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In Ireland a few years ago a plastic bag levy was introduced. If you want a plastic bag at the checkout, you have to pay 5c for each one. Now everyone has reus

In Ireland a few years ago a plastic bag levy was introduced. If you want a plastic bag at the checkout, you have to pay 5c for each one. Now everyone has reusable shopping bags they bring to the stores. The bags are much more rugged than single use plastic bags or paper, and reuse is better than recycling. However, I think shopping bags are probably not the intended market for this stuff, and the need is more to replace the plastic wrapping that covers food. There have been efforts here and in the UK to reduce the amount of packaging in the first place but there will continue to be places where we still need it for a while

michael_vo 2y ago
Same in Canada. The reusable bags that the stores sell are 5-20$. You get hit once with that and you'll start bringing your own bags. It's actually really simple to influence human behavior with pricing!
- Eddy_Viscosity2 2y ago
  Its not all great, these reusable bags are starting to fill up in landfills. People forget to bring them, or make an unplanned stop to the grocery store to pick up a few things and buy a new bag. Then at home the bags pile up and get thrown out. Many are barely 'reusable', the are crap and don't get used again an get thrown out (my favorite are the ikea bags, they are big and great for groceries - vs many grocery store offerings which are garbage). Nutshell, it they may not be a net plus for the environment when so many poor quality bags which are more energy/resource intensive to make end up being single-use anyway.
  - maccard 2y ago
    Have you a source for this? Because all the published info I’ve seen says that it is great and it works as intended.
    - alistairSH 2y ago
      https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11367-021-01946-6 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11367-021-01946-6 I've seen several studies that dispute the efficacy of reusable plastic items (bags, cups, etc). The energy costs of producing the "sturdy" alternative are often high enough to offset the gain in reuse. IIRC, one study showed that reusing the single-use grocery bag one time (as a trash bin liner) was enough to put it back ahead of the typical $1 reusable bags available at the check-out counter at most grocers.
      - maccard 2y ago
        That doesnt back up your claim of these reusable bags piling up in landfills, it says it’s not as clean cut as it being better.
        alistairSH 2y ago
        I never claimed they're filling up landfills, that was somebody else. I was just providing some more context, which as you note, indicates it's not as simple as "reusable good, one-use bad".
      - Tagbert 2y ago
        Since reusable bags have so little mass, I am not so concerned about the energy use to produce. More about the amount of bags and micro-plastics that escape into the environment.
        alistairSH 2y ago
        That's fair. And I'm definitely in favor of doing whatever's best for the environment. Just pointing out that it's not as simple as "reusable is better" - depending on the set of metrics being measured, it might not be.
  - dougdimmadome 2y ago
    everyone I know has a bag of "bag for life" bags, and yes sometimes you forget to bring them and you end up buying more. but they're definitely a net good. the amount of bags sold to people who forgot theirs is orders of magnitude than the number of bags that would be handed out when they were free. I was shocked recently when I visited a shop in another european country and they had regular non-reusable bags, it seemed so primitive! > Many are barely 'reusable', the are crap and don't get used again an get thrown out there are thinner plastic ones, but even the lightest "reusable" bags we have last for months if not years. unless you're buying pineapples and throwing stars every time you shop they should last you a while.
    - ImHereToVote 2y ago
      > and they had regular non-reusable bags, it seemed so primitive! It's all about vibes with you people.
  - robertlagrant 2y ago
    > these reusable bags are starting to fill up in landfills Can you cite where this is happening?
  - jackcnreturns 2y ago
    [dead]
  - Workaccount2 2y ago
    The killer is grocery delivery services. They got wrapped up in the legislation, so they must deliver groceries in reusable bags. It's totally impractical to come an collect the bags again (collect, clean, sort), so instead our small office, for instance, goes through about a dozen of them a month.
    - ImHereToVote 2y ago
      It's all so tiring. Make packaging from manufacturers biodegradable by law. Why is the consumer burdened with these decisions? Is this some sort of deranged lobbying scheme?
    - camtarn 2y ago
