Every industry lobbies for its own best interests. It would be irresponsible not to. That says absolutely nothing about the merits of its products. The products and the various and often counterproductive efforts to ban them have to be judged on their own merits, or lack thereof, not by maligning the manufacturers who make the products.
I certainly did not intend to malign the manufacturers.
I was merely pointing out that powerful lobby groups exist, and are more than willing to tie up municipalities in court, delaying legislation and costing taxpayers money. And then they are quite happy to spread Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt to create misinformation for the public. Who then repeat it.
This is the reality of lobbying groups, and has little to do with the manufacturers.
Who do you suppose is funding the Canada Plastic Bag Association? 
When they sued the City of Toronto over the bag ban (which may or may not be what you were referring to) their argument was the following, which sounds to me perfectly factual and not “Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt”; their argument essentially was that this was feel-good policy-making by the city which had failed to consider any actual evidence:
The CPBA argues that the plastic bag ban is unlawful and that it was passed in bad faith because council has not received any advice, evidence, or opinion from its staff or any other person indicating that banning “single-use plastic carry-out (shopping) bags” would further the economic, social, and/or environmental well-being of the City or would protect the health, safety and well-being of any person.
“As Toronto City Council gave no notice, undertook no public consultation, carried out no due diligence, and received no advice prior to adopting the Plastic Bag Ban, the bag ban resolution ought to be quashed for having been passed in bad faith,” said Joe Hruska, representing the CPBA.
The CPBA lost the first lawsuit in Toronto and are trying another one. Because, why not? In 2012, Toronto council caved to the mere threat of a lawsuit and cancelled a proposed ban on plastic bags.
They’ve lost in every other municipality that they’ve tried this on.
They lost in Victoria in 2018, trying on the argument that the city did not have the authority to implement such a ban.
They’ll come up with whatever reasoning they have to for a lawsuit or two or three. They’ll keep going until they are not allowed to sue anymore, or they run out of money (unlikely).
Again, this is what they are designed to do.
Toronto of course has also famously banned bottled water from all municipal facilities, because apparently they just found out that the bottles are made of plastic (and of course, plastic = BAD). Never mind that the bottles the water is sold in are almost universally clear polyethylene terephthalate (PETE), which is the best possible plastic for recycling, and indeed many spring water brands (and all the ones I buy) use bottles that are made from already recycled PETE, and eligible for recycling yet again.
This is a great example of the idiocy of bans, and why Toronto has historically been so sanctimonious that years ago it earned the moniker “Toronto the Good”. Of course plastic bags are now banned federally, but – and I say this as someone who generally quite likes Justin Trudeau – the man is so sanctimonious himself that I’m sure he’d be welcome as the mayor of Toronto the Good.
My life continues to go on even in the face of this sanctimonious ban on plastic bags. It’s a struggle, but I manage.
If only the lobby group had been more successful in challenging policies and making us spend even more tax dollars. Then this long national nightmare would end.
I thought recycled plastic couldn’t be used for food?
I honestly think most plastic recycling is fake.
Here’s one common brand which sez:
Each bottle of non-carbonated water is made from 100% recycled plastic and is 100% recyclable.
I can’t speak to how much of the alleged recycling is fakery, but PC is a reputable brand from one of the biggest grocery chains. Incidentally, that particular item is a pack of 12 but they’re more commonly available in 24-packs, often on sale for just a couple of bucks, and it’s actual spring water, not filtered tap water.
I think some places have limitations on using consumer-recycled plastics for food, but recycled material is not primarily consumer waste, it’s industrial waste. Things like off-cuts, damaged goods, or down-cycled material (ie. originally intended to be a higher grade, but deemed unsuitable and repurposed). And they don’t say they’re recycling it back into a bottle necessarily, just that it could be recycled. So they could, for example, make their bottles from off-cuts from another factory, and then recycle their bottles into clamshell packaging or textiles, and claim to use 100% recycled plastic and be 100% recyclable.
No, there was nary a peep about e. Coli. Groceries were installed in brown paper sacks, as God intended. Then they got a hard-on against paper and the timber industry. I think the average idiot somehow got in their head they were cutting Redwoods down to make toothpicks and old growth forests were evicting spotted owls and the rest of it.
