Plastic Bags = BADDD!!!

This is only because you are not paying it. Why won't they just switch to damn paper bags and be done with it, rather than levying a charge? The whole philosophy behind the move seems topsy turvy to me.

Of all the litter, plastic bags are the most mobile... sometimes you see them floating high above the street, free as a bird.

(I'm the Marat of the coming plastic bag war... incendiary.)

The more I learn about mankind, the less I understand.

"I am a submissive cross dresser into bondage and plastic bag asphyxia. My transvestite fetishes include headscarves, plastic rain bonnets and plastic dresses. Despite my innocent appearance I am one kinky woman!"

!!!!!

Good for Bangladesh.

For someone like me who has no car and needs to carry all my groceries on a 20 min walk, I so DO NOT want paper bags, they are useless. Plastic is ok but still not that great. well made, square based canvas bags rock my casbah.

buy a rucksack.

Yes!

I can't find the New Yorker article online, but apparently the author, Ian Frazier, wrote a nearly identical article for Mother Jones several years earlier.

http://www.muzen.com/NewBillPhoto.gif

Yeah, backpacks and canvas bags all the way. I guess we'll just have to buy special bags for all the dog-poop and cat-litter scooping though... hrm.

this fuckshit is my rep -- in BROOKLYN.

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/simcha-felder-speaks-for-the-plastic-bags-for-the-bags-have-no-voices-9623959

asshole Cuomo rejects NYC's plastic-bag fee

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/n-y-lawmakers-urge-cuomo-compromise-disposable-bag-fee-article-1.2972351

had to create a psa for my epidemiology class. decided on single-use plastic. am not a artist by any means but am happy to be done with it.
https://www.powtoon.com/online-presentation/d84jhp9y1a7/?utm_campaign=copy%2Bshare%2Bby%2Bowner&utm_content=d84jhp9y1a7&utm_po=23621572&utm_source=player-page-social-share&utm_medium=SocialShare&mode=movie#/

What if this was all the result of a brainstorm session at a big catholic think tank?

1. get everyone's support against single use plastics
2. ban condoms!
3. profit: accepted @ heaven

:-)

utm_campaign=copy%2Bshare%2Bby%2Bowner&utm_content=d84jhp9y1a7&utm_po=23621572&utm_source=player-page-social-share&utm_medium=SocialShare&mode=movie#

really not looking fwd to this

I put my garbage in plastic takeout bags

https://www.westsiderag.com/2020/02/18/single-use-plastic-bags-will-be-banned-in-new-york-state-starting-march-1st-why-it-might-be-tougher-for-men

Just throw it out the window onto passing rich ppl

it's kind of strange that ny has taken so long to do this.

I use them for picking up dog shit and lining my smaller trash cans (bathroom, bedroom). I have reusable bags, but about half the time I'll forget them at home. It all kinda balances out well for me.

I just don't see how the inconvenience of ppl having to find replacements for free disposable plastic bags for other purposes can POSSIBLY come close to the harm that cheap single-use plastics are doing. Everyone I know has a whole cupboard of those fucking things and we all go around asking each other if we know a good way to dispose of them. I've used tote bags for my shopping for ages and yet somehow I still have a bag of bags that barely fits under my sink! Good riddance. People will figure it out.

Single use bottled water is next imo.

At this point I feel like I am absolutely pro-plastic bag. Very low environmental cost to produce, can be used again and again, yes not easily biodegradable, but not really polluting either, so long as they aren't just pumped out into the sea. But obviously an easy target for people who fly and drive everywhere and want to comfort themselves that they are doing something about the environment.

Now all supermarkets in the UK only sell big thick "bags for life" for 5-20p each and (from observation) the majority of people just seem to treat them as they did their little flimsy bags, the amount of plastic actually being used has increased massively anyway, so well done there lib dems.

Fyi they are pumped out to the sea

I can't wait for Canada to ban these fuckers.

xp Oh yeah sure, but what isn't?

This is fucking awesome news. I hope it works out the same as the smoking ban. I hope people look back on the idea that you could just go shopping with nothing to carry your stuff home in and just expecting to be handed a piece of shit plastic bag instead as essentially unthinkable and bizarre. Paper’s bad too. Bring a bag with you for fuck’s sake. They fit in a pocket.

Single use bottled water is next imo.

Yes. Just ban it. A little leadership, please.

what are those trash bags you buy in the store (Glad etc) made of? Aren't they bad for the environment?

