301–310 of 417 posts
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-...
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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).
Lots of my friends have said the same thing. I've always wondered why people didn't re-use bags before the charge... Saving the environment didn't matter, but 5p does? People didn't know plastic was bad before? They didn't care? It's great that the 5p charge works, but do we need to have a 5p charge on every bit of plastic to drive the point home?
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That applies to computers and all of the other un-repairable ewaste generating electronics. All purchases of smartphones, laptops, in fact pretty much all of bestbuy would fall in that category. Can we get a ban on those too? https://ifixit.org/ewaste
I'd argue that disposable bags, disposable straws, disposable chopsticks, and the like are in a different category because there is a ready alternative which is not particularly onerous to use.
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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).
Lots of my friends have said the same thing. I've always wondered why people didn't re-use bags before the charge... Saving the environment didn't matter, but 5p does? People didn't know plastic was bad before? They didn't care? It's great that the 5p charge works, but do we need to have a 5p charge on every bit of plastic to drive the point home?
1) Bags cost 1p, but now cost 10p.
2) Bags were free, but now cost 1p.
I bet that the reduction in bag use would be far greater in scenario 2 than in scenario 1. It's like why a very cheap paid app is disproportionately harder to market than a free app.
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Lots of my friends have said the same thing. I've always wondered why people didn't re-use bags before the charge... Saving the environment didn't matter, but 5p does? People didn't know plastic was bad before? They didn't care? It's great that the 5p charge works, but do we need to have a 5p charge on every bit of plastic to drive the point home?
The ideal scenario is to reward customers for being environmentally conscious as oppose to penalising those who aren't. eg. A 5p-off your shopping incentive for every re-used bag. However, sadly I don't think this would work as well currently.
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Soon have guns under control Or, more likely, they would make more guns to compensate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect
The implicit step one being that sale of guns / assault rifles were banned, as it should be.
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Fill the basin? You don't just scrub each dish with a damp sponge spotted with dish soap then rinse it?
To be honest, I used to wash dishes under running warm water, probably quite wasteful. 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.
> uniform invoices – widely used in Taiwan I wondered what this meant, so I looked it up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Invoice_lottery To encourage businesses to report their earnings, Taiwan's tax authorities operate a receipt lottery. Genius.
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> From what I understand plastic waste is usually burned for electricity or heat in industrial processes, Except for the ones that end up in the ocean: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch
The plastic that ends up in the ocean comes from places & countries that have no waste management at all besides dumping garbage directly in rivers and the ocean. I doubt that's the case for Taiwan.
I was in Taidong in October, on the South East of the island which is supposed to be less polluted, and the beach was strewn with washed up plastic.
I hate seeing these extremist bans. I was homeless in California when the bag ban went into effect. Following hot on the heels of the bag ban a hepatitis epidemic broke out in Southern California. I believe these two things are related. I have a permanently compromised immune system. Reusing bags is problematic for me. However, I use grocery bags as trash bags. I almost never buy trash bags. This has basically been t…
That was my experience. The free plastic grocery bags were awesome small garbage bags or bags for storage. They always got used.
Now that I don't get a free plastic grocery bag, I just buy garbage bags now.