What is really behind the friction over plastic grocery bags, it can’t be the plastic?

I figure the grocery bag thing is a simple way to make a difference. Sometimes plastic packaging is very useful and it would be a big inconvenience to make a change, also plastics used in medical supplies are very important, but grocery bags aren’t that inconvenient.

I bought 5 bags with a lining to keep the food cold or hot and they’re great! I cut down on my plastic bags by about 80%. The bags I do take home I re-use as small trash bags.

Every little but helps.

Maybe someone else will know if there is something more to it.

What @JLeslie said.

Also, sure – your sandwich was in a plastic container. We have packaging within packaging, then we demand that all of our double or triple-packaged items be placed into more packaging so we can transport them home. Requesting another plastic bag to protect the other plastic bag is often not out of the question.

Do you suspect that there is some kind of paper company conspiracy at work here in some kind of “bag war”?

I agree that our packaging generally includes way too much plastic, but plastic bags account for a large part of the disposable, plastic waste we generate. This explains some of the reasoning behind bag bans and the dangers they present. They are very easy to stop using. We just all have to remember to keep bags in our car or to keep one of those string bags handy. If by re-educating ourselves to do this we can reduce the impact on the planet and other species, I think it’s a very worthwhile step.

I’d really like to see us working towards reducing the amount of plastic we use in other packaging. I totally agree at times it’s over-the-top and we’re paying for that packaging in a variety of ways.

I never see screwdrivers and bike lights lining the side of the river near my house. Plastic is great if you want things to last for a long time. Unfortunately plastic bags are a one ore two use thing and they never go away.

I use plastic grocery bags for kitchen waste, for storing car parts, for trash bags in my car, for linings for my waste baskets, for carrying water bottles, for picking up trash while I run, for who know what.
If they were banned I would have to buy new bags to do those jobs. I’ll bet the grocery stores would love that.

@LuckyGuy I also have found many ways to re-use them. Maybe we need to start hording saving them against the day when they are banned.

We’ve had plastic bag bans here for a long time now @LuckyGuy and I still have a big pile of them under my kitchen sink and like you, I reuse them for all sorts of things. I think we are expected to pay for them in some stores here now. So if you go to the supermarket, without your shopping bag, you’ll be charged for the plastic bag. I know Target do this. Still, many stores still use plastic bags and dole them out for free so I don’t think you’ll be lacking for plastic bags for quite a while yet. I think it does make you more conscious of how often they’re used. I know I’ll often tell stores to keep the bag unless I really need one.

I get a credit in some stores when I use my insulated bags. I think I get 10¢ per bag at Target. It adds up. One of the stores asks if you want the credit or to donate it.

@Earthbound_Misfit Depending upon the season and the size of my stash I request either paper or plastic.

Since I have a wood burning stove I convert paper into heat. I use the paper bags for burnable trash like mail, tissues, Watchtower, wrapping paper, cardboard bits, paper napkins, toilet paper tubes, nut shells, etc. When full, I toss the whole bag into the stove and enjoy the free heat.
20 pounds of paper waste has the same energy content as a gallon of heating oil ~$3.00. That full bag of paper trash is worth about $1.00.

We should use paper bags much more. That would be a move in the right direction. Remember when you’d go to the ironmonger (or whatever they call it over there) and screws or nuts would be weighed and given you in a paper bag? We shred some of our paper to put on the garden or in the compost too.

Don’t worry @Hypocrisy_Central, next July 1 this won’t be an issue in California, no more plastic grocery bags.

I hardly ever accept plastic bags at stores anymore, and I still have more than I can reasonably expect to use. They still seem to just appear out of nowhere. It’s too much.

To all those who are using grocery bags as garbage bags… how do you even do that? I can’t remember the last time I received a grocery bag that didn’t have at least one hole in the bottom. Why not investigate that conspiracy to make you buy garbage bags?

