321–330 of 351 posts
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I just threw one of those into my compost pile last month and it’s still there. No clue how long it’s supposed to take.
Compostable plastics don't compost if you just throw them in a compost heap, you need to compost them in high-temperature conditions.
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> Corporations actively use addiction and psychological manipulation. They're not just passively filling consumer wants. Are you suggesting people have a plastic bag addiction? What exactly are the plastic bag manufacturers doing that is unethical? Let's use real examples instead of vague accusations. I'm not going to start with your assumptions that corporations are all evil and are definitely doing bad stuff so you…
Do you work for a plastic bag company? The American Progressive Bag Alliance (representing Novolex, Hilex Poly, Superbag, and Advance Polybag) has: - Spent $6+ million fighting California's bag ban through misleading ballot measures https://resource-recycling.com/plastics/2016/08/17/plastic-b... - Funded studies claiming reusable bags harbor dangerous bacteria (while omitting that washing eliminates this) https://arc…
"Misleading". 6m is hardly anything in a CA election. The article even agrees, “[The $6.1 million spent by manufacturers] is big money, but in California, for 17 ballot measures, it’s essentially petty cash,” he said.
How much evil money did the ban supporters spend? It's funny how negative you phrase the actions taken by the side you don't support.
And yet the ban exists.
> Funded studies claiming reusable bags harbor dangerous bacteria (while omitting that washing eliminates this)
I know lots of people that use re-useable cloth bags that don't wash them. How many studies did the environmental lobbies spend proving that plastic is horrible, ignoring the fact that most retailers simply replace cheap plastic bags with heavy duty "re-useable" plastic?
> Sued cities implementing bag bans, forcing expensive legal defenses
Nobody should sue cities now? That's pretty rich considering how often governments are sued by environmental groups.
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Yeah, I still don't understand why brown paper bags aren't more standard for everything. I do see some manufacturers reducing plastic, fortunately. For example, my box of tea bags used to come wrapped in plastic, and now it suddenly doesn't, and I'm wondering why it ever needed plastic. But there's still so much stuff that comes wrapped in plastic, and often multiple layers of it. Just ban it. There are excellent alt…
I'm old enough to remember when supermarkets only had brown paper bags. They were weak and the handles tear off easily, and anything cold will make the bag wet and it will fall apart usually from the bottom. Supermarkets must have spent a lot of money replacing customer's broken items when bags failed even before leaving the store. So when doing the calculus for brown paper bags don't forget to include the cost goods…
Incidentally, given that I'm _not_ old enough to remember a time before supermarkets had plastic bags, either the invention of attaching handles to paper bags took a very long time to migrate to my corner of California, or this comment makes no sense
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I'm old enough to remember when supermarkets only had brown paper bags. They were weak and the handles tear off easily, and anything cold will make the bag wet and it will fall apart usually from the bottom. Supermarkets must have spent a lot of money replacing customer's broken items when bags failed even before leaving the store. So when doing the calculus for brown paper bags don't forget to include the cost goods…
I'm old enough to remember when supermarket brown paper bags didn't have handles... Agree with the other commenter that the handles are pointless but the bags work fine if you just ignore them. Incidentally, given that I'm _not_ old enough to remember a time before supermarkets had plastic bags, either the invention of attaching handles to paper bags took a very long time to migrate to my corner of California, or thi…
I haven't seen those in decades unfortunately. It was a great way to reuse those boxes.
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This study, for instance, [1] looks at CO2 emissions. Which may be a somewhat limited view, but the effect is rather large: adding 5 wrappers around a cucumber (4 of which being useless) would result in about the same CO2 usage as adding no wrapper. And that's not even considering spoilage after the cucumber has been bought by a consumer. [1] https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/sustainable-food-system...
CO2 usage, I get you, but what about the plastic waste?
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Please be careful of such "metrics/statistics." Their very nature means they're politically and financially incentivized lean towards a higher or lower number than "the other guy." And, of course, a big number is scarier in a vacuum. What if a paper bag is 250g of emissions? The poster child for me for this is low-GWP refrigerants. Sounds good, right? Well, think about how CO2 captured filtered and compressed compare…
We have enough data to estimate the reasonable range of possibilities and exclude the upthread assertion that a ten minute car ride is similar emissions to 10k plastic bags. A degree of uncertainty need not make us helpless in the face of loud ignorance, that's how we end up giving equal weight in the media to common consensus of professionals in whatever field and political operatives with fringe beliefs but no evid…
I am confused why everybody mentions emissions though. In a discussion on paper/plastic/reusable bags, in a response to a call for napkin math for a claim of "10,000 bags from the fuel needed to get to the store" (essentially the argument made)- CO2 isn't relevant: just the mass of the gas used to get to the store.
I'm not pleased with how this turned out. to be told I'm wrong? That's fine, its the internet. I'm disappointed and alarmed with how badly wrong the suggested corrections are... it's deeply frustrating for me as well.
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Do you work for a plastic bag company? The American Progressive Bag Alliance (representing Novolex, Hilex Poly, Superbag, and Advance Polybag) has: - Spent $6+ million fighting California's bag ban through misleading ballot measures https://resource-recycling.com/plastics/2016/08/17/plastic-b... - Funded studies claiming reusable bags harbor dangerous bacteria (while omitting that washing eliminates this) https://arc…
> Spent $6+ million fighting California's bag ban through misleading ballot measures "Misleading". 6m is hardly anything in a CA election. The article even agrees, “[The $6.1 million spent by manufacturers] is big money, but in California, for 17 ballot measures, it’s essentially petty cash,” he said. How much evil money did the ban supporters spend? It's funny how negative you phrase the actions taken by the side yo…
Do you work for a plastic manufacturer or are otherwise involved in plastic use or manufacturing?
The UK banned single use plastic bags at major supermarkets. We all moaned about it for a few minutes, forgot our reusable bags a couple of times and then got on with it. Even the small plastic bags you put fruit or pastries in are now gone in a few super markets - initially, they replaced them with transparent paper-based windowed bags, but then I think people realised you really don't need to see inside the bag, an…
Yeah, I still don't understand why brown paper bags aren't more standard for everything. I do see some manufacturers reducing plastic, fortunately. For example, my box of tea bags used to come wrapped in plastic, and now it suddenly doesn't, and I'm wondering why it ever needed plastic. But there's still so much stuff that comes wrapped in plastic, and often multiple layers of it. Just ban it. There are excellent alt…
What you see in a lot of places that have people heavily relying on things like delivery services, is people using the reusable bags like they would use single-use bags - so now you have spent even more resources on a bag that's still being used as single-use. Oops.
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I'm old enough to remember when supermarket brown paper bags didn't have handles... Agree with the other commenter that the handles are pointless but the bags work fine if you just ignore them. Incidentally, given that I'm _not_ old enough to remember a time before supermarkets had plastic bags, either the invention of attaching handles to paper bags took a very long time to migrate to my corner of California, or thi…
I'm old enough to remember when supermarkets had boxes. All the goods they sell comes to them in big cardboard boxes, and and supermarkets would have a fenced off area where they dumped all those boxes, so whenever a customer needed a box to put their groceries in to take them home, they'd get a box from that fenced off area. I haven't seen those in decades unfortunately. It was a great way to reuse those boxes.
I would kill for this for when I’m buying fresh produce at the shops. Right now I just raw dog the produce into my basket as putting 4 apples into a plastic bag to ease the weighing and transport home seems like a selfish thing to do to the environment, but something that starts to break down soon after that sounds great.