      Over here in the UK, our grocery delivery service (Sainsburys) just comes to your door with flat crates full of unbagged shopping. You meet them at the door and transfer the shopping into your own bags. It's a lot slower than just grabbing bagged shopping out of the crates, and I have no idea how it works for folks in flats/apartments (do the delivery folks have to walk each crate up four flights of stairs individually?) but it is nice that it doesn't cause as much direct waste. Albeit that it might cause indirect waste due to now needing more vans on the road to service the same number of users, hm.
      - jstanley 2y ago
        You can carry the crate to the kitchen and dump out the contents on your worktop/floor. No need for the intermediate bagging! I agree things were easier when they delivered it in bags though.
        ssl-3 2y ago
        With the way groceries are usually packed (with smashables like bread and milk on top), that sounds like a good way to accidentally make French toast.
    - chipdart 2y ago
      > The killer is grocery delivery services. I don't think so. This is largely dependant on each grocery delivery service, but of you look at it the worst cases are actually just continuing business as usual,which is hardly a regression. In the meantime, some services managed to completely eliminate the use of plastic bags. As an example, for the past year or so I had a groceries delivery service use their old plastic bags, but they also implemented a charge-back service where they pay you back when/if you return them in the following delivery. This is clearly an improvement. In the meantime I had competing supermarket chains completely switch away from single-use bags to alternatives such as reusable plastic crates and even reusable cardboard crates. Behemoths such as Amazon Fresh completely switched to a mix of paper bags, for example.
  - vlachen 2y ago
    There are ways to get around the "oh crap, I forgot the bags" depending on how the store does things. For example, the Aldi stores I shop at in the US have a couple of cages with empty boxes in them. The boxes on the shelves get emptied and then the employees round them up and drop them in accessible cages/crates. This allows a person to choose to either buy a paper bag, buy a reusable bag, or make due with a couple of free boxes that were going to be disposed of anyways.
    - michael_vo 2y ago
      costco has been doing this since the beginning!
      - vlachen 2y ago
        Not something I have in my area, so I have no experience with Costco.
    - ssl-3 2y ago
      That may vary by location. The Aldi I usually go to has staff that are so ridiculously efficient that there are nearly zero empty boxes on the shelves, and the rolling "box cage" is nearly always tucked away somewhere unseen unless they're actively using it. This isn't a complaint. It's a nice place to shop, and the stock is always very orderly compared to some other locations. But GFS? They've got boxes at the checkout. I think the expectation is that the customer is supposed to box their own stuff, but they always do it for me if there isn't a line.
      - vlachen 2y ago
        My love of Aldi comes from the fact that my attention isn't being accosted as soon as I walk in the door. It's the stuff I need, without advertisements, screens, music, etc. The price doesn't hurt either. Before I began shopping there, I was exclusively at The Fresh Market, so when I switched, my grocery bill was cut by 2/3.
        2y ago
  - chipdart 2y ago
    > Its not all great, these reusable bags are starting to fill up in landfills. People forget to bring them, or make an unplanned stop to the grocery store to pick up a few things and buy a new bag. Then at home the bags pile up and get thrown out. Your comment is a textbook argument of perfect being the enemy of good. Sure, some bags are thrown out. Sure, people use more than one. Sure, people can buy them if they feel they need them. That's perfectly fine, as that's completely besides the point. What you're failing to mention is that thanks to this push to adopt reusable bags the use of single-use plastic bags plummeted. You no longer see over a dozen single-use bags being thrown out at each and every single shopping trip. These bags aren't recyclable and disintegrate very easily, making it extremely hard to pull them out of the environment once they get there. You're also somehow leaving out is the fact that some major supermarkets chains are making available reusable shopping bags made of natural fiber. It's not a given that you're replacing large volumes of single-use plastic with small volumes of reusable plastic, as you're also seeing small volumes of natural fabric being used. You're also leaving out the fact that this push is taking single-use plastic out of the market but nothing forces customers to adopt the store's own offerings. Anyone is able to buy whatever type of shopping bag suits their fancy. So no, you're not seeing plastic being replaced with plastic. You're seeing drastic reductions in plastic use by eliminating perverse incentives to consume single-use plastic containers, and the adoption of substitute goods that have a far preferable environmental footprint.