I don't even really know what "composting" is so don't even bring that up.

deck chairs, Titanic, etc

But obviously an easy target for people who fly and drive everywhere and want to comfort themselves that they are doing something about the environment.

Are you subtweeting a certain group here or is this just...a straw-latte liberal, or...? In my experience people you "drive everywhere" have a way better chance of having 10 tote bags in their trunk when they get to the grocery store than New Yorkers who walk everywhere. Isn't this change still a net harm reduction? Other places all over the world manage somehow.

It doesn't need to solve climate change to be worth doing; less microplastics in the ocean is reason enough.

what are those trash bags you buy in the store (Glad etc) made of? Aren't they bad for the environment?

Totally. Biodegradable/compostable alternatives exist that are virtually indistinguishable from “real” plastic.

Would want to see coffee cups banned (and in the meantime surcharged for) before plastic water bottles.

Easy now

i use those ikea blue bags for sooo many things. also most wine/spirits stores give out reusable bottle bags that carry 4-6 bottles.

I think the NYC law only allows paper bags for a fee, not the heavy “reusable” plastic bags. Since paper bags are crap for anything heavy, this will be a pretty strong nudge for people to bring their own bag.

you can honestly carry so much more comfortably in the reusable totes too.

i've been bringing my own bag for the past year, it's easy and cool and you don't have to be a "pro-plastic bag" edgelord

otm. this is bad behaviour that has to be removed out of the zeitgeist. like smoking on airplanes or hitting on teenagers.

I use a backpack and never have any difficulty, I'd be fine with an outright plastic bag ban tbh

also how has no one itt posted this??

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuJ31bu01mM

i VAGUELY know what compost is, Your Shakiness, ive just never had to do it

o. nate, i believe the link i posted says otherwise

Focusing on particular high-profile items, like plastic bags, makes it easier to explain the problem, but an effective solution to the problem will have to include a narrowing of choices by eliminating a large number of the worst ones, along with creating a culture of reduced consumption, reuse, and recycling.

yes of course it will

also it is a NY *state* law

Certain bags are exempt from the law, including bags used by pharmacies to carry prescription drugs, produce bags for bulk items such as fruits and vegetables, and dry cleaner garment bags....

Stores will continue to sell packages of plastic bags, such as garbage bags, ziploc bags, baggies and bags for cleaning up after dogs, according to the DEC spokesperson.

exemptions:

http://www.dec.ny.gov/chemical/117781.html

There was a piece on the radio some months back about which restaurants would let you bring your own containers to pick-up take out ...

Here it is!

https://www.wbez.org/shows/worldview/can-you-get-takeout-without-a-side-of-trash-in-chicago/fdab4761-534c-4cb2-9131-17979e34ae66

i was actually thinking of asking my usual friday night spot if we could start bringing in our own containers. They only use foil containers and paper lids but still.

and i saw a pick on reddit or something of a place that has a shampoo, body wash dispenser to fill bottles which is sooooooo needed everywhere.

our local co-op has been doing that for decades, all our soap/shampoo/lotion is handled that way

jfc Brad, no need to be a dick, this is the context of the plastic bag charge in the UK

These tweets are precisely why I would rather fricassée, and then subsequently eat, my own arm than vote Liberal Democrat.

That 9% in the polls looking positively princely to me tbh. pic.twitter.com/oKTrqKjEJ4

— Ash Sarkar (@AyoCaesar) April 20, 2018

jfc Brad, no need to be a dick

you were being a dick! in your initial post!

xxpost A lot of co-op styled places have a byo container policy for bulk items, from honey to peanut butter to oats or whatever, but there's a company called Loop, run by TerraCycle, that does this on a wider scale:

https://loopstore.com

how exactly was I being a dick? I was not rude to anyone.

i am absolutely pro-second hand smoke.

yeah, let's read the first lines of posts and ignore the rest shall we?

i thought that was your thesis. I didn't think you were being a dick. but it wasn't dick free.

idk it feels a little dickish to walk into a conversation about removing one form of single-use plastics from regular use in new york city grocery stores and what that change affects and how we could possibly use even less than that bc it would be really sick to have less plastic in the oceans, with "at this point i am very pro-plastic bag, because (based on only personal observation) that people use and discard these bags for life just as much, and jeez these anti-plastic baggers sure love to pat themselves on the back before taking their private jets to work"

although i understand now you were trying to own the lib dems, who are also not relevant to this conversation imo

my thought is, every little bit helps, gotta start somewhere, this plastic bag ban should've happened fuckin years ago

there is absolutely no parking for my private plane at Trader Joes. Their parking lots are notoriously terrible.

right, because one single post is about NYC then every other subsequent post in the previously-non-NYC-specific thread must also be about NYC?

