Not sure where you are, but this sounds like what you’re talking about. To quote the CBC,
As of July 1st, customers will need to request utensils, straws, napkins, and condiments at restaurants. Plastic bags are now banned, and paper bags and reusable options come with an additional charge.
I agree with you that some of this is nonsense. I think you rather exaggerated, though, when you said they banned “single use itmes”, implying all of them. That would imply that McDonald’s handed you your hamburger at the drive-through window with no packaging, and threw a bundle of fries into your car through the window. I mean, yes, charging extra for a paper bag is ridiculous, and I certainly don’t want stinky fast food in a reusable grocery bag. But you seemed to be somewhat exaggerating.
I didn’t exaggerate. I specifically said they wanted to charge me to put my paper wrapped items in a paper bag. I never implied that all packaging was banned.
But of course, that’s one of the reasons this is stupid. My grocery order is FILLED with single use plastic and paper packaging. The last little bit of giving me a paper bag to put it in being restricted is just dumb. It’s like they are going out of their way to force people to jump through hoops.
All we heard in the run-up to this was about the risk of plastic. Micro-plastic, plastic rings, the Pacific plastic garbage patch, etc. Then they go and restrict paper bags as well.
I have to wonder if this wasn’t lobbying pressure from restaurants that use plastic to force paper using restaurants to join the restrictions to avoid a competitive disadvantage being unevenly applied. Whatever, it really turns out to be a $.15 additional tax on fast food, because few people are going to bring cloth bags to a drive through (and shouldn’t. Ick.), and you can’t really take an order of food without a bag unless you are eating it right away.
And I guess all those restaurants that paid big money to switch to paper bags and cardboard cutlery are just screwed.
Well, we can agree that it’s ridiculous. I live in one of the most environmentally inclined political areas in the entire country, and no one here has even proposed regulation to the extreme that you describe. Sure, the liquor board is discontinuing paper bags, but it’s a voluntary measure and as I said earlier I never used the damn things anyway. Wine and liquor is heavy (and also, unlike fast food, non-stinky) so cloth bags with heavy straps are ideal, all the more so because some are made with compartments for wine and similar sized bottles. It’s a good example of where going with “reusable” makes sense.
Some of these prohibitions are so outrageous that I suspect you may be right about special interests being involved.
Naw, it’s a good life hack you want to know. If you have to drink something that tastes nasty, you can use a straw. Shove the straw most of the way across your tongue, so the liquid only barely touches the very back of your tongue before you swallow it.
It makes consuming a gallon of nasty liquid pretty easy.
Yeah, it seems stupid to make paper bags unavailable for fast food. For drive-thru you might be better off getting a thermal bag which at least keeps stuff temperate.
I don’t notice any change in taste using paper straws, but they get soggy and stay that way. I sometimes still use (and then reuse) plastic straws. But I often don’t use a straw.
I have stopped buying plastic bags. I keep some in my car. But since I reused them, this is a mild nuisance. I don’t mind making changes that genuinely benefit the environment. But they should probably consider going after the biggest problems first - minimizing commercial packaging waste, stopping unnecessary microplastics, that sort of thing rather than inconviencing people over stuff that makes very modest differences.
Some of these “bans” go too far - it’s entirely possible to write them so that McDonald’s or any other restaurant can give you your food in a free paper or plastic bag. There’s a whole list of exempt bags in my state. Some make sense - bags for take out food , bulk food , to contain food sliced to order or uncooked. Others don’t make as much sense - it’s not clear why the pharmacy can give me a plastic bag or a free paper one to carry a prescription but not if I buy over the counter medication.
And for some of them the complaints don’t make sense - I’ve absolutely heard people complaining about having to ask for napkins, utensils, ketchup packets etc. At some point in my life (I’m not sure when) restaurants started automatically throwing utensils , napkins , straws into takeout orders. At least three quarters of the time I order take-out I’m eating it at home and don’t need any of that stuff, so I don’t think it’s ridiculous for the restaurant be required to provide only on request.
But not all of the stupidity can be blamed on the law.
This is the result of a decision made by McDonald’s - the law quite possibly said that you had to pay $.15 for a bag but it certainly did not say that the restaurant couldn’t collect that fee when you got to the window and were told you had to order and pay for a bag.
I’ve never had a problem with paper straws tasting bad. Just with getting soggy and sometimes disintegrating. This extremely beefy cardboard straw lasted long enough for me to finish my coffee. I’m not convinced it was better for the environment, as making paper is rather dirty, and did i mention the straw was very beefy? But maybe it is. Anyway, if they’ve solved the “straw disintegrates” problem I’m not too upset to lose plastic straws.