    - coryrc 2y ago
      Why care if they get thrown out? If you are the median American, you burnt (aka "disposed of in the atmosphere") far more petroleum driving to the store than a hundred single-use bags. I bet a single bag is of comparable volume to tire wear. Get off your high horse and start focusing on real problems. Automobiles are responsible for more micro-plastics than single-use items, plus 6PPD poisoning us. Single-use plastics are just a useful tool to distract from the real sources of pollution.
      - michael_vo 2y ago
        I've heard this argument before and totally agree that single use plastics are a tiny fraction of the total problem. But as a Canadian I like that the law forced me to think about my consumption habits, as well as it helped create conversation topics with other people.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > these reusable bags are starting to fill up in landfills. People forget to bring them, or make an unplanned stop to the grocery store to pick up a few things and buy a new bag Put a tax on them that funds an environmental initiative, whether that be decarbonisation, trash clean-up or better landfill management.
- Tagbert 2y ago
  you should shop around. I see the heavy plastic bags in the US$2-5 range. Check out Trader Joe's if you have them. I've been using the same couple of TJ bags for years.
- JadeNB 2y ago
  > Same in Canada. The reusable bags that the stores sell are 5-20$. Cents, not dollars, right?
opdahl 2y ago
In Norway the price increased to about 50 cents per plastic bag. I know it made me start carrying a reusable bag.
pdabbadabba 2y ago
Yeah, FWIW, this kind of bag fee is very common in the U.S. as well, with the same effects (though perhaps not in northern Michigan). In fact, single use plastic bags are outright banned in many parts of the U.S. I guess I'm not sure what GP means by "No one ever talks about paper bags."
- flakeoil 2y ago
  I guess they mean that paper bags are biodegradable and have been for ever. However, plastic bags have been used instead as they are cheaper. He says cost is what drives this so for a barley or corn plastic bag to work it has to be as cheap as a regular plastic bag or at least cheaper than a paper bag.
NoImmatureAdHom 2y ago
It's far from clear that "reusable" (thick, thin plastic bags are reusable too) plastic bags are a better deal environmentally. If you have to get 300 uses out of a thick one to break even, does the average "reusable" hit this number?
- whartung 2y ago
  I loathe modern grocery store "reusable" bags. They can't be recycled, in that I can't toss them into my blue bin, I have to take them back to the store (I don't) and story is nothing happens to them anyway. I hate the texture of them, I hate the way the lay. I find them just awful. For the grocery store, we have a set of, I guess, 10 or so cloth bags we use. We've used the core set every week for over 12 years. Had a tailor stitch up a hole in one of them once, wash them every few months. We have a large, cloth Target logo'd bag I stuff in the bottom. It's about 1.5x the size of the normal ones, if I put it on top they inevitably drag it out first and fill it with the milk, juice, bowling balls (both of them), cinder blocks and whatever else is super heavy that we happened to buy that day. "But it fits!" "Yea, and now it weight 50lb!" Couldn't stuff it with cotton balls, stuffed animals, and the Cool Whip. So, yea, bottom of the bag it goes. I know there are concerns with cloth, and we wrap notably meats in the light plastic bags to help contain contamination. It's not been a real problem. We've just started (past few months) using reusable mesh bags for the produce, that's working out ok so far.
ensignavenger 2y ago
Reuse is better than recycling when the reusable bags are more efficient to produce / number of uses than single use bags. More than one researcher has disputed this for "reusable" plastic bags. (I reuse the "non-reusable" ones...)
throwway120385 2y ago
I just reuse the paper bags, and I really wish someone would sell slightly thicker better-built paper bags because they have a lot of good attributes versus reusable bags. They biodegrade, they're made from waste and recycled wood and paper pulp, and they can be produced locally. The only thing that makes them not ideal is the handles tear off. Frequently the store staff have to double-bag everything with paper because the bags tear so easily. But when double-bagged I can get 5 or 10 uses out of them, which suggests that the bag just needs to be thicker to be highly reusable.
- sandworm101 2y ago
  >> The only thing that makes them not ideal is the handles tear off. Do you live in California? Nevada? I bet it is somewhere hot and dry. Paper bags are not fun in the pacific northwest, or the north, or deep south ... basically anywhere with moisture in the air. Either you put them down in a puddle by accident, or you get snow on them and it melts in your car on the way home. Either way, the bottom will fall out the moment you pick them up.
