I’m not out to shoot the messenger, but what kinda horseshit is that? Did the county government really pass a law that states what type of reusable bag I can use?
This.
Does the County of Alameda actually have a law saying that you can’t re-use paper bags? Or is that just the policy of some particular store, or chain of stores? Do ALL supermarkets in Alameda County follow such a rule? What happens if you try it? Do they confiscate your paper bags?
ETA: Or is it perhaps a local municipal ordinance, like maybe just in Oakland or Berkeley? Why would the “state” (city or county or whatever), or even the store, have an interest in whether your re-usable bag is freshly laundered? Do they do random sniff tests?
Most plastic grocery bags have little holes in the bottom anyway, so they’re not really useful for wet garbage or kitty litter sifting. I have reusable bags, when I don’t forget to put them back in the car after the last trip to the store. I use the inevitable plastic produce bags for kitty litter, and I buy tall kitchen bags for the actual garbage can.
Ever participated in a creek or river clean-up? If you had, you wouldn’t need to ask this question.
I grow organic vegetables in my backyard and I scrub the heck out of them - dirt, bugs, bird poop, cat piss, and things I don’t want to think about happen out back in the garden. Basically, wash your food before you eat it. Even raccoons and some primates have figured that one out.
I usually carry a stack of paper bags in my car trunk that I re-use for a bit then covert to bird cage liners, then it’s the compost heap with them. I like them because they stand up on their own, it’s easy to double them up, and the ones I get have handles on them so they’re easy to carry. When they wear out I get more from the store, and when I re-use them they give me a $0.05 credit on my bill.
We do get plastic bags because they seem inevitable at some stores and they’re used for trash can liners and such, but because we get a lot fewer due to using re-usable bags a lot we aren’t over-run with them.
Heck, just having a compost heap cuts down on the trash the household generates. Recycle, F yeah!
Both! I use plastic bags for a garbage in my car, and to clean out the cat box and pick up after the dog in the yard. Paper because in Michigan we have a bottle deposit, and it is impractical to haul plastic leaky bags to the store. Also, at stores where they don’t have machines and have to count them by hand, they refuse to return any cans/bottles in plastic bags…for good reason! (Nastiness!)
Growing up in Europe it used to be that no stores offered bags. Of any kind. It was expected that you would bring your own bag (called a ficelle in France). Shopping is different there in that you would shop daily…compared to the US where it seems stockpiling weeks and weeks worth of provisions is common. Sadly, unfortunately…European stores now offer plastic bags, too.
Somewhat related…I found it interesting that Germans leave their recycling on their way out of the store, e.g. removing the inner bag of cereal and leaving the cardboard, same for the toothpaste, etc etc. It seemed a lot smarter than lugging it all home only to bring it back later.
It looks like it’s mostly cities that have tried these laws, and the success has been mixed.
My wife and I keep a sufficient supply of reusable bags in our cars and wash all of the food that needs to be washed. We still somehow end up with enough plastic bags at home to line our small waste-paper cans.
I think you missed the question.
“I know that a whole lot of plastic bags end up in places they shouldn’t be. but how?”
Participating in a river cleanup wouldn’t explain how the bags end up there.
The answer is obvious some people are lazy inconsiderate jerks who just don’t dispose of things in a neat manor.
Get better informed, the stores are not banning plastic, local governments are. (And you missed a question mark in your question.)
In my city, it’s no plastic, and 10 cents for paper (soon to be 25 cents). I keep a stash of bags in my trunk.
Keeping clear of other people’s germs is somewhere between a useless and counterproductive effort. I’d much rather my immune system is working to kill the stray cauliform bacterium than attacking my own body out of boredom.
I have no problem bringing 10 to 15 reusable bags to the grocery with me; they all get folded and shoved down into one bag. I also reuse paper bags from Trader Joe’s if I have them.
The thing that bugs me is that the stores don’t train their checkers to use them. Or maybe they do, but the average checker gives not one shit about my food and just slams stuff in there. I have to stand there, hyper-vigilant, if I want to get home with intact produce — or bags that are not stacked with a hundred cans. :mad:
My solution is to usually help the checker with the bagging, but mon dieu I’m usually thoroughly exhausted by this point, and need to keep an eye on any kids I have with me.
At my local grocery chain, the baggers act like they get paid based on how many bags they manage to get rid of. They double-bag everything, refuse to put more than one or two items in each bag and get visibly angry at any type of intervention. Often a small stack of unused plastic bags will stick to a bag and they just leave it there. Asking for paper bags also enrages them and they will often pretend not to hear the first request and then greet a second with an exasperated huff and then insist on doubling them then filling them at most half-way.
I know a lot of it is because the store hires people with mental handicaps for this job, which is nice and all, but I wish they were not so easily upset.
It’s getting rarer and rarer though, and in my own corner of Europe plastic bags were common for the last 30 years. Now some stores don’t even offer them, others change 5ç for the flimsy ones and 50ç-1€ for the reusables (which you can trade in for a new one at any time). Personal shopping carts are common here and rare in the US though, and I can’t recall a time either when I saw paper bags at a store in any of the European locations where I’ve lived, or where I did not see people bring their own carts/bags.
A lady asked for her watermelon to be put in a bag yesterday. The melon was too heavy to be carried by the handles with the melon inside. The melon was picked in the field and loaded into a gaylord box on a pallet. The gaylord was shipped on a truck to the store and people touched the watermelons all over searching for the perfect one. Putting the watermelon in a plastic bag did nothing to keep it sanitary. What was the purpose of this lady getting the bag put around the watermelon?
What is a “gaylord box”?
Big shipping box.
ETA: Arrgh! The stupid board acting up thing keeps dropping my quotes and making me come off as terse! Sorry, Broomstick.
Some of it is just due to the flimsy nature of the things. There you are, out on the street, with your plastic bag, and there is nowhere handy to recycle, so you drop it in a garbage bin. Someone comes along and dumps the bin into the truck, the truck gets dumped to a landfill, maybe with intermediate dumping steps, and if there is the least bit of wind, gravity isn’t going to keep the bag with the other trash, it will just blow away.
Maybe someone buys items for a picnic, unloads the bag, and a gust blows it away. Even in the absence of laziness, ignorance, or malice, the things are going to wind up floating around.
I’ve solved problems like these. I tell them not to bag anything, just put it back in the damn cart. I bag it myself after pushing the cart to an unused lane. It really just saves a lot of aggravation on my part, things are packed appropriately into my reusable bags, and I can carry it all out of the store on two shoulders.
Though I’ve never encountered quite the attitude described above. Good thing, because there would be - words - to accompany an impromptu bagging lesson that would make everyone unhappy.