I find it a nuisance, but since i started buying plastic bags to replace the ones i used to get free, it’s only been a minor nuisance.
I hate paper straws with a passion, though. They break down before I’m done with my drink. I have also purchased plastic straws, and a straw carrier, which i leave in my bag and in my jacket pocket. I dearly hope that plastic straws aren’t outlawed.
I’d forgotten that I started this thread six months ago, and had opined in it extensively. Nothing has happened to change my position that the ban on plastic bags is a well-intentioned fiasco rife with unintended consequences, and that plastic grocery bags were never a significant source of ocean microplastics. Of course yahoos like the ones @Euphonious_Polemic mentioned above, throwing plastic bags out of car windows, are a plague on society and should be heavily fined; they and those like them are the reason we have these ridiculous bans.
I’ve also been frustrated by the wildly inconsistent implementation, which will only now come under a federal ban. Some stores charged 5¢ a bag, others did not, others still had no bags at all. Then an entire city would have a municipal bag ban, then a conservative mayor would get voted in and the bag ban disappears (along with the 5¢ fee). I was particularly annoyed by the sanctimonious signs in stores charging the bag fee, alleging how much they “cared” about the environment. No, you don’t, you care about getting 5¢ for bags that you used to give away free.
Anyway, as I said before I never throw plastic grocery bags away (unless they’re defective, which is rare) but use them to line the kitchen garbage bin for which I’d just have to buy bags. For that reason I still have thousands of them. When I run out of the huge stash I have upstairs, there’s a ton more in the basement. For that matter, I hoard plastic produce bags, too, as well as plastic bread bags. They’re useful for wrapping leftovers or disposing of wet kitchen waste.
Actually, one thing has changed in the past six months. Fast food outlets are now universally using paper straws. I hate them. The paper is stiff enough, similar to plastic, but the straws have an off-putting paper texture that is suggestive of drinking through tissue paper. I never use them. I have a stash of plastic straws that I hoarded in some distant past. When those run out, I’ll have to turn criminal and try to purchase plastic straws on the black market, probably from some guy on the street corner wearing a trench coat.
I note also that our ever-virtuous provincial liquor stores, who switched from plastic bags to paper years ago, have now deemed that paper bags are not environmentally good enough. Their new solution: no bags. Frankly I have no problem with that. I stopped accepting their plastic bags long ago because they were too stiff and heavy for use as garbage bin liners, and I rarely took the paper bags, either. For years I’ve been using sectioned cloth wine bags and/or just wheeling the bottles out to the car in the shopping cart.
I reiterate that I’m all for responsible, sensible environmental measures. I’m happy to note, for instance, that just by following our current guidelines on recycling and making use of the extra-large wheeled recycling bins that were recently provided, probably at least 80% of my household waste volume is recycling, and only a tiny portion is landfill – sometimes so little that it’s not even worth taking the bin out on garbage day. When paper, cardboard, cans, aluminum trays, and virtually all plastic and glass is recyclable, there not a lot left for garbage.
Not meaning to hijack the thread, but how do you feel about the balloon releases to “carry our prayers to heaven”. Not only plastic, but irreplaceable helium as well.
In case you missed in my lengthy diatribe above, I hate paper straws, too, and now everyone here uses them. I don’t know if they break down before one can finish a drink because I’ve never used them long enough. I hate the feel of the paper texture. I always throw them out and use the plastic straws I still have.
I don’t mind the texture.
I used paper straws as a kid, and remember when plastic straws were introduced. Being conservative, i was very suspicious. But i rapidly realized they worked far better, and never unraveled, and i was a convert.
You know you can buy a hundred plastic straws at Dollarama, right? That will only cost you a dollar, at most a dollar fifty. And they bend, having that cool corrugated piece.
I don’t mind the paper ones. But I reuse the plastic straws too, and keep a couple stashed.
The boxes of plastic straws I’ve seen for sale (I even have such a box, with those bendable straws) are a smaller diameter than the classic fast-food straws. Not much smaller, but not the same. Thus why my stash of plastic fast-food straws purloined from various fast-food emporiums (or possibly, emporia) is so valuable today. Many are from Wendy’s, where I would always go inside for my order, and leave with my food and drink and at least a dozen straws – almost as if I was anticipating the dreaded Future of the Paper Straw – yet another sign that we sensible mature citizens (I reject the term “oldster” as ageist) take as evidence that everything is worse in the future.
