Uplifting News

Can't paper bags be recycled more easily, or even composted?

I get your perspective, and I'm frustrated that I have to buy garbage bags now.

But my household(s) always ended up with more plastic bags than we could reuse. And before the ban, plastic bag litter was far, far more commonplace.

imo, a good middle ground might've been to charge for plastic bags and use that money to fund the cleanup and recycling of plastic bags. But that's more reactive than proactive, and it'd place disproportionate burden on the lower classes who can't take on the higher costs as easily as wealthier people.

I'm a bachelor, I outright don't like using full size kitchen trash bags because any cat litter or meat scraps I throw away start smelling Republican long before the bag is full. I haven't bought trash bags in years, I only use grocery bags as trash bags.

very occasionally, I ask for one paper bag. After it carries groceries home, it will get cut into rectangles and used for rubbing out the finish on my woodworking projects, because it's cheaper and honestly better than 600 grit sandpaper. One bag will last awhile, I go through one a month when I'm really churning things out.

Now, in my lifetime, grocery stores have changed. My childhood Juicy Juice was poured from a big metal can my mother opened with a church key. My Gerber baby food came out of glass jars, some of which I still have and still use as containers for screws and such 35 years later. Russet potatoes weren't individually shrink wrapped. Cat food came in metal cans and paper bags. Now, all of those things and more are packaged in plastic. None of that is being addressed.

I mostly agree with this

those grocery bags always had another purpose and got used several times, or at minimum just once as a garbage bag

now I have to buy dedicated bags, which are much more material per bag. and there's still basically nothing being done about all of the plastic waste in single use products that account for much much more material usage, like water bottles as you said.

I will admit that seeing trees full of plastic bags on a windy spring day after the snow has melted is pretty disheartening. but I don't think it's any more disheartening than the plastic trash strewn across the parks and near the garbage cans, and arguably the bags are even easier to clean up.

like yay we got rid of thin plastic bags that had multiple uses, and every fucking vegetable in the grocery store is wrapped in plastic or in a plastic container

I thought they specifically were a particularly common thing to blow into waterways or something, in ways that plastic bottles etc. weren’t? [citation needed]

If you reuse old plastic bags, how does this ban on stores giving them away even affect you?