The day MLK was shot, he was in that city to help with a sanitation workers strike. The workers were asking for a couple of things including some way to wash up before leaving to go home. In those days people just threw mixed trash into metal cans unbagged, where the food waste would bleed out their juices and rot all week until garbage day. And those guys had to heave those cans up by hand to dump them out. AND they weren’t given so much as a sink to wash up in before their long bus ride home!

Learning about that made be appreciate the humble garbage bag a lot more.

But I have been using the biodegradable bags for both the trash and the compost for some years now. They are terrible bags and more expensive but it’s something I can deal with and it cuts down on plastic waste.

The real thing you’re going to have trouble with is food packaging. I hear you that people got along without plastics in the 1940s but I’d really like to hear a plan for how we’re going to deliver food to people in today’s world without all the plastics. I mean I really would like to hear that plan! I think it will be hard but we can certainly do a lot more.

It’s just a long way to “medical use only.” The amount of plastic used in Agriculture alone is one of the top sources of plastic in the US. It’s used in sheets to suppress weeds in crop fields, and it is arguably a better alternative than herbicides.

I'm old enough to remember when plastic bags became available in grocery stores. People didn't trust them, so they had displays at the entrances showing the bags holding heavy things, like several two liter soda bottles. They pushed so hard for plastic, saying that it would save the environment, and now they're pushing even harder saying it'll destroy the environment.

Insane that the US isnso behind on these type of laws.

Plastic bags have the lowest carbon footprint

Why do people only ever talk about the carbon footprint when plastic bans are discussed?
Plastic waste is lying around everywhere, microplastics have been found in placentas and brain stems, the great pacific garbage patch is larger than some micro states.

The environment consists of more than just the atmosphere and we should reduce both greenhouse gases and plastic waste.

Also

plastic bags (including small produce bags) can be recycled at the grocery store (two near me do but it’s easy to miss). I also found plastic very easy to reuse.

That may be so but many people do not recycle or reuse their plastic bags. I would assume this measure is aimed more at them then at you.

I've never viewed getting rid of plastic bags as a carbon saving measure. To me it's addressing how bad they are when they get into the environment. As much as these bags can be reused, most aren't and they just end up thrown out.

recycled at the grocery store

recycling thin films often doesn't happen without specialized equipment and most regions don't have it. so they collect it, but... it probably goes to a landfill.

Great for food waste bins

California already had banned single use bags. We've been ~~posting~~ paying for "reusable" plastic bags for a couple years already. This legislation bans all plastic bags, including the reusable types. Now we get to ~~being~~ bring our own bags, or get paper bags.

Sometimes I still forget to bring a bag, then I need yet another wawa bag, and I just stare at this neverending pile of bags

My Whole Foods just uses paper bags, so I guess this doesn’t affect me :shrug:.

I have so many reusable bags, mainly because I have a terrible case of "God fucking dammit I forgot to put it in the car again-itis" but i still wouldn't go back to plastic bags