I’ve never used a paper straw long enough to notice. It’s not the “taste” that I can’t stand, it’s the feel or texture. Imagine biting into a wad of paper towel – that’s what a paper straw feels like to me. I consider the switch from plastic straws one of those ill-conceived feel-good measures that have minimal benefit.
I’m surprised the large-volume nasty-tasting stuff is still in use, although maybe in some cases there’s a reason for it. Much more palatable purgatives have been around for a long time. The stuff I had was a packet of powder that you dissolved in about 3/4 of a cup of water that created a lemon-flavoured drink. Not unpleasant, and there certainly wasn’t much of it.
I’m in the Edmonton area, and it’s horrible. The poor front line restaurant workers are constantly getting yelled at as they pass a tray of unstable food for the upset driver to find secure areas for. Fries falling out of the sleeve, greasy, poorly wrapped burgers dripping…
I feel the fast food sector is going to fight this at some point. Madness.
Well, ain’t that just peachy! Something else that I put to productive reuse will be banned here, too, I suppose.
I haven’t felt the pinch on the grocery bag ban because I hoarded such a large quantity for reuse as kitchen garbage bags. But I also re-use produce bags (often multiple times) as food wrapping for leftovers to minimize the use of plastic wrap. If a bag gets gungy from whatever was in it, I put it aside and later use it to bag kitchen waste. By putting stinky stuff into its own sealed bag, I can keep the kitchen garbage bag going longer and not take it out until it’s full, minimizing the number of bags I use. Which, incidentally, is always a very small number. My garbage bin is generally almost empty at pickup time, while the recycling bin – which is much larger – is often nearly half full.
I wonder if these genius do-gooders ever stopped to think about this sort of productive reuse these bags have? Or about the fact that some produce in grocery stores is deliberately water-sprayed to keep it fresh, so the produce you’re bagging is sometimes literally dripping wet? Or about the possibility of making all these bags out of biodegradable plastic instead of banning everything?
Hey, New Zealand: Say hello to our lil’ friend, E.Coli.
The fast food places here are actually telling you to bring in a cloth tote bag that they can put your food into. You pass them the empty bag and they fill it and give it back. That includes things like a sleeve of fries, guaranteed to get grease on the inside of the bag, a greasy burger wrapping. And of course this bag handle is going ro be filthy over time, and passed back and forth between the employee and a zillion customers. It will also be set down on the packing table, mixing with the stuff that was set down from the last customer’s bag. Then you’ll take it home with you.
Such a good idea.
We are apparently in the middle of the great unlearning.
Kia ora Straight Dope (and Banquet Bear and other Kiwis in particular)!
I happen to be visiting here in Aotearoa at present, and I can personally confirm (insofar as some unsupported claim by some rando on an anonymous messageboard can be considered “confirmation”) that NZ supermarkets are no longer using plastic produce bags for consumers to put individual produce items in.
What we’ve got instead are small lightweight paper bags, or whatever reusables the customer brings along. Working fine for me so far, at least.
?? Where are you getting this prediction with respect to the use of consumer-packed plastic produce bags for individual produce items like tomatoes, apples, onions, etc.? You do know that those foods in most supermarkets just sit out in unwrapped heaps, buck naked in the supermarket atmosphere, right?
Customers are handling, breathing on, etc., individual unwrapped produce items all day long, irrespective of whether the lightweight produce bag they then place their chosen items into happens to be paper or plastic. How in the world do you figure that swapping out plastic produce bags for paper ones will somehow make the whole process—i.e., thousands of strangers fondling heaps of bare apples with their bare hands—significantly less hygienic?
I mean, unless the supermarkets you’re used to keep all produce items individually pre-wrapped in plastic so that consumers never actually touch any produce surfaces with their dirty consumer skin, you are at just as much risk from E. coli spread in the produce section as those of us shopping in NZ supermarkets.
I was talking on the phone with a friend in Edmonton today, and he didn’t have a lot of good things to say about that city’s ban on “single-use items.” In fact, he had none. This guy is as liberal as they come, and he still mentioned his city’s “enviro-weenies,” whom he wished would just shut up and deal and shut up even more.
But it’s starting to get ridiculous. I like tomato juice, and typically get a six-pack of 5.5 oz cans–that size being what I typically consume at one sitting, usually breakfast, but since I don’t drink it every day (maybe once every week or two), I’m not going to buy anything bigger that will just go off in the fridge. A six-pack costs $6.79, plus a 60c deposit (10c per can), plus a 48c “enviro-fee” (8c per can). What does the “enviro-fee” go towards? Nobody knows. At any rate, at the checkout, I’m paying $7.87 for a $6.79 six-pack of tomato juice. At least I get my deposit back when I return the cans, but that “enviro-fee” is gone forever, to who-knows-where.