If the net result of plastic bag bans is that the generations that ensured the demise of earth get to at least share in a small fraction of the suffering our descendents will have to endure, I am for it.

I keep reading this thread title as "Big Audio Diggity Diggity Dynamite!!!"

And just to be clear, I am of course open to alternative solutions for dog shit disposal should the Maryland General Assembly bring the hammer down.

wait, I was totally imagining people in the UK spending 2, 5, 10 quid on reusable bags and then just tossing them not the 5p-20p "reusable bags for life". Those were always stupid. They need to get rid of those too.

Can't beat plastic bags for record shopping in the rain, but other than that they can not rot in hell

the two record stores I worked at awhile ago, I always asked if they needed a bag because the bags are usually thick and nice and for cds not really good for anything else (even picking up poop). People were so trained to need that bag to walk their cd to their car or to put it in their purse. I did have a bunch take the bag and then realize how stupid it was and give it back.

P much as soon as I was old enough to be in stores by myself I started turning down plastic bags at checkout if I was buying one thing or things small enough to be pocketed, and not infrequently cashiers eyes would go wide and theyd be like "Really? Are you SURE?", or even sometimes argue with me and say insane things like "I HAVE to give you a bag for this, it's the rule". Crazy to imagine how future generations (if there are any) will look back on how we thought essential we thought these were to our lives.

I was buying some cheese mochi the other day and they went to bag them up and I was like, uh I am going to eat them now, can you just put them all into my hand. It was awkward.

and this is how the coronavirus started.

I wonder if it's that bags serve to elevate the product. If you're just putting it in your pocket then the acquisition seems more banal.

FYI to Cams but while you are largely otm re the use of bags for life, some supermarkets have started doing the £1 extremely compact bags which are themselves made from recycled plastic. They’re sort of cloth? Am I ever organised enough to bring a bag for life? No. Do I always have a foldaway bag on me? Yes and it makes a big difference to the amount of plastic bags I use! I also bring a backpack if I know I’ll be buying more than I can carry in two reusable bags. The bonus is they’re considerably stronger so the arse doesn’t bust out of them the way it does with the plastic ones.

But that’s obviously not something scaleable to lots of people and maybe things like the direction the co op is going in (making bags from compostable plastic) is a better solution given it takes a big push for people to change their behaviour?

the smoking ban proved lots of people can change their behaviour on a dime.

the success of the plastic bag ban in i.e. France also proves it. it’s simply societally weird there to not bring your own bag. it just becomes second nature. wallet, keys, phone, extremely crushable bag stuffed into pocket/backpack.

that said people do plan themselves a little better in France due to shops not always being open, tobacco and newspapers and bread only being sold in certain places etc. But the bag thing is honestly an incredibly easy habit to get into.

it's probably bad but I really like seeing people get flummoxed when there are no bags for them to use.

my town and most of the surrounding towns have banned them. it’s not a big deal at all. when i see a single-use plastic bag now it seems weird.

for the love of god let water bottles be next. when i walk down my street on recycling day it amazes me how many bins have almost nothing but single-serving plastic water bottles.

so glad there is a 10-cent deposit on those in Oregon

The large grocery store down the street from me has finally gotten rid of the 'reuseable' plastic bags... California finally banned them, acting on a loophole in an earlier ban on single-use bags. (The manufacturers just made heavier bags and called the reuseable and thus not single-use.) The loophole has finally been closed

Really bleak article on the petroleum industry going all in on plastic as gasoline demand weakens

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/feb/19/they-pushed-so-many-lies-about-recycling-the-fight-to-stop-big-oil-pumping-billions-more-into-plastics

the "reusable" ones take 20x the energy to make as the old and free non-reusable ones (which I often reused multiple times anyway)

