That’s on the whole probably good news, though I’m having trouble finding immediate satisfaction. Banning plastic bags doesn’t necessarily mean less of an impact on the environment. Not without a behavior change, as well.
Plastic bags have the lowest carbon footprint to produce and distribute compared to paper, polypropylene, or cotton. In many places plastic bags (including small produce bags) can be recycled at the grocery store (two near me do but it’s easy to miss). I also found plastic very easy to reuse. It’s a bit annoying to have to buy trashbags when my reused grocery bags worked fine and were made of less material.
Reusable totes are only as eco friendly as they are reused (about 130 times to equal plastic). Forgetting them and amassing a huge collection is not progress nor is using paper bags once and then recycling them. source
Happy to see attention on the issue but as I haven’t always appreciated the nuances or been wary of the green washing in the past, I thought this was worth sharing. Progress is rarely as simple as a new regulation or new product, as strong capitalist forces would want us to believe. If we want meaningful progress we need to foster a culture that consumes less and reuses more.
recycled at the grocery store
recycling thin films often doesn’t happen without specialized equipment and most regions don’t have it. so they collect it, but… it probably goes to a landfill.
Now what about food packaging? Everything comes in plastic!
I live in Italy. We have plastic bags made out of plant material. They feel flimsy but they get the job done. They’re not very reusable though.
Great for food waste bins
this is what my compost bin liners and dogshit baggies are made of. decomposes in a few days, but fine for their purpose.
no food packaging should last a decade.
Now where will people store all their other plastic bags in under the sink???
We’ve had this in Jersey for a couple of years now. It’s been great. I highly suggest that any Californians who read this go to their nearest grocer within the week after the change goes into effect, I had a grand old time laughing at all the lazy people raging at having to pay for reusable bags. I had already been using my own bags for years so it didn’t change my behavior at all. Has changed how much plastic litter I’ve seen outside, though.
Sometimes I still forget to bring a bag, then I need yet another wawa bag, and I just stare at this neverending pile of bags
I just walk out of Wawa looking like the “why can’t I hold all these limes” guy.
I always leave one extra bag in my trunk and only use it when I forget the others. That helps in a pinch
We’ve gotten better about bringing them to the car by making sure empties are in front of the door.
Just ask for a cardboard box. Supermarkets have masses of boxes which just go to waste or recycling. My local puts them near the checkouts for customers to grab.
I like the reusable bags, when I remember to take them!
Costco packs everything this way and it’s great.
Eh, it’s not so great trying to dispose of all the boxes, plus all the excess packaging from Costco trips. My recycling bin is completely full after a Costco trip, and it takes forever to break everything down and dispose of it.
In my experience, it’s resulting in bags that use much more plastic being disposed of, instead of the thin plastic bags they used to use.
It’s a great usability improvement that groceries have good quality plastic bags again. Here they charge 10¢/bag, so hopefully that’s enough to make people try.
It’s a new habit I’m still having trouble with and have so many 10¢ bags to bring to the grocery - every time I forget I have to buy more. I guess it’s better than paying yet more for hundreds of cloth bags
California already had banned single use bags. We’ve been
postingpaying for “reusable” plastic bags for a couple years already. This legislation bans all plastic bags, including the reusable types. Now we get tobeingbring our own bags, or get paper bags.I don’t understand… my local Safeway here in California still offers only single use plastic bags. They are a somewhat thick bag but still single-use, not some permanent thing you own.
Yeah, those thicker ones are considered reusable, and therefore are exempt from the single-use plastic bag ban. This legislation closes that loophole.
Ooooookay thanks.
Hm, well, we use the plastic bag recycling bin at Safeway for all our plastic bags, shrink wrap, and bubble envelopes. We dropped off 8 bags this weekend. I wonder if they will get rid of that bin now?
Yeah it’s really dumb. They got rid of the thin bags, and replaced them with bags that use 20x more plastic. I guess people are supposed to reuse those, but very few people do. Their big brain idea was to use 20x more plastic to stop all the plastic waste.
Gotcha. I guess no schadenfreude is on the horizon. Oh well
My Whole Foods just uses paper bags, so I guess this doesn’t affect me :shrug:.
I have so many reusable bags, mainly because I have a terrible case of “God fucking dammit I forgot to put it in the car again-itis” but i still wouldn’t go back to plastic bags
I have an “emergency” bag I leave in my trunk that I only use when I forget my usual ones. It helps!
But then you forget to put that back in the trunk too.
the change itself is worth it to me; I don’t need to laugh at anyone.
we swapped to reusable bags here in seattle ages ago. then came covid, and some silly idea that reusable bags might spread it. so plastic came back.
we’re back to our reusables but the grocery is handing out free thick plastic bags so no one brings their own, again. we’re going to have to go through it all again.
in some ways I prefer paper bags but the handles on the cloth reusable bags are better.
Ayy fuck Newsom. That is all.
No find all trash bags you can find now and make them into a plastic dildo and use that to go fuck all plastic bag manufactures. That’s much better in my opinion.
Why? For doing a good thing?
$20 says you’re one of those grocery store customers that has to have everything put into a paper bag, and then double-bagged in plastic. Customers like that made me quit retail. We were constantly running out of bags because of customers like that.
Quit being lazy and just bring your own bags.
I don’t care about the bags, He’s authoritarian elite, he’s not looking out for me. Fuck him
So you showed up just to make an off-topic comment.
Another tax on the working class. Thank you sir, can I have another?
What tax?
For the past few years needing a bag already came with a 10¢ charge per bag for either paper or plastic. This law just bans stores from offering the “reusable” plastic bags, which were near identical to the standard ones, just 5-10x thicker and supposedly having a rating of 125+ reuses.
Those bags were still sub-par quality, supplied in bulk, and rarely used more than once other than for filling with refuse. That previous law never made much sense.