@zenvelo :: don’t fret.. your neighbors to the north ditched plastic bags a few years ago and the world still turns.

It is like the smoking ban in bars here… I freaked out but after I week I forgot that we could smoke in bars.

And there is a benefit to baning smoking. You get double the ladies in the bars. Helpful if you have a million dollars.

@dappled_leaves I just checked some bags for holes. Wegmans, Party City, JCPenney did not have holes. Harbor Freight had them where the plastic was bonded.

I use the plastic bags for trash in my cars by hanging them from the arm rest. They are perfect for tissues and paper trash.
I always keep a couple stashed in the door pocket. They are so handy.

What do you use in your car?

@LuckyGuy I don’t own a car!

@Hypocrisy_Central

Nope, there’s nothing more to it than that. It’s just the plastic. Plastics can be extremely useful, but plastic bags are a stupid waste of a valuable resource, and they end up in the environment a hell of a lot more than screwdrivers do. The less plastic bags used the better.

Once you see photos and read about the Pacific Garbage Patch/Gyre you want to reduce plastic trash as much as possible. At least that’s what happened to me. The large one is the size of Texas.

@dappled_leaves Ok. No car. Do you line your waste baskets in your home? I’ve got one in every room. The bathroom gets 2: burnable and non burnable.

@LuckyGuy – I don’t line my small baskets with trash bags, and we have trash bags in our cars that are similar to a small sleeping bag stuff sack. They can be emptied and put right back. If they get really dirty and smell, they can be washed in the sink and dry quickly.

If you had to pay for these plastic shopping bags, you might seek alternatives. But because they seem “free”, there is no incentive to change.

As an aside, when I do my grocery shopping, I use canvas bags 100% of the time. Besides limiting waste, they are so much easier to use and really hold up to heavy groceries. There really is no downside to eliminating these plastic shopping bags.

@LuckyGuy No, I don’t line the waste baskets. I don’t put anything messy (requiring a bag) in waste baskets; anything messy will go in my kitchen garbage bin. It sounds like you produce a lot of waste to have that many bags around the house!

@hominid Agreed, but I still find I have lots of plastic bags around, as @Earthbound_Misfit mentioned. They seem to multiply on their own.

@hominid You don’t line your small trash baskets? Are there women in the house?

Waiting patiently to find out why women particularly need plastic liners for their wastepaper baskets.

@JLeslie: ”@hominid You don’t line your small trash baskets? Are there women in the house?”

Yes. My wife and my 12-year-old daughter. Why?

We have 3 trash containers other than the kitchen. The bathroom, and one in each of the kids’ bedrooms upstairs. The upstairs containers only occasionally need emptying, and they bring them down to empty into the kitchen trash – usually when I’m about to bring it outside. The one in the bathroom needs more frequently emptying. But the same process applies.

At minimum I put a bag in the bathroom trash cans when I have my period. The rest of the month I don’t always worry about it.

What drives me crazy is when my husband puts the bathroom trash bag inside of the kitchen trash bag when he brings the trash out. I don’t want him to put a bag in a bag.

All this generalizing. Surely whether you should line your waste baskets depends on what goes in there?

Banana peel and leftover oatmeal = bag

Pieces of paper or nutshells = no bag necessary

@JLeslie “I don’t want him to put a bag in a bag.”

Why?

@longgone I can fit more trash in the larger kitchen bag if he doesn’t fill it with a bag of trash from the bathroom, which means using fewer kitchen bags in the end. Saves money and less plastic out there. The little plastic bag from the bathroom can be thrown out on it’s own for the garage collector.

@hominid Let me mention that no matter what you do for your family, for female guests I recommend putting a bag in the bathroom.

My gay BIL’s don’t have a trash can at all in their second bathroom used by guests. That’s just crazy to me.

^ Right, got it. I’m tired, sorry!

No problem. It’s late in your time zone.

