Hacker News Reader

Comment by swinnipeg | Hacker News Reader

I would wager the median number of uses per cotton bag is way below 173 store visits.

Why would it be that low? I am using 3 if them that are around a decade old.

The average cotton bag has an artificially low number by misleading statistics. Alice uses one bag 100 times, Bob uses 99 bags one time each. If you sample a grocery purchase and check how many times that bag is used in its lifetime it is 50.5 on average. But if you sample a bag and check how many times it is used in its lifetime, it is 2.

Based on my own usage patterns i'd get really roughly that number before they fell apart. The trader joes "burlap" style bag I like would get me about 1 trip a week for about 3 years. It is, notably, plastic lined though.

"fell appart", really?

Or do they sometimes have a part of the stitching failing that takes 2 minutes to repair with a needle and a cotton thread?

catastrophic failure, like objects falling through and fraying that makes repair silly for a $3 bag

I bet you're right. Why though? I've gotten thousands of uses out of mine. Even if you shop infrequently that just means they'll wear out more slowly, so surely that's viable for everyone else, maybe with a 7yr break-even point for an every-2-week shopper?

Because I remember to take mine maybe 25% of the time

Yeah they need to stay in the car. It’s a hard habit to break because we have lived our entire lives bringing the groceries in and unloading.

We actually just get paper bags and reuse them for our recycling items. The paper bag goes into the recycling bin with the rest of the paper.

I actually don’t care if recycling takes more energy. We should save plastics for where they can be best used, and that’s not a one-shot trip to the landfill

> It’s a hard habit to break because we have lived our entire lives bringing the groceries in and unloading.

So... how are you bringing in the groceries? Making 10 trips stacking things in your hands?

Because people forget their bags sometimes, and now they have 2 more they they need to use every week for 3 years to break even, on top of their previous bags. Because people take home leftovers from restaurants and the restaurant sometimes puts them into reusable bags, but you already have 10 reusable bags at home so it's not like getting another is helping. Because you get takeout or delivery once in a while and the food comes in a reusable bag that you are never going to reuse 100 times, because you already have 20 reusable bags from forgetting them while grocery shopping and taking home leftovers.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com