- kjkjadksj 2y ago
  Bankers boxes would probably last for years of use. Built in handles. Stackable and rigid in a vehicle.
  - mulmen 2y ago
    This could work but you’d probably need to re-think the shopping cart too so they can be easily re-used.
- ssl-3 2y ago
  Paper bags are available in a range of thicknesses, just as approximately every other paper product is.
Etheryte 2y ago
I don't remember the exact figure off the top of my head, but if memory serves well it was in the ballpark of a decade that you could buy a new plastic bag every day and throw it away after, and it would still create less CO2 in total than one reusable cloth bag. Modern plastic is ridiculously cheap to manufacture whereas reusable bags waste a lot of energy and water. A good example of a movement where people feel good about themselves, but actually they're not making things better.
- jahnu 2y ago
  Last I read that was debunked. It was based on one study or article that made a really bad assumption and then it spread. Someone went and did the figures again and it was way off by a few orders of magnitude and in fact only a few uses of a reusable bag means it’s better. Like you I don’t have the link to hand sorry.
  - mrspuratic 2y ago
    Externalities are hard. https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2020/04/30/plastic-paper-cotton-bags/ https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2020/04/30/plastic-paper-c... By estimated impact: cotton > paper > plastic, but more constructively: > Ultimately, the single use of any bag is the worst possible choice. The key to reducing your environmental impact is to use whatever bags you have around the house as many times and in as many ways as possible.
  - coryrc 2y ago
    So it's better that I need to pay for thicker bags just to put in my wastebasket to collect trash? How is that better than getting a t-shirt bag from the store to carry my items home, then use the bag to line my trash, then throwing the mess away? By volume I throw away more diapers in a month than an entire lifetime of plastic bags. Fighting plastic bags is what the rich companies making actual pollution want you to focus on so you aren't fighting real pollution.
    - nozzlegear 2y ago
      > Fighting plastic bags is what the rich companies making actual pollution want you to focus on so you aren't fighting real pollution. Why can't we fight both? Reducing both plastic bag pollution and "real" pollution seems better than just one or the other.
Al-Khwarizmi 2y ago
We have that in Spain too. I still pay for the plastic bag like 50% of the time, because they're useful to take out the trash. Otherwise I wouldn't be paying the 5c but I would need to buy trash bags. PS: the best reusable shopping bag I have is a traditional Taiwanese shopping bag a friend brought from there. Light, beautiful, rugged, holds a lot of weight, seems indestructible. A pity they don't sell these here, I live in fear of losing it :D
- teleforce 2y ago
  Sound great, any particular brand?
happyopossum 2y ago
Similar thing in California happened about 10 years ago - 10 cents per bag. Unfortunately, it backfired - because the 10 cent bags are thicker (they can't be designed for "single use", so they have to be thick enough to be "reusable"), the amount of plastic bag waste in landfills has actually risen dramatically in that time. California kinda screwed up by not mandating paper bags, or carving out an exception for them to promote their use. [0]https://publicinterestnetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Plastic-Bag-Bans-Work-January-2024.pdf https://publicinterestnetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01... - page 14
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > because the 10 cent bags are thicker (they can't be designed for "single use", so they have to be thick enough to be "reusable"), the amount of plastic bag waste in landfills has actually risen In New Jersey the problem was grocery delivery companies. Like, yes, if I have a constant stream of any packaging I’m going to dispose of it. In California, stores giving away free bags seems to have compounded the problem. Banning single-use plastic bags and adding a bag tax seems like the way to go.
  - happyopossum 2y ago
    >In California, stores giving away free bags seems to have compounded the problem. Banning single-use plastic bags and adding a bag tax seems like the way to go. That's what California did, and it failed. Nobody is "giving away free bags"...
whycome 2y ago
Those reusable bags are made of plastic. They degrade in different ways. How many bags did they replace when they reach their end of life? Where do they go at the end of life? How much do they cost? The previous plastic bags may have been reused (ie for small garbage bags). Are consumers now just purchasing equivalent plastic bags for that purpose? I think there are so many unanswered questions and the benefits can vary by region.