You know, you can (gasp) wash and reuse your plastic straws. Every grocery store I’ve been to in the last few years sells brushes intended for this. They also sell non-disposable metal straws packaged with said brushes.
I’m delighted that regular plastic grocery bags are banned, despite liking them for my trash. I hated seeing them littering up the area. I can use paper bags for trash just like we used to do when I was a kid. I line the bottom with newspaper.
When I’m given the heavy plastic bags, I reuse them until they’re ready for the garbage.
the problem with paper bags–the ones without handles–is that you have to carry them in your arms, which is a hassle when you’re walking, as opposed to convience of plastic with more elasticity
Hey, I didn’t fall off the puppy-wagon yesterday! Currently in my kitchen is a plastic straw – whose orange colour suggests an original issue from Burger king – that is in at least its fifth rinse and re-use cycle. This is how I extend the longevity of my precious stash of large-diameter plastic straws!
Well, as I said, I agree that littering and other aspects of poor disposal is a problem. What irks and saddens me is that I was never the problem, but I have to suffer the consequences (well, not really, but only because I have so many thousands of plastic grocery bags saved up).
The only real consequence I have is if I don’t bring along enough re-usable bags for the groceries I’ve bought, which tends to happen often because – like I suspect happens to most of us – I sometimes go in expecting to buy two or three things I need and end up with a whole shopping cart full. But even then I don’t succumb to the temptation to buy yet another unneeded re-usable bag – I just take the stuff out to the car in the cart, and deal with it then.
Right, which is why the new “no-bag” liquor store policy doesn’t bother me. I refused their free plastic bags when I realized they were too stiff and heavy to re-use as garbage bags and all I could do was throw them out, and they were explicitly prohibited from recycling. Then I refused their paper bags because it was just as easy to take the stuff out to the car with no bags at all or with re-usable cloth bags, and then I didn’t have a mess of thick paper bags to have to dump in recycling.
i have silicone and metal straws, so i always have a straw with me. i also keep roll up fabric bags with me as well. they fit into pockets and back packs. easy peasy.
And that’s the rub. Canada’s policy had nothing to do with the environmental impact; indeed, the impact was probably not examined at all, or such reports as were available were ignored. The move was pure political theatre. Plastic bags are VISIBLE. The energy and waste involved in creating reusable bags isn’t seen.
There is no such thing as a free lunch. Anything done to help the environment will have a cost, so a responsible person would examine the cost and see if it was worth it.
A much better solution to the excess of plastic is to tax it. Let people use plastic if they want, but make them pay for it. That’s how a government should deal with such externalities. The entire problem with externalities is that the parties who benefit from a trade impose a cost on third parties but don’t pay for it. So, make them pay,. Aside from changing the incentives in a proper way, it means the government can much more effectively deal with ALL plastic, not just two specific things like bags and straws.
Just a reminder that CO2 is not the only measure of environmental impact.
Your overall point may be correct.
Oh, I never suggested otherwise. You’ve got physical waste, CO2, use of detergents, the energy and time expended manufacturing each bag, and changes to customer behaviour to consider.
Why so much obsession over straws? Are you doing that much drinking in the car? That’s the only time I use one.
The most energy-intensive example, by like an order of magnitude. Kind of an unfair comparison.
Can’t speak for anyone in this thread individually … but for people with teeth-sensitivity problems, they may drink of straws frequently. Even in their home, when most would just drink from the rim of a glass or cup.
Aside from that – a lot of people just like and got adapted to straws. Pretty much everyone has this or that habit that falls apart under coldly-logical scrutiny.
The impact of the plastic bag ban on our household is that we use a lot more flimsy produce bags (which have a second life as liners for the food waste bin) and groceries too large to fit in a produce bag either go into a reusable bag or no bag at all. I think the net impact is probably a reduction in the amount of plastic used.
I almost never drink fountain soft drinks, so I haven’t had to worry about paper straws yet.
Luckily take out places here in NYC still give plastic bags so I am still able to use those to line small garbage cans.
I tried one once when CA tried that it was like drinking through a TP roll …Now you have to ask for one if you want a plastic straw