I pass on the way is full of plastic.

How is that the fault of plastic wrappings and not the fault of people throwing trash onto the side of the road?

Where did I say that? I was only responding to the assertion "in first world countries almost no household plastic ends up in the environment" pointing out that I see it everywhere.

My bad, sorry. I also see it

> in first world countries

Most would consider The Netherlands to be a first world country, but I understand the term is anachronistic.

it's not about CO2 emissions, it's about plastic waste that eventually degrades to microplastics

> The impact of a 10 min car ride = 10,000+ plastic bags of emissions.

Emissions isn't the main problem with plastics.

But yes, we should also cut down on driving cars, or drive EVs, or take public transport.

SAME. It kills me inside when people wrap things like fruits and potatoes in plastic that have natural peel they'll remove before eating anyways

Japan is wild for this, but also pretty good at recycling plastic in general.

Bananas are often wrapped individually for sale. You buy a box of biscuits and they're often individually wrapped in plastic etc.

Japan recycles but also a whole bunch of their waste is incinerated. I think they super-heat it to reduce emissions but guessing that also costs energy which also secondarily causes emissions.

It is energy positive. Their incineration plants provide power.

Most of that plastic can't be recycled so it's probably being burned or thrown away.

Japan incinerates most of their plastic.

Why don't you just buy some re-usable fruit bags?

https://www.target.com/p/lotus-original-reusable-produce-bag...

> I just raw dog the produce into my basket

It's crazy, and how fast "glazed" became commonplace.

Bring a cloth bag to put the apples in after checkout.

The plastic bag also prolongs the life of the produce, which is the main reason I want it.

Wasting produce is much worse for the environment than wasting a bag. After all if you don't litter the bag, throwing it out is pretty harmless.

we use these fresh and crisp bags. They sound like a gimmick but they really do work. We reuse a bag for months until its full of holes and not doing its job well anymore.

https://www.woolworths.com.au/shop/productdetails/2824/fresh...

Why not use a fabric bag?

Either way good on you

Would be nice to have bags like that with their weight printed on them that machines trust.

Where I live they have scales that tare at the beginning as part of the process of using your own bag.

Do you write down the result? How is the process connected? Smart produce scales log weight => Smart checkout scales compare weight to produce logs?

Write down -what- result.

You put the bag on the scale, it then sets this amount to 0.0

You put the product on the scale, (say 500g of apples), It shows 500g.

You remove the bag, it takes off 4g, you add the bag it puts on 4g.

There is no need to write down the result.

In the US, produce is rarely weighted and labeled in the produce section with the bag. Only at checkout is it weighed for sale, so no opportunity to tare the container.

Today I learned.

Are bags so heavy that you need to tare them out?

the places around here are using compostable plastic bags. not sure what it's made of but it can be composted in municipal facilities according to the bag. one downside is they are green tinted and harder to see what is in there but if it removes some of the plastic killing the ocean then i'm for it... assuming it's not a plastic that degrades into microplastics.

> but if it removes some of the plastic killing the ocean then i'm for it

It doesn't. The plastics in the ocean don't come from your grocery store. They come from fishing gear and from places without municipal trash service.

Honestly? It's basically greenwashing, it doesn't actually do anything at all. No one ever composts this things, and landfilling or incinerating a bag does not harm the environment.

I just threw one of those into my compost pile last month and it’s still there. No clue how long it’s supposed to take.

Compostable plastics don't compost if you just throw them in a compost heap, you need to compost them in high-temperature conditions.

Well that is disappointing. I feel like that should be specified on the bag instead of alleging it is generally compostable like a brown paper bag.

yeah I mentioned municipal compost because they can get the compost temperature way higher than we can at home scale. It should break down in the big compost piles they have

Most of these at least in my region are made from cornstarch. They decompose well/without "microplastics" but only under correct conditions.

Home composts aren't usually meeting these, their temperature isn't going high enough for full decomposition and you can have traces of polymers left behind. I throw them in the trash for compostable waste because thankfully my collectivity collects these to generate biogas and my guess is they do end up in much larger/managed composts where they can fully decompose.

I thought it was all PLA:

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

I think there's also "biodegradable" plastic which has cornstarch in it which allows bacteria to degrade it, but that's not the same thing?

PLA doesn't actually biodegrade outside of specialist industrial facilities, it was much vaunted as an eco friendly thing when 3d printing started using it, but we rapidly found out it can last decades without breaking down much if at all.

> it can be composted in municipal facilities according to the bag

Note that "according to the bag" is very different from "according to your municipality"; my understanding is that most places actually can't handle them, and they might need to divert your compost to the landfill if it has too much of those plastic bags. They can be composed under certain conditions, but whether the facility your municipality uses has those is unclear.

See also "flushable" wipes that must not be flushed down the toilet.

> See also "flushable" wipes that must not be flushed down the toilet.

That really should be prosecuted for false advertising. Just because I can physically flush Orbeez down the toilet doesn't mean it's safe to do so.

I'd assume those bags would be okay considering they break down after a few days of holding compostable materials, and frequently make a mess in the compost bin. The "compostable" cutlery is definitely not compostable under normal household situations though.

My understanding is most manicipal compost facilities can handle them - the vast majority of manicipalities don't have a facility at all. They are expensive. A home pile won't compost them, a pile at manicipal size is likely a health hazzard and so not a good option.

Ironically i only use the produce bags to wrap raw chicken and beef in an entirely different section.

I’d guess paper would work fine for that purpose, except that it’s harder for the checkout person.

I've been doing that since before anyone cared, it just seems wasteful to use a bag for a handful of things. I use bags if I buy more than a few of something, or if it's something with dirt on like potatoes.

I bring these little net bags from home. They work great to keep the veggies separated.

https://a.co/d/4luSE9Q

We have been using linen bags from Rough Linen and have been pretty happy with those.

We've got reusable mesh bags that we use for this.

Paper bags solve that use case much better.

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