michael_vo 2y ago

Same in Canada. The reusable bags that the stores sell are 5-20$. You get hit once with that and you'll start bringing your own bags. It's actually really simple to influence human behavior with pricing!

Eddy_Viscosity2 2y ago
Its not all great, these reusable bags are starting to fill up in landfills. People forget to bring them, or make an unplanned stop to the grocery store to pick up a few things and buy a new bag. Then at home the bags pile up and get thrown out. Many are barely 'reusable', the are crap and don't get used again an get thrown out (my favorite are the ikea bags, they are big and great for groceries - vs many grocery store offerings which are garbage). Nutshell, it they may not be a net plus for the environment when so many poor quality bags which are more energy/resource intensive to make end up being single-use anyway.
- maccard 2y ago
  Have you a source for this? Because all the published info I’ve seen says that it is great and it works as intended.
  - alistairSH 2y ago
    https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11367-021-01946-6 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11367-021-01946-6 I've seen several studies that dispute the efficacy of reusable plastic items (bags, cups, etc). The energy costs of producing the "sturdy" alternative are often high enough to offset the gain in reuse. IIRC, one study showed that reusing the single-use grocery bag one time (as a trash bin liner) was enough to put it back ahead of the typical $1 reusable bags available at the check-out counter at most grocers.
    - maccard 2y ago
      That doesnt back up your claim of these reusable bags piling up in landfills, it says it’s not as clean cut as it being better.
      - alistairSH 2y ago
        I never claimed they're filling up landfills, that was somebody else. I was just providing some more context, which as you note, indicates it's not as simple as "reusable good, one-use bad".
    - Tagbert 2y ago
      Since reusable bags have so little mass, I am not so concerned about the energy use to produce. More about the amount of bags and micro-plastics that escape into the environment.
      - alistairSH 2y ago
        That's fair. And I'm definitely in favor of doing whatever's best for the environment. Just pointing out that it's not as simple as "reusable is better" - depending on the set of metrics being measured, it might not be.
- dougdimmadome 2y ago
  everyone I know has a bag of "bag for life" bags, and yes sometimes you forget to bring them and you end up buying more. but they're definitely a net good. the amount of bags sold to people who forgot theirs is orders of magnitude than the number of bags that would be handed out when they were free. I was shocked recently when I visited a shop in another european country and they had regular non-reusable bags, it seemed so primitive! > Many are barely 'reusable', the are crap and don't get used again an get thrown out there are thinner plastic ones, but even the lightest "reusable" bags we have last for months if not years. unless you're buying pineapples and throwing stars every time you shop they should last you a while.
  - ImHereToVote 2y ago
    > and they had regular non-reusable bags, it seemed so primitive! It's all about vibes with you people.
- robertlagrant 2y ago
  > these reusable bags are starting to fill up in landfills Can you cite where this is happening?
- jackcnreturns 2y ago
  [dead]
- Workaccount2 2y ago
  The killer is grocery delivery services. They got wrapped up in the legislation, so they must deliver groceries in reusable bags. It's totally impractical to come an collect the bags again (collect, clean, sort), so instead our small office, for instance, goes through about a dozen of them a month.
  - ImHereToVote 2y ago
    It's all so tiring. Make packaging from manufacturers biodegradable by law. Why is the consumer burdened with these decisions? Is this some sort of deranged lobbying scheme?
  - camtarn 2y ago
    Over here in the UK, our grocery delivery service (Sainsburys) just comes to your door with flat crates full of unbagged shopping. You meet them at the door and transfer the shopping into your own bags. It's a lot slower than just grabbing bagged shopping out of the crates, and I have no idea how it works for folks in flats/apartments (do the delivery folks have to walk each crate up four flights of stairs individually?) but it is nice that it doesn't cause as much direct waste. Albeit that it might cause indirect waste due to now needing more vans on the road to service the same number of users, hm.
    - jstanley 2y ago
      You can carry the crate to the kitchen and dump out the contents on your worktop/floor. No need for the intermediate bagging! I agree things were easier when they delivered it in bags though.
      - ssl-3 2y ago
        With the way groceries are usually packed (with smashables like bread and milk on top), that sounds like a good way to accidentally make French toast.
  - chipdart 2y ago