That aspect has been driving me nuts! My area started with a transition period where you could still get ordinary plastic-film bags but had to pay 25 cents or whatever — we really should have stopped there, or slowly elevated to a more annoying cost, because that alone was plenty of incentive to bring one's own bag. Instead, we now have the situation where inevitably, every few weeks, you end up stopping for something you did not expect to, you have no bag, you have to purchase an overpriced multi-use one, and eventually your household has dozens and dozens of unnecessary, resource-intensive reusables clogging up storage cabinets, waiting for you to figure out some way to get rid of them that feels better than throwing them away. Each one is acquired at point of sale, for somewhere between $1 and $2, only for reasons of immediate necessity — it's the rare situation in which people would likely be happier being "fined" $2 for a disposable film bag than "purchasing" a $2 reusable they want nothing to do with. And then on a larger level it bugs me that our political/regulatory processes make it so unlikely for people to acknowledge that a rule has been counterproductive and adjust it to have the desired effect.

In Maryland, you can use your own bags or pay $0.10 for a single-use paper bag. I like the paper bags from a nostalgia standpoint (like I'm in an Art Frahm pin-up or something), but have had them rip open on more than one occasion, which is no fun at all.

Giant Food sells both the flimsy reusable bags and a sturdier, collapsible "shopping tote." Although the totes cost more than twice as much as the reusable bags, they are sturdy as fuck - I've gotten years of use out of mine and they don't look much worse for wear. They're easier to clean as well. For a few bucks extra, they have an insulated one with a zippered lid.

https://i5.peapod.com/c/E5/E54L4.png

That's an interesting suggestion, nabisco. I agree with you it would be better for all concerned if disposable bags were still available at a higher price rather than forcing people to buy a sturdier bag they don't really need.

This prompted me to look up the Anya Hindmarch I'm Not a Plastic Bag bag on eBay, to see if they appreciated. 2007! The single-digit 2000s were a long time ago.

I've done some maths with a calculator and the answer is that 2007 was 19 years ago. If you had been born in 2007, you would now be the same age as a nineteen-year-old.

It seems that they sell for £16-20-35. They were originally priced at £5, although my recollection is that they were very rare at the time, or at the very least I couldn't get hold of one. I was too busy listening to Kate Nash and MIKA on my third-generation iPod Nano. I was too busy "cranking that".

I've had a couple of those fancy reusable bags ^^^^ (including an insulated one) but the problem is that they're also plastic! and someday bound for a landfill

I recently found an old LL Bean cotton tote, made in the USA no less... that's the one I'm using most now

They still make them in the USA!

Good to hear

We have an assemblage of tote bags we use for groceries, some purchased and others acquired as giveaways or elsewise. Some are cotton, some have some level of plastic in them. I've read the arguments about amount of energy to produce a tote vs. plastic bags, and how it can be kind of a wash etc. But I still feel better bringing my own bags than coming home with 12 plastic bags (or more when they double-bag them). Especially because store baggers are so cavalier about throwing just like two or three items into each bag. The funny thing is they become much more thoughtful and efficient with the totes, they fill them up properly.

Anyway, it's all just a drop in the ocean, and the ocean's already full of microplastics. But what can one do.

As a former grocery worker, Tipsy, I can tell you it's probably more cautious than cavalier! If a plastic bag you've overloaded rips open, it gets turned into the store's problem. And with plastic you can't do certain organizational tricks (like using boxes to structure the edges), since corners like to rip through the film. They're just not built to reward efficiency. A big tote is, plus even if it somehow fails that's doesn't feel like the store's fault. (Obviously paper is the most, like, intellectually engaging for a bagger: a defined, rectangular, non-flexible space to Tetris full while also attending to weight limits, maintaining a steady base you can lift from beneath, and orienting items so nothing rigid is jutting against the planes of the paper.)

I'm mostly impressed that you still encounter baggers at all. Of like four different stores I go to, it's pretty much self-bagging across the board. Occasionally a checker tries to help and does it like an inept noob, and I feel like an old head awkwardly steeped in "domain knowledge" from years of professional bagging/checking.

The first person I saw with one of those Anya Hindmarch £5 totes was Keira Knightley, when she was a regular at the farmer’s market I shop at in West London.

In the UK, most people have a selection of cotton totes, either muslin ones that don’t last long or larger cotton twill totes from eg. artisan bakers or posh food shops that are £10-£20 (more if branded or designer) or given away as promotional items. The only plastic bags available are either heavy gauge ‘bags for life’ from supermarkets that you can exchange for another once they break, or standard plastic bags from street markets/traditional greengrocers/corner shops.