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California's war on plastic bag use seems to have backfired

latimes.com

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Re: California's war on plastic bag use seems to have backfired

#51

Post by belorn »

TexanFeller wrote: post #4

Bag bans are one of the most perfect examples of how American environmentalists focus on all the wrong things and miss the forrest for the trees. The plastic bag in the grocery store contains multiple products packaged in 100x more volume of plastic than the plastic bag. It also contains a bunch of single serving aluminum cans. Banning plastic bags moves the needle the least and greatly annoys customers. It would be…

With the goal of less plastic in the ocean and landfills, the solution should not be to make a very narrow and specific form of plastic illegal while everything else is acceptable. Thick plastic and aluminum are both terrible at decomposing at the bottom of the ocean. Natural fibers however tend to dissolve quite well in water.

Recycling and plastic waste initiatives seems like two completely different goals. Recycling reduce energy usage in the industry, but the effect on ocean waste can be anything from beneficial, marginal to negative. In order to address single serving aluminum cans, one of the more effective solution is container-deposit. When 1/5 of the counter price is in the deposit, people seems to litter a lot less. It need to hurt a little to throw the can into the ocean or just randomly in the street.

Re: California's war on plastic bag use seems to have backfired

#52

Post by crabbone »

Moving from Israel to the Netherlands, it was one of the things I had to get used to. Israeli groceries offer free plastic bags for many things. In the Netherlands most supermarket chains have none (only the heavier durable kinds).

However: produce (i.e. cucumbers, tomatoes, potatoes etc.) in Israel are not individually packaged. Usually, I'd take one bag and stuff it with different vegetables / fruits. It's somewhat messy at the checkout, but if you aren't buying a lot, it's fine. In the Netherlands it's very common to package either individual fruits / vegetables (esp. cucumbers for some reason!) or small multiples (eg. apples are sold in four-packs, as are pears, kiwis etc.)

So, in the end of the day, the amount of plastic I bring back home from a grocery store is greater in the Netherlands than what it was in Israel.

----

But, if I go all the way back to my childhood... It's perfectly possible to do grocery shopping without any plastic packaging whatsoever. A lot of things we buy from the grocery today were things that some 30 years ago just were supposed to be made at home. A lot of ready-made food simply didn't exist, but today it could be the number one source of plastic packaging. Things like yogurt cups or various similar snacks, sandwiches, salads, anything packaged for a single serving.

I can sort of see how some people simply might not have the time to deal with cooking or even just sorting the groceries. The pace of life definitely changed towards dedicating less time to such boring tasks. But, there are still people like myself who wouldn't mind spending extra half an hour in a grocery store / bring their own containers for various goods. It's just nobody sells food in this fashion anymore.

Re: California's war on plastic bag use seems to have backfired

#53

Post by JoeAltmaier »

xnorswap wrote: post #23
TexanFeller wrote: post #4

Bag bans are one of the most perfect examples of how American environmentalists focus on all the wrong things and miss the forrest for the trees. The plastic bag in the grocery store contains multiple products packaged in 100x more volume of plastic than the plastic bag. It also contains a bunch of single serving aluminum cans. Banning plastic bags moves the needle the least and greatly annoys customers. It would be…

Your argument is a popular contrarian take, but it doesn't seem to hold up to the evidence: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/31/governme... If California has a problem it isn't because bag bans don't work, it's because they've screwed up their implementation. And yes, supermarkets do still use a lot of unnecessary plastic in packaging, but that's another issue that can also be tackled, and I haven't s…

Any cherry-picked stat can look good. What replaced those 7B? Cloth? Paper? Exercise for the environmentalist: which has a larger impact on the planet? Compare and contrast.

Nothing is wholly a win here. Just by existing we impact the planet. Seriously, the principle effective way to reduce environmental impact is to have 7 billion fewer people on the planet. Anything else can be seen as theatre.

Re: California's war on plastic bag use seems to have backfired

#54

Post by lurking15 »

thimp wrote: post #9
milliams wrote: post #5

In the UK we brought in a similar law and the shops were allowed to charge (if I remember correctly) 5p for the thin bags that were previously used or 10p for a stronger one. It wasn't long before they mostly phased out the thin bags and started raising the cost of the stronger bags, I think they're maybe around 50p now. They've also mostly moved back to bag-less delivery (if you get delivery). Anecdotally looking ar…

Yeah that's about it. They slowly made them prohibitively more expensive. I've actually had the same shopping bag for 27 years and have gone from being seen as a hippy weirdo to never being questioned. It was just normalised that you got bags free before. That should have never been the case in the first place!