    > The killer is grocery delivery services. I don't think so. This is largely dependant on each grocery delivery service, but of you look at it the worst cases are actually just continuing business as usual,which is hardly a regression. In the meantime, some services managed to completely eliminate the use of plastic bags. As an example, for the past year or so I had a groceries delivery service use their old plastic bags, but they also implemented a charge-back service where they pay you back when/if you return them in the following delivery. This is clearly an improvement. In the meantime I had competing supermarket chains completely switch away from single-use bags to alternatives such as reusable plastic crates and even reusable cardboard crates. Behemoths such as Amazon Fresh completely switched to a mix of paper bags, for example.
- vlachen 2y ago
  There are ways to get around the "oh crap, I forgot the bags" depending on how the store does things. For example, the Aldi stores I shop at in the US have a couple of cages with empty boxes in them. The boxes on the shelves get emptied and then the employees round them up and drop them in accessible cages/crates. This allows a person to choose to either buy a paper bag, buy a reusable bag, or make due with a couple of free boxes that were going to be disposed of anyways.
  - michael_vo 2y ago
    costco has been doing this since the beginning!
    - vlachen 2y ago
      Not something I have in my area, so I have no experience with Costco.
  - ssl-3 2y ago
    That may vary by location. The Aldi I usually go to has staff that are so ridiculously efficient that there are nearly zero empty boxes on the shelves, and the rolling "box cage" is nearly always tucked away somewhere unseen unless they're actively using it. This isn't a complaint. It's a nice place to shop, and the stock is always very orderly compared to some other locations. But GFS? They've got boxes at the checkout. I think the expectation is that the customer is supposed to box their own stuff, but they always do it for me if there isn't a line.
    - vlachen 2y ago
      My love of Aldi comes from the fact that my attention isn't being accosted as soon as I walk in the door. It's the stuff I need, without advertisements, screens, music, etc. The price doesn't hurt either. Before I began shopping there, I was exclusively at The Fresh Market, so when I switched, my grocery bill was cut by 2/3.
      - 2y ago
- chipdart 2y ago
  > Its not all great, these reusable bags are starting to fill up in landfills. People forget to bring them, or make an unplanned stop to the grocery store to pick up a few things and buy a new bag. Then at home the bags pile up and get thrown out. Your comment is a textbook argument of perfect being the enemy of good. Sure, some bags are thrown out. Sure, people use more than one. Sure, people can buy them if they feel they need them. That's perfectly fine, as that's completely besides the point. What you're failing to mention is that thanks to this push to adopt reusable bags the use of single-use plastic bags plummeted. You no longer see over a dozen single-use bags being thrown out at each and every single shopping trip. These bags aren't recyclable and disintegrate very easily, making it extremely hard to pull them out of the environment once they get there. You're also somehow leaving out is the fact that some major supermarkets chains are making available reusable shopping bags made of natural fiber. It's not a given that you're replacing large volumes of single-use plastic with small volumes of reusable plastic, as you're also seeing small volumes of natural fabric being used. You're also leaving out the fact that this push is taking single-use plastic out of the market but nothing forces customers to adopt the store's own offerings. Anyone is able to buy whatever type of shopping bag suits their fancy. So no, you're not seeing plastic being replaced with plastic. You're seeing drastic reductions in plastic use by eliminating perverse incentives to consume single-use plastic containers, and the adoption of substitute goods that have a far preferable environmental footprint.
  - coryrc 2y ago
    Why care if they get thrown out? If you are the median American, you burnt (aka "disposed of in the atmosphere") far more petroleum driving to the store than a hundred single-use bags. I bet a single bag is of comparable volume to tire wear. Get off your high horse and start focusing on real problems. Automobiles are responsible for more micro-plastics than single-use items, plus 6PPD poisoning us. Single-use plastics are just a useful tool to distract from the real sources of pollution.
    - michael_vo 2y ago
      I've heard this argument before and totally agree that single use plastics are a tiny fraction of the total problem. But as a Canadian I like that the law forced me to think about my consumption habits, as well as it helped create conversation topics with other people.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > these reusable bags are starting to fill up in landfills. People forget to bring them, or make an unplanned stop to the grocery store to pick up a few things and buy a new bag Put a tax on them that funds an environmental initiative, whether that be decarbonisation, trash clean-up or better landfill management.
Tagbert 2y ago
you should shop around. I see the heavy plastic bags in the US$2-5 range. Check out Trader Joe's if you have them. I've been using the same couple of TJ bags for years.
JadeNB 2y ago
> Same in Canada. The reusable bags that the stores sell are 5-20$. Cents, not dollars, right?