Trees are a renewable crop when it comes to making pulpwood.
I never grokked the rationale behind charging for grocery bags either. Whether paper, or plastic, organic gluten-free flax, the groceries incorporated the cost in the price of the products we purchase. How could it be otherwise? How am I supposed to get all this shit out to my car? “Oh, well that’s extra”.
In the case of my (cheap) family, we absolutely used fewer grocery bags once they started charging for them, which is presumably the point of forcing stores to charge for them. The easiest case is putting the loose groceries back into the cart and wheeling it out to the car.
Well sure, but the point is everybody got along fine for decades because we already paid for the bags by shopping there in the first place.
The problem is almost certainly the way McDonald’s drive thrus are set up. Every one I’ve seen has two windows – you pay at the first one, and they hand you your food at the second one. As someone else upthread said, the bags haven’t actually been banned per se, you just have to pay 15 cents for them. Except once you get to the second window you’re now past the point where they collect your money, and the person at the second window doesn’t have a way of processing the transaction (well, they probably could have taken your 15 cents, walked over to the register at the first window, and rung up a transaction for one bag, but they probably just couldn’t be bothered to do that). But really they should have asked @Sam_Stone if he wanted a bag when they took his order.
Some, maybe most places. But for as long as I’ve been shopping at warehouse stores, they haven’t provided bags. You could use the empty boxes that they were going to throw away that were stacked up after the checkout line, but that’s it.
The rationale is to get people to use fewer bags - it has nothing to do with “we already paid for the bags as part of the price of the groceries” We absolutely did - but I paid the same for a quart of milk whether I took a bag or not. That’s no longer the case. And even if you might pay to use just as many bags if you are doing a week’s worth of grocery shopping, I’m going to guess that almost nobody pays for a bag to bring a single item to their car.
I’m sure it is because of how the drive thru is set up - but that’s still on the McDonalds (either employees or owner) . They should have asked him if he wanted a bag, the second person could have walked over. Really, even the drive-thru set up is a choice- plenty have only a single window.
Why? If I buy more groceries, I need more bags. If I buy less groceries I need fewer bags. Seems like a solution in search of a problem.
If you passed up a bag for a quart of milk when you didn’t have to pay extra, that’s great. But lots of people didn’t pass up bags they didn’t need, whether it was for a quart of milk or a bag of chips and a soda they were going to carry down the block to the park. Not to mention people will bring bags with them when there is an extra charge when they didn’t before . So fewer total bags are used.
One problem is, people are generally not good at thinking of a problem at large population levels.
I don’t use many straws. I don’t take a bag when I don’t need one. I dispose of my single use plastic responsibly. I don’t create much garbage for the landfill.
Guess what? It’s probable that you’re not typical. It’s likely that you do actually use less than most, and are more responsible for most.
The policies are put in place for the whole population, many of whom are complete idiots, and need to be TOLD what to do, for the good of everyone else.
Charging for single use plastic items absolutely does reduce the amount of these going into the waste stream from the hundreds of millions of people using them.
In the McDonalds example above - this is an issue that is a result of a brand new policy and a restaurant who is still finding ways to accommodate it. Eventually (soon), the employees will learn to ask if folks want to pay for a bag, and the customers will learn to ask for one or bring their own. THINGS CHANGE. I know change is hard and uncomfortable, but guess what? THINGS CHANGE ANYWAY.
No, I remember it well. e.Coli, Salmonella, other food-borne pathogens. Reusable bags are full of them. Over half of all reusable bags tested in one study had dangerous bacteria in them.
The debate around e.Coli and salmonella was certainly a thing back when the reusable bags showed up, and was used as a justification for them. I remember it well, but stuff from 30 years ago is hard to search for.
I like their recommendations that you carry separate reusable bags for various food types, and “always, always” put meat in a disposable plastic bag. Someone should tell them that those bags are also being banned… They also recommend that you wash your reusable bags regularly, but reusable bags are rarely washed. And the polypropylene ones cannot be washed, and they are the ones I see most commonly.
To be fair, I went there first maybe a day or two after the law was passed. I picked up some food for my kid yesterday, and they did ask if I wanted to buy a bag. And
I did buy the bag this time. I’m not putting loose McDonald’s food on a filthy seat. I might get some McDonald’s food on it.