United Nations calls for world-wide ban on pointless, thin plastic bags
Full article here
So what’s your take on this? I don’t know if there is enough evidence yet to ban them.
UN bullshit. So people get heavy duty bags at the store and use them once using more plastic.
Plastic bags suck, our bays and harbors are loaded with them. They’re light, get blown by the wind easily, and people just throw them on the ground instead of a trash can. Sometimes you need plastic bags though. What would replace the plastic bag? Paper is fine and all but it requires cutting a tree down and doesn’t hold trash that might be wet. You need some sort of cheap disposable bag.
They’re not banned here, but they are ‘discouraged’. You have to pay at least five cents for each one, and the stores get to keep that money. More and more people are using permanent shopping bags.
More an more people in Atlanta are using permanent bags without any threat of a ban or a tax. At Trader Joe’s, they give you money back if you bring in your own bags.
Are we talking about the plastic bags that you carry groceries away in, or the plastic bags that you put produce in in the produce section?
I’m in favor of adding a small fee for bags to take your groceries away. But I think banning them is silly. And if they do away with the other bags, how the hell am I supposed to buy green beans or brussels sprouts?
I use reusable canvas bags when I shop. It really isn’t that hard. I think a tax on (or fee for) plastic bags could encourage the use of reusable bags.
I think it’s a great idea. Maybe if I had to pay for plastic I wouldn’t forget the heavy duty cloth ones that 1) hold more stuff and 2) are less harsh on the environment.
I also re-use my plastic grocery bags. They are perfect for cat shit.
What about the little plastic sandwhich bags? Think of all the weed sellers this will put out of work!
A comment for the reusable bag people. I see this at another site with grocery store employees. Wash the cloth bags sometimes. They get cloth bags that have had leaky stuff in them and never have been washed.
As far as “saving the planet” by using less energy/fossil fuels? BFD. Take one less drive around town per year or turn your thermostat down by 0.5 degrees and the result will be the same.
As far as keeping lazy jerks from littering and have that crap everywhere ( even if it isnt killing baby seals), I am all on board if they can work out something functional.
Bring back significant deposits? Few folks litter, and it give kids an easy way to make a little cash…
I’d be all for a charge on single use plastic bags. As someone above mentioned, it would make me remember my reusables. I keep a couple reusables in my car, but sometimes I’m distracted enough to walk into the store without them.
There are a couple of instances where this could be an issue though. When I buy meat, it’s not uncommon for the packaging to be either leaking or covered in gunk from other packages that did leak. I’ll stick these in their own plastic bag, so I don’t get drying blood all over everything else I bought. Same with frozen foods that have ice crystals all over the outside.
If the stores get to keep the 5¢ fee for a plastic bag, then they better waive it when it’s their product that is being messy.
I see no reason NOT to ban them or at least add a charge to them to discourage their use. Most stores now offer cloth bags (some of them made from recycled plastic) and give a bonus of 5cents per bag used at the checkout. But I think we should go further and CHARGE people for each plastic bag required or just get rid of all bags at the store outright.
If you don’t have a bag when you come in, you buy one of the cloth ones for .99.
While I admit that at times I forget my bags or don’t have enough AND that I reuse the plastic bags for garbage, etc…at least once before tossing them, I would not mind at all paying for them or being denied the option.
There comes a time when we just have to put the greater good above our own selfish convienience and sense of entitlement. I think it is WAY past that time.
I didn’t see anything in the article in that explains what’s so bad about them except that they “choke marine life,” which we don’t have much of where I live. I want to see a demonstration showing exactly how they’re much more Evil than the alternatives before you talk about a ban.
They aren’t banned here but are frowned upon. Some stores charge for plastic bags, and a few others donate a dime to charity if you don’t need any bags.
Well said. I think we should charge people $25 per post on the SDMB too. Think of all the good we could do with the money raised! Myself, I cannot think of any reason not to do this right away.
If people don’t want to pay (although I don’t know why they wouldn’t, they must hate cute shelter puppies and kids with cancer and all the people we could help with this free money; I’m prepared to pay it, isn’t that enough?), they just don’t have to post. But it is WAY past time we move beyond the selfish convenience and sense of entitlement and take one for the team (so long as it’s my teammates taking it and not me!) by getting rid of free posting.
Well, there are at least 2 cost, as I described in my previous post.
The energy to make them, which as I implied, is virtually in the noise.
Then there is the resulting debris/littering, which even without dying baby seals has some social “cost”. If you dont give a rats behind about plastic bags EVERYHERE, then, from your perspective, that cost is zero. If the sight of one rogue bag gives you a stroke, then that cost is pretty high.
Overall, most societies seem to at least have some upper limit on the amount of free floating (heh) trash they will tolerate. So, for those societies, there is some real “costs” to these things beside energy.
I like the idea of charging for them. But then again I use them as poop bags with my dogs, so that would get expensive for me real quick.
Word.
IIRC, China banned the use of thin plastic grocery bags over a year ago? Any word on how that’s going, and whether they’ve seen demonstrable results? My Google-fu has failed me.