I can see a backlash coming—from producers, such as the McDonald’s front-line staff, who have to explain, undoubtedly, over and over, why your drive-thru order is delivered separately, and not in a single bag; to consumers, who have to entrust two Big Macs, a box of McNuggets, a chicken sandwich, four large fries, and four soft drinks (without plastic straws) to a guy whose only recourse is to pile them on the passenger seat. And he’s only got two cup holders for the sodas. Don’t brake too hard; your meal will end up on the dashboard. And like the “enviro-fee,” at least two sodas will be gone forever if you do.
I see bamboo straws and metal straws for sale; no idea if this is a side effect, presumably you could always get them?
The more I see people in my area just not give a shit about litter, or hazardous waste, or complain about paying $.15 for a bag or some other trivial thing, the more I am convinced that the average Joe needs a cruder form of hint that is harder to ignore, along the lines of the $2,500+ fine repeat offenders in Germany can be slapped with for not sorting their trash into the correct bins. The total bans on disposable bags (+ concomitant fines for littering, etc) may simply be a reaction to a few, or more than a few, ruining things for the rest of us, a tragedy of the commons.
Ripping people off, as opposed to a simple deposit, is not cool, though. Unless that money truly is going to a worthy cause…
I completely agree. Basically, instead of enacting stupid and counterproductive prohibitions because of the idiotic behaviour of a minority of morons, impose strict penalties for such idiotic behaviour. I fully support environmental causes, just not the stupid ones that are basically performative.
That’s the thing. Nobody has told us what it goes towards. If pressed, they will say that it’s all about saving the whales and other ocean wildlife (even though our province has no saltwater coasts), or cleaning up landfills (sorry, I cannot see workers picking through garbage to take out plastic straws and plastic bags), or something-something-environment-something. They never define what the “enviro-fee” is for, only that we have to pay it because of reasons that remain unspecified. None of which make sense in a landlocked province.
I agree with the complaints about draconian bans of all single-use items of whatever composition in all contexts, although it’s not clear to me how many such truly draconian bans actually exist in reality. But I don’t get all the whining about bans on free giveaway disposable single-use items, and plastic in particular.
You can still buy all the sealable reusable plastic bags you want for food storage and garbage disposal, etc., if that’s how you roll. You just can’t pick up an endless supply of them for free at the grocery store and other retailers any more. Big whoop.
Likewise, you can buy a 15-cent bag to put your 7-dollar or whatever fast food meal in, and a 10-cent or whatever fork to eat it with, no problemo. But they’re not allowed to just hand you ones you didn’t specifically request and pay for. Again, so what?
The people who want bags or forks or ketchup packets or whatever can still purchase and pay for them. The people who don’t want them can save a little money by not ordering them, and don’t have to deal with a bunch of unwanted junk in their drive-thru meal. At the same time, the reduction in retailers handing out unwanted junk with customers’ purchases means that there’s less unwanted junk littering public spaces and polluting the environment. Seems pretty win-win.
So okay, as part of the cost of a purchased item, the retailer is charging you a particular amount, set and collected by themselves, which they call an “enviro-fee” and whose specific purpose and relation to the retailer’s actual costs you have no knowledge of.
Just like all the rest of the money that the retailer is making you pay for that item, except perhaps for the sales tax.
You mean, a retailer figured out a way to make the price of their wares superficially look lower than what you end up actually paying for it? Goodness, what an absolutely unheard-of degree of commercial nefariousness.
I mean, sure, I don’t particularly like having point-of-sale charges tacked on to the sticker price of a purchase either, but are you arguing that retailers should simply not be allowed to do any such thing? Or are you concerned that the retailer charging the fee is not actually complying with product recycling practices that the fee revenue is supposed to be covering? Both of those are valid conversations to have, but I don’t think generic whining and kvetching about “enviro-weenies” is in the same category.
Face it, the current problem of anthropogenic environmental degradation is pretty serious, and AFAICT there are no viable ways to address it that aren’t going to involve significant inconvenience and expense to very great numbers of people. Reflexive foot-dragging and constant complaining that this particular proposed measure is too useless and burdensome, and somebody ought to be pursuing some other more effective measure instead, is how we got here in the first place.
Yeah, it is indeed a great pity that we as a society, and as a species, didn’t develop and implement a more responsible approach to unnecessary and unsustainable packaging practices a half-century ago. But anyone who attempted it back then faced the same sort of resistance and unproductive whining.
I’ll be the first to admit that many, many aspects of many, many environmental regulation initiatives are sub-optimal, inefficient and annoying. But I think it’s long past time for everyone to face the fact that in this case the disease is way worse than the cure. Letting unwanted and harmful manufactured debris continue to proliferate unchecked is the worst approach of all.
I mean, yes, charging extra for a paper bag is ridiculous, and I certainly don’t want stinky fast food in a reusable grocery bag. But you seemed to be somewhat exaggerating.