If I bought one cotton bag and used it for my whole life, the argument would seem silly. In reality, a household can easily gain 5-10 new tote bags a year as businesses hand them out as swag or with legitimate collections of items or paperwork. There's no way to use them all enough to justify their manufacturing. The point the article is making is that the "use fewer plastic bags" thing was well-intended, but it ince…
If you have enough bags, you don’t need to keep accepting new ones. We have used the same collection of bags for over 15 years.
Not to mention the microplastics. Plus the Solo cups are transported over a great distance as well, between the fuel and packaging it could easily triple their carbon costs.
> Plus the Solo cups are transported over a great distance as well, between the fuel and packaging it could easily triple their carbon costs. As opposed to ceramic mugs that just materialize in your house? Not sure about you, but I don't have a dilithium powered transporter in my kitchen.
My mug only had to be transported to my house once. With disposable cups that's a recurring expense. Unless you have a dilithium powered replicator.
The authors think reusing a cotton bag for 173 times is difficult - that's all we need to say about this article. When recommendation for landfilling comes from this kind of sources, I think we can safely assume we are doing absolutely great with our demands to reuse, repair and recycle!
The author of this comment thinks everyone is like him or her.
As someone who works in sustainability, and life cycle analysis, it's quite frustrating to see someone who is clearly not technically trained lay out an argument for single-use based on LCA data. Establishing a functional unit is critical for this type of analysis, otherwise yeah, it looks like every single-use item is "more sustainable" than a reusable. That isn't actually how you measure a sustainability scenario in this context. Also, the simplification of these vastly complex problems being presented as if we have been over reacting or too dumb to solve them -- be, as the kids say, so for real. It is exhausting to have non-technical sustainability folks write these articles as if they've provided some insight on how simple this all can be, as if we eggheads got too caught up in our science textbooks. Now we have to spend time undoing the perception that "it's just so simple, landfills and single use aren't that bad" instead of moving forward into better systems and effective action. Either spend 5 minutes talking with someone who actually works in sustainability or don't write these nonsense articles.
This was pointed out to me a while ago, but it seems to hold true: Whether someone appreciates a modern engineered landfill is a useful Shibboleth for distinguishing real evidence-based environmentalism from narcissistic signaling "environmentalism." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRx_dZawN44
Not sure if this counts as 'modern', but I had the unfortunate experience of driving near Seneca Meadows[1] recently. I can't begin to describe the visceral level of horrendous stench that is perpetually downwind of this facility.
I bet you're right. Why though? I've gotten thousands of uses out of mine. Even if you shop infrequently that just means they'll wear out more slowly, so surely that's viable for everyone else, maybe with a 7yr break-even point for an every-2-week shopper?
Because I remember to take mine maybe 25% of the time
Yeah they need to stay in the car. It’s a hard habit to break because we have lived our entire lives bringing the groceries in and unloading.
We actually just get paper bags and reuse them for our recycling items. The paper bag goes into the recycling bin with the rest of the paper.
I actually don’t care if recycling takes more energy. We should save plastics for where they can be best used, and that’s not a one-shot trip to the landfill
The authors think reusing a cotton bag for 173 times is difficult - that's all we need to say about this article. When recommendation for landfilling comes from this kind of sources, I think we can safely assume we are doing absolutely great with our demands to reuse, repair and recycle!
I was in a city that did a bag ban. Informally I observed a lot of perfectly fine reusable bags being discard. I believe later on this was confirmed that the total amount of waste from bags actually went up since the bag ban was enacted. This doesn't even count the material and energy use to make the reusable bags. I think you be shocked about the actual number of reuses a reusable bag gets.
The language gives off some climate denialist vibes, but the substance is nonetheless true - recycling become both a magical word which is forbidden to be challenged on merit, and it also become a crude hammer to just bash peons to distract from real problems and real solutions. I also appreciate that finally someone says that DAC should happen as a more effective climate change tool.
Lately I'm getting a feel that it's becoming impossible to be a progressive person and criticize some parts of global greenwashing initiatives. One either need to blindly follow the gospel of 12 recycle bins and other inane ideas, or be shut down as a "climate change denier" because one dared to disagree on something.