For the sake of the planet and the animals on it, we should all be prepared to adapt and find better ways to manage our waste and how we package ‘stuff’. I read somewhere recently coffee capsules are the latest plastic nightmare we’re inflicting on the environment. I know people use these at work and we have a lot of people where I work.

@JLeslie That sounds slightly stalker-ish, made me grin. It is late, though, and I’m still awake. Logging off now.

:)

still, just because the plastic used in other containers and products are not seen on the side of the road doesn’t mean they don’t exist, they still are in the trash just as much as plastic bags, and many have no reuse attributes to them

A screwdriver or a bicycle light isn’t a one or two use product like grocery bags are. Just because there are other products made with plastics doesn’t mean they’re as wasteful as grocery bags are.

@Darth_Algar, I think @Hypocrisy_Central meant the screwdriver and the bicycle lights come packaged in plastic. I don’t think he was suggesting products made with plastics are a problem. They’re however often excessively packaged.

i thought this was going to be a question about why plastic bags rustle under friction. And I read about that in a scientific journal and was going to amaze you all with my knowledge

@Stinley Don’t leave us hanging!

I thought the whole point of going to plastic bags was to cut down on paper usage. You know save a tree. I guess that hasn’t worked so well.

@Jaxk: “I thought the whole point of going to plastic bags was to cut down on paper usage. You know save a tree.”

Huh? Citation?

Anyway, the good thing is that some genius invented the canvas bag. They last decades and do a better job than plastic or paper bags.

We consumed about 14 million trees in 1999 to make paper shopping bags. And that’s while plastic was the primary choice. This article provides even more data on why plastic is superior to paper or cloth. Such as 25% of pesticides are used on cotton. Use cotton bags and you are putting a lot more poison in the ground. Plastic uses less energy as well so if you’re interested in global warming or carbon in general, plastic is the way to go.

@Jaxk – Thanks for the links. I’ll look at them. But this is not what I was asking for. I’m not looking for a plastic vs. paper vs. cloth evaluation of some particular measure of environmental effect. Let’s try this again…

@Jaxk: “I thought the whole point of going to plastic bags was to cut down on paper usage. You know save a tree.”

I was asking for citation for this ^. Did the switch from paper to plastic occur because we were trying to cut down on paper usage (to save trees)?

@hominid – I could spend a lot of time looking for a citation but the argument I used was strictly from my own memory. Finding arguments from 40 years ago isn’t always easy.

^ I don’t see anything relating to the adoption of plastic as a way to save paper. I keep finding stuff about patents held by Mobil ending, etc.

Anyway, I see that there are lots of articles referencing the superiority of plastic to cloth bags. But each article seems to be missing some crucial information. I’d like to find the data on why/how it’s possible that decades of using a new plastic bag every single shopping trip is more environmentally friendly than using a canvas bag.

I have been exclusively using canvas bags for 15 years. These are the same bags sitting in my car right now. They look like they could last another 15 years. If I go shopping approximately 2 times (minimum) per week. That’s 52 weeks x 2 uses = 104 uses/year x 15 years = 1560 uses (minimum). Even if it were slightly more costly (environmentally) to produce the canvas bag, it would have to be 1500 times more costly for it to break even with the plastic bag. I would like to see this data. Note: I’m using 15 years in this calculation, but these bags are in perfect condition and will last many more years. So extend this out for any calcs that show the benefit of plastic over canvas.

@Jaxk To determine whether using paper products was having as greater or even a great effect on the environment, we’d need to know whether the bulk of the trees pulped were sourced from old growth forests or from plantations created to meet the demand for paper.

@Earthbound_Misfit

It seemed to me that he is referencing both products and packaging. I won’t argue that packing is not wasteful.

I think re-reading that’s a fair interpretation with regard to the bike lights and of course, plastic has a place in society. There would be many things that we wouldn’t have or that would cost more and that would have a shorter life cycle if they were made in metal or other materials.

I agree on the packaging too @Darth_Algar.