281–290 of 417 posts
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Yeah, modern dishwashers use less water per washing cycle than it takes to fill the kitchen basin for handwashing.
Fill the basin? You don't just scrub each dish with a damp sponge spotted with dish soap then rinse it?
By the way, around here (North Europe) we have special dishwashing brushes that apparently aren’t a big thing in most parts of the world.
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Perhaps the homeless could be given jobs cleaning the toilets?
Fort Worth and Albuquerque give them jobs to clean up streets. In Fort Worth, they pay $10 per hour and provide housing. This would be similar - and a good idea, I think.
Just to play devils advocate on this, this isn't very free market. How is this not clearly choosing winners and losers? What about the plastic bag producing companies and their shareholders? The government is choosing multi-use bag makers over single use bag makers. I feel like this is "common sense" enough that people don't fight it, but if it is a more complex (and more important) issue like climate change and bann…
what is the environmental cost of staying in the hospital? Coliform bacteria are found in half of reusable bags and E. Coli are found in 12%. Reusable bags weigh 40-50 grams, one time use bags are 6 grams. I'm for finding bio-degradable plastic replacements, not because they take up landfill space (who cares, landfills are very safe), but more for the bags/plastics that don't find their way to the landfill.
There are likely to be longer term positive effects of banning plastic bags as well though. Plastic bags don't biodegrade, but they do seem to break up into little bits and can make it into the food supply through fish and maybe other animals. I have a hard time believing that plastic bags as they are are an actual good solution to the problem of needing to get food to your house.
To me, the ideal solution to plastic bags is the same as the solution to most environmental problems: correctly account for the cost of the environmental damage and add that to the cost of the product (the company can chose to eat it or pass it on to the customer). I know that correctly calculating the cost is probably tricky but still. That would fix a lot of our environmental issues. Gas and coal are only cheap when we don't factor air quality into the equation.
The UK dropped to 500 million bags annually used from 7 billion after introduction of a 5 pence per bag charge. That's just one country albeit one of the world's largest. Still I think we're over due for much more agressive action. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jul/30/england-...
I don't like that this is a regressive tax - pay a premium for the good bags, settle for paper, or pay for reusable bags. If anything, maybe just give a tax credit for not using plastic, which is printed on the receipt.
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A little thing to bear in mind is that the new bags weigh significantly more than the old ones, so it's not actually a 14x decrease. With the switch all the stores now sell "lifetime" bags. According to my fairly inaccurate kitchen scales the old ones weigh about 10g, the new ones weigh about 25g. So it's about a 5.6x drop, which is still fantastic. I think everyone talks about the number of bags as it makes the decr…
> the old ones Charging for bags was commonplace in the UK in the 80's ... how long have you been keeping these for??
I now have loads of "bags for life" because sometimes you forget to bring one, don't bring enough or shop on a whim.
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Why use a straw at all instead of just drinking directly from a drinking glass, thus avoiding the need to wash and manage the straws? Also, glass is a better material than steel for food applications, and glass straws exist, so they are probably a better choice (unless there's a significant chance of breakage like giving them to small children).
That's my question too, why is the straw in every day life necessary?
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Or just access to toilets. It's not like they want to poop in bags.
They have that. They choose the plastic bags because the toilets are in disarray.
The UK dropped to 500 million bags annually used from 7 billion after introduction of a 5 pence per bag charge. That's just one country albeit one of the world's largest. Still I think we're over due for much more agressive action. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jul/30/england-...
Anecdata, but since it was introduced, I've gone from getting a new bag every day (lunch/fresh groceries), to using the same one for pretty much the last 6 months. It was a very noticeable shift to making me think about their use. Buying one because I've forgotten is a rare, and slight annoyance (the price doesn't put me off, it just changes the mental model).
Those are some high quality bags!
Morocco is already actively banning plastic bags since 2016. www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2016/07/green-morocco-bans-plastic-bags-160701141919913.html