> and have gone from being seen as a hippy weirdo to never being questioned

you're still a hippy weirdo

Re: California's war on plastic bag use seems to have backfired

#55

Post by gkbrk »

milliams wrote: post #5

In the UK we brought in a similar law and the shops were allowed to charge (if I remember correctly) 5p for the thin bags that were previously used or 10p for a stronger one. It wasn't long before they mostly phased out the thin bags and started raising the cost of the stronger bags, I think they're maybe around 50p now. They've also mostly moved back to bag-less delivery (if you get delivery). Anecdotally looking ar…

If I remember correctly, Tesco will even replace your "bag for life" if it's broken. Or at least they did for a while.

Re: California's war on plastic bag use seems to have backfired

#56

Post by bryanlarsen »

belorn wrote: post #51
TexanFeller wrote: post #4

Bag bans are one of the most perfect examples of how American environmentalists focus on all the wrong things and miss the forrest for the trees. The plastic bag in the grocery store contains multiple products packaged in 100x more volume of plastic than the plastic bag. It also contains a bunch of single serving aluminum cans. Banning plastic bags moves the needle the least and greatly annoys customers. It would be…

With the goal of less plastic in the ocean and landfills, the solution should not be to make a very narrow and specific form of plastic illegal while everything else is acceptable. Thick plastic and aluminum are both terrible at decomposing at the bottom of the ocean. Natural fibers however tend to dissolve quite well in water. Recycling and plastic waste initiatives seems like two completely different goals. Recycli…

But thick plastic and aluminum are much less likely to end up in an ocean than a plastic disposable grocery bag. Plastic disposable grocery bags catch the wind very easily and are great kites. They can easily travel hundreds of miles in the air.

Also, decomposing in the ocean is exactly what we don't want. Plastic disposable grocery bags decompose into microplastics, and we're finding out how bad that is. A heavier bag stays intact.

Re: California's war on plastic bag use seems to have backfired

#57

Post by flaminHotSpeedo »

gruez wrote: post #42
flaminHotSpeedo wrote: post #19

This doesn't pass the sniff test for me... The article claims that plastic bag waste went from 4.08 tons to 5.89 tons per 1000 people from 2014 to 2022, then attributes that to the new heavier bags. I don't have good numbers but as a terrible estimate let's say an old single use bag was 5 grams and a newer one is 30 grams. If plastic bag weight really went up almost 50% per capita, using that assumption that an indiv…

>I don't have good numbers but as a terrible estimate let's say an old single use bag was 5 grams and a newer one is 30 grams. So, a factor of 6? Try a factor of 40[1] instead. [1] 0.5 mil vs 20 mil https://1bagatatime.com/learn/what-is-a-mill/

You didn't read your own source, that website your linked cited 2.5 mil. I guess I was off by a factor of 1

Re: California's war on plastic bag use seems to have backfired

#58

Post by flaminHotSpeedo »

cal85 wrote: post #50
flaminHotSpeedo wrote: post #19

This doesn't pass the sniff test for me... The article claims that plastic bag waste went from 4.08 tons to 5.89 tons per 1000 people from 2014 to 2022, then attributes that to the new heavier bags. I don't have good numbers but as a terrible estimate let's say an old single use bag was 5 grams and a newer one is 30 grams. If plastic bag weight really went up almost 50% per capita, using that assumption that an indiv…

I almost always have to buy bags. I tend to pick up groceries on a whim while already out and about so I don’t have bags with me. And even when I go out specifically for groceries, I usually forget to bring bags. I consider it a tax for being a disorganised and forgetful person. The idea that 1/5 people are like me doesn’t surprise me at all. Also apparently 30g is the low end for the thicker bags - this site says th…

Based on a bit of extra research 30g is pretty middle of the road for the bags in question. 120g is for actually reusable bags, what folks are calling "bag for life"

Re: California's war on plastic bag use seems to have backfired

#59

Post by eappleby »

Would this problem be solved if there were bins in front of supermarkets where people could drop off their extra bags and other people could grab them if they needed them? I get that the stores may not like it because they sell the bags, but if they were onboard, would there be any reason why it wouldn't work?

Re: California's war on plastic bag use seems to have backfired

#60

Post by gruez »

flaminHotSpeedo wrote: post #57
gruez wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don't have good numbers but as a terrible estimate let's say an old single use bag was 5 grams and a newer one is 30 grams. So, a factor of 6? Try a factor of 40[1] instead. [1] 0.5 mil vs 20 mil https://1bagatatime.com/learn/what-is-a-mill/

You didn't read your own source, that website your linked cited 2.5 mil. I guess I was off by a factor of 1

Before accusing people of not reading the source, you should double check your understanding of the same source. The table does list 2.5 mil, but that's for "Thick plastic bag". The thickness for "Thin Plastic Bag" is indeed 0.5 mil.
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