Ditching plastic bags 'no real use

When they took over our local Safeway, Morrisons started to charge for carrier bags. It caused a huge outpouring of emotion and the practice was rapidly stopped. I suppose it would be different if it was a legal requirement. The Co-op uses biodegradable plastic for their bags, which is an interesting idea.

Darat said:
Iin those days you could buy a plane for tuppence!
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And still have enough change to buy a bag of chips on the way home.
 
webfusion said:
OK, how about THIS solution?
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There's a problem.

Fully 25% - maybe more - of the U.S. population is oblivious.

You know these people. If your town is a tourist haven, they come to visit with their entire family, and walk five abreast down the sidewalk, sometimes holding hands, forcing you to either step into the street to get out of their way, or give them a nasty look and say something snarky as they get close.

They get off the escalator, then stop right there to turn around and check to see if the rest of their herd is still behind them (no, genius, they were magically teleported to Planet X about halfway down).

They merge into traffic oblivious to the fact that there may already be someone in the spot they're trying to get into.

They have loud, intense conversations on their cell phone in public places.

They'll stand on line an McDonald's, having a delightful conversation ahead of you, and only when they get to the front of the line do they figure out, "Hey, maybe we should try to decide what we want to eat..."

And if they're carrying a long pole over their shoulders, do you think it occurs to them what will happen to the three feet of pole extending out behind them if they turn to their right?

"Hey Moe! Hey Larry! Wooh! Wooh! Wooh!"

FWIW, I once saw a lady knitting a blanket out of old plastic shopping bags while waiting for her flight out of Salt Lake City airport.
 
All of my local supermarkets have carrier bag recycling bins.

I re-use mine where I can, but I find they are so flimsy, they rarely take more than two uses before they die.

I also use them for kitchen waste. I hang one on the cupboard door so it's right by my arm while I'm peeling etc. Very useful. Then I put it straight into the large communal bins.

I also use them for lining the wastepaper baskets around the house.
 
a_unique_person said:
If it is determined that plastic bags are a threat to wildlife and cost money to clean up, then a remedy is required. It may be that a legal remedy is chosen.
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Required? The whole problem may be that that is going too far. But let the sob stories roll so politicians can ride to the "rescue".
 
Around here, most of the grocery stores will accept them back into a recycle bin. We do that about every month.

With a couple of teenagers in the house, we find it pretty easy to accumulate a lot of those bags.
 
I've seen it argued that since paper weighs more, it takes more gas to drive it to the store.

a_unique_person said:
They say that only 1% end up 'in the wild', but it's 1% of 5 billion. The people tending the dead marine life would know that it's still a serious issue. They look just like jellyfish. Even if they are handy to use as bags for waste disposal, the question is if the benefit outweighs the cost. I don't mind putting up with the inconvenience if it's going to benefit the environment.
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I'm not willing to take it for granted that killing a few million animals each year is definitely going to cause a problem. And there's a difference between wildlife and the environment.

webfusion said:
Also, in hotlinking, you are doing nothing relevant or governed by copyright anyway. The act of linking is basically telling others where the work is already available to the public.
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Not exactly. A normal link tells the reader of the thread where to find the work. A hotlink tells the reader's computer where to find the worl, and tells the computer to go get it.

The copyright owner doesn't have any exclusive right to tell others about his works.
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Actually, the owner does have that right. But if one makes it available on the internet, one cannot complain about it being available on the internet.
 
I carry a large, lightweight canvas shopping bag most times I go out, sometimes two of them. They can hold much more than the bags at stores, the handles are longer so you can sling them over your shoulder, and I don't end up with cabinets full of plastic bags.

Here in Hong Kong, my nearest recycling post is conveniently just outide the nearest grocery store. So I take the bag that I put my recycling in, put the cans/bottles/paper into the appropriate bins, pop into the grocery store, then use the now empty bag to take home the stuff I buy.

One grocery store chain here has recently started giving customers .10 cents off their bill for each plastic bag they don't use. Not much, but it's a good start. In some groceries in Amsterdam and Germany that I've been to, the store sells their plastic bags to customers -- around .30 euro I think. In Johannesburg, it's .65 rand at the Checkers Superstore for each plastic bag you use.
 
yanit said:
One grocery store chain here has recently started giving customers .10 cents off their bill for each plastic bag they don't use.
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Really???

"Hey, it looks like you have about ten thousand plastic bags in this store. I only need three for my groceries. So, I guess you owe me $997.00 for the ones I'm not using..."
 
What's weird is how automatically the clerks put everything into a bag. One time I bought a mop, and the clerk put the mophead in a bag. What good does that do? Or I go to the bakery, put some pastries in a bag, and go to have it rung up, and they put the bakery bag into another bag.
 
Art Vandelay said:
What's weird is how automatically the clerks put everything into a bag. One time I bought a mop, and the clerk put the mophead in a bag. What good does that do? Or I go to the bakery, put some pastries in a bag, and go to have it rung up, and they put the bakery bag into another bag.
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Or when they went to put the toolbox at Home Despot into a bag.

What's easier to carry? The "rollie-suitcase" toolbox with handle extended, or the same thing in a big plastic bag.
 
In Germany, you have to pay for every bag. At least, I think that was it. For all I know it could have been a local ordinance is Giessen, where I worked. As a result, a lot of people carry cloth bags while shoping.

As I said, I don't know if it was a national law, a local ordinance, or just something that German stores did, but I think the charge was 5 cents per bag.

Seems like a good idea to me, although somewhat inconvenient. But then again, I live in Michigan, home of the nation's highest bottle deposit. You never see empty pop bottles on roads or in trash cans around here.
 
a_unique_person said:
If it is determined that plastic bags are a threat to wildlife and cost money to clean up, then a remedy is required. It may be that a legal remedy is chosen.
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(sigh)

I'm for the enviorment, but I dislike the automatic reliance on new laws and regulations as the "solution".

The undelying psychological mechanism that supports such a view is the naive belief that a legal solution--that is, government action--would be its nature be more "serious" and "effective" than other actions, and that thereore--other things being equal--it should be preferred solution to this problem, as it is to, well, everything.

For some reason, this belief is most strong with the crowd which considers its actual elected representatives to be a bunch of morons.

Go figure.

I, for my part, think the opposite. I think government is made up mostly of people who are neither idiots not incompetent, but that nevertheless government should use its power only when needed, and one should think twice before setting up yet another beurocracy to help solve a minor problem, as in many cases the cure is worse than the disease.
 
Skeptic said:
-snip- one should think twice before setting up yet another beurocracy to help solve a minor problem, as in many cases the cure is worse than the disease.
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Who wants to set up a Beureaucracy? The federal department of plastic bag distribution? Lol....
 
I use the plastic bags to wrap up my garbage. Does everyone do this? Only trouble is that we also take our own bags to the supermarket, so we do not have enough. We have to get them from our friends.
 
The hierarchy of reduce/reuse/recycle is quite practical. As others have pointed out, if you can't reduce the number of bags you use, then reuse them by keeping them in your car for the next shopping trip. Reuse would also include giving them to a neighbor with a lot of dogs.

As for recycling, plastic bags are now used as a source for plastic lumber which is becoming popular for decks.
 
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