My state has plastic shopping bag bans across (most of?) the state and I feel like it’s completely backfired.
Now, instead of those thin plastic bags everyone used to get, people are charged 20 cents for a “reausable” bag, which is still a shitty bag that no one seriously reuses or wants, but it’s thick plastic, like thick, crunchy, and indestructible. Maybe double the plastic waste.
I TRY to remember my (actual) reusable bags, I really do. But sometimes I forget and I wind up with these big thick bags I don’t want to reuse and wind up throwing out or “recycling” (which probably means shippibg then to the Philippines).
I also do curbside grocery pickup frequently and the ONLY option is to get those thick “reusable” bags with your order. Otherwise the grocery employee (who can’t accept tips) will need to individually place each item in my car one at a time.
The thin plastic disposable bags were better. Paper bags would be better. This 20 cents for a “reausable” bag loophole is total bullshit.
I think it’s important to remember that re-using something like that a couple times is even better than using the recycling bin. I love those things because I end up with a small heavy duty trash bag for around my apartment which comes in handy surprisingly often. Of course it’s not perfect, I also try to remember my really reusable bags.
The bags I get from Fred Meyer are so awkwardly shaped and crinkly I haven’t been able to find another use for them. I used to reuse the old plastic bags all the time. To scoop cat litter into, small garbage can liners… but these are wide and shallow, you can’t even tie them closed. They’re so ridiculous they barely hold groceries.
I remember a while ago reading that the thick plastic bags are worse, because they take so much longer to break down, you have to re-use them something like 1000 times to make them more environmentally friendly than using a thin one that degrades much quicker. This was based on the types of plastic bags in use at UK supermarkets. The thick ones were marketed as ‘bags for life’, which they’re not.
Plastic definitely had a pretty good PR team in the beginning there. “Don’t use metal cans, the chemicals the leach into water kills fish”. “Switch to plastic drink bottles, glass is dangerous to wildlife if it ends up in the ocean”
Never heard those. The ones I would hear are. It takes a bajillion pounds of fossil fuels to make one can. Glass will just randomly explode into a shower of splinters that will definitely get into all the children’s feet with no warning whatsoever.
Obviously plastic causes a whole bunch of other problems but using it for bags literally does save the rainforests in a roundabout sort of way.
Corporations being corporations, very few are going to spend the extra money to offer you FSC certified paper bags sourced from a well managed, renewable plantation. They are going to buy the absolute cheapest product available that they can slap their logo on.
The inevitable consequence of that choice is that those bags likely come from a country with little to no regulation of their forest industry. In all likelihood those ultra cheap bags are either a) made from irreplaceable old growth forest that was then burned to cinders and turned into a palm oil plantation.
Or b) made from low grade timber imported from the other side of the planet. When this timber arrives, it and everything else in the hold are completely and utterly black with mould. All good though, you can just blast it with a mixture of industrial bleach and a cornucopia of the harshest chemicals imaginable before draining and allowing that entire slurry to wash into the river, which then flows to the ocean.
Now you can make paper!
Even where I live in Australia, we’ve rapidly shut down sustainable state forest logging for hardwood. These decisions were made on emotion, but essentially out of a desire to do good. It’s just unfortunate that the people making that series of decisions doesn’t really understand the consequences of their actions.
We do not have anywhere near the amount of sustainable plantation required to service the needs of our local paper making industry. Further still, you can’t make quality paper out of plantation pine alone: you need hardwood.
There’s massive investment into hardwood plantation timber over the next few years. Unfortunately we are looking at 30 years of buying our bags from countries where there are no standards, and no hesitation to pump chemical slurry into the ocean or cut down old growth forest to make shopping bags.
So yeah, I’ll take the plastic thanks. I’ll re-use it as a bin liner before it goes to landfill but at least it isn’t burning sludge diesel in TWO directions as the ingredients are shipped around the world and it didn’t pour a thousand litres of filth into the ocean or tear down an old growth forest.
I think it could depend a lot where you are. I just took a look at my own paper bag from Trader Joe’s in CA. I looked up the company that produced it, it seems like they’re using 3rd party sourcing certification and source their pulp domestically. Also 40% of the bag is recycled. I’d love to be proven wrong but it seems like it’s a lot better than plastic to me.
Oh without a doubt. I have no idea what sort of store trader joe’s is, but I’d imagine whole foods stores and others who want to look like they give a fuck would do their due diligence on the supply chain. In which case absolutely paper is better than plastic! It’s renewable and doesn’t stick around forever.
And speaking as a kiwi, we produce very little for ourselves. Most of our production is immediately sent overseas for better prices… This is double-bad because we’re so damn isolated.
I’ve sat amongst policy wonks trying to raise the profitability if the country and had them joking that if we could just move across the equator closer into Asia, it would all be so much easier…
My point is, the carbon miles on everything makes it awful. Sure consumers and supermarkets are changing (after legislation, certainly not before!), but the whole playing field is based around the convenience of the shipping container and it’s absolutely unsustainable.
I don’t know how it works in New Zealand, but in the US fruit is weighed for cost. The plastic bags don’t really weigh anything, but imagine if you have cloth then that could add to your cost. Of course you could just take the fruit out, but what if you bought 10 separate apples (which I do a lot) or something like that? There’s probably a work around. I’m just not aware.
The official government guidance discusses that. It’s illegal to charge for weight of packaging under the weights and measures act, so they’re encouraged to program in known-bags and empty/tare customer provided bags.
bbc.co.uk
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