California on verge of banning plastic bags

[August]

Y'know if shopping bags were made biodegradable this would avoid the whole issue. We need something that degrades like paper, is as strong and light as plastic and is just as cheap to produce.

[Subnuts]

I'm more concerned about paper grocery bags. My front end manager told me last year that a single paper bag costs as much as four plastic bags, and I almost never see anyone reusing them. Besides that, I constantly see customers using a double paper bag for two rolls of paper towels, and kleptomaniacal seniors sneaking away with 15 or 20 bags when no one is looking. Apparently, our store spent $1 million on grocery bags in 2007, which comes to about $2,500 for every employee. OTOH, we offer canvas bags for $0.99, which can hold 30 pounds of groceries easily, and deduct five cents from the bill for every bag the customer uses.

Even if one ignores the environmental issues of paper and plastic bags, a gradual shift towards reusable bags might make sense economically.

[GoldenRivet]

personally, i'm with California on this one.

our society has become so wasteful. We use these reusable cloth bags...



...but occasionally forget to bring them when we make unexpected stops at the stores.

most of the stuff in my home is reusable, I have even been known to remove the labels from glass jars and bottles, clean them thoroughly and use them as drinking glasses.

not only that but i remember an article i read that claimed that something on the order of several million barrels of oil go into plastic bag manufacturing.

think about it, we use a precious resource to manufacture something that will be used all of 10 minutes, then relegated to the dump by most people - there it will sit pretty much forever.

[August]

I think the reason you rarely see anyone reusing paper bags these days is because they use plastic bags instead. They're what's on hand.

I remember as a kid my parents reusing paper grocery bags for all kinds of stuff.

[GoldenRivet]

Originally Posted by August

I remember as a kid my parents reusing paper grocery bags for all kinds of stuff.

with a pair of scissors and a magic marker... you could make yourself into a scary robot

[Aramike]

Seriously? Has anyone at all thought about this???

We're living in a society in which some want to BAN PLASTIC BAGS. And that's acceptable.

It's legal to, say, smoke cigarettes, but we're worried about freakin' plastic bags.

Does California not have anything better to worry about right now? Surely their economy must be chugging right along. And I imagine that the workers who labor in the plants that create plastic bags will be well-served by this. Perhaps now they can do what everyone else is doing, and get a nice cozy government job - a job that requires more than 10 private sector workers to pay for.

Oh, and I reuse plastic grocery bags all the time. But I guess recycling doesn't matter unless it can create some kind of statistic the pols can use...

[Turbografx]

I wish people would just bring their own re-usable heavy-duty bags to the super-market with them. Everyone did this when I lived in the Netherlands and it wasn't a big deal. Nice not to see all those trashy bags everywhere. You can still get them but they cost like .25 cents so everyone just brings their own grocery bag.

[d@rk51d3]

Plastic bags (thin type grocery bags) have been banned here in South Australia for at least 12 months. Shopping centres stock the "cloth" bags that you can buy for $1, if you forget your own.

Drawback is that now we need to actually purchase bin liners.

Strangely, the heavy duty plastic bags you get from department stores aren't banned.

Biodegradeable bags seem to be knackered before you even get to use them.

[Admiral8Q]

Originally Posted by mookiemookie

I'm not sure about this. I re-use plastic bags from the store often and I wouldn't like if they got rid of them. I think they have it backwards here. They should give out the paper bags for free, but charge you extra if you wanted plastic.

Sounds pretty inconvenient. But reading the stories about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and you kind of understand where they're coming from.

Well in some provinces in Canada they charge you a few cents for each bag and don't even offer paper ones. Idiotic really. Though I remember when I moved to British Columbia a few years ago and bought over $300 in groceries, and they said that will be 3 pennies per bag. I said, "Never mind the bags" Then they said they only accept a credit card from them (Superstore). I was ready to abandon my selections of groceries but the manager made an "acception on the policy" and let me use my VISA.

Mind you to see, I never shopped there again after that PITA.

[Tchocky]

Originally Posted by August

Charging for plastic bags is not going to address the litter problem which is what this is all about. Now a deposit system like that on cans and bottles might but i'd bet it would cost a lot more to administer than an outright ban.

Litterbugs suck.

Speaking from what's happened in Ireland, we introduced a levy on bags and the littering dropped massively. I think usage dropped by something like 98% after the introduction.