opdahl 2y ago

In Norway the price increased to about 50 cents per plastic bag. I know it made me start carrying a reusable bag.

pdabbadabba 2y ago

Yeah, FWIW, this kind of bag fee is very common in the U.S. as well, with the same effects (though perhaps not in northern Michigan). In fact, single use plastic bags are outright banned in many parts of the U.S. I guess I'm not sure what GP means by "No one ever talks about paper bags."

flakeoil 2y ago
I guess they mean that paper bags are biodegradable and have been for ever. However, plastic bags have been used instead as they are cheaper. He says cost is what drives this so for a barley or corn plastic bag to work it has to be as cheap as a regular plastic bag or at least cheaper than a paper bag.

NoImmatureAdHom 2y ago

It's far from clear that "reusable" (thick, thin plastic bags are reusable too) plastic bags are a better deal environmentally. If you have to get 300 uses out of a thick one to break even, does the average "reusable" hit this number?

whartung 2y ago
I loathe modern grocery store "reusable" bags. They can't be recycled, in that I can't toss them into my blue bin, I have to take them back to the store (I don't) and story is nothing happens to them anyway. I hate the texture of them, I hate the way the lay. I find them just awful. For the grocery store, we have a set of, I guess, 10 or so cloth bags we use. We've used the core set every week for over 12 years. Had a tailor stitch up a hole in one of them once, wash them every few months. We have a large, cloth Target logo'd bag I stuff in the bottom. It's about 1.5x the size of the normal ones, if I put it on top they inevitably drag it out first and fill it with the milk, juice, bowling balls (both of them), cinder blocks and whatever else is super heavy that we happened to buy that day. "But it fits!" "Yea, and now it weight 50lb!" Couldn't stuff it with cotton balls, stuffed animals, and the Cool Whip. So, yea, bottom of the bag it goes. I know there are concerns with cloth, and we wrap notably meats in the light plastic bags to help contain contamination. It's not been a real problem. We've just started (past few months) using reusable mesh bags for the produce, that's working out ok so far.

ensignavenger 2y ago

Reuse is better than recycling when the reusable bags are more efficient to produce / number of uses than single use bags. More than one researcher has disputed this for "reusable" plastic bags. (I reuse the "non-reusable" ones...)

throwway120385 2y ago

I just reuse the paper bags, and I really wish someone would sell slightly thicker better-built paper bags because they have a lot of good attributes versus reusable bags. They biodegrade, they're made from waste and recycled wood and paper pulp, and they can be produced locally. The only thing that makes them not ideal is the handles tear off. Frequently the store staff have to double-bag everything with paper because the bags tear so easily. But when double-bagged I can get 5 or 10 uses out of them, which suggests that the bag just needs to be thicker to be highly reusable.

sandworm101 2y ago
>> The only thing that makes them not ideal is the handles tear off. Do you live in California? Nevada? I bet it is somewhere hot and dry. Paper bags are not fun in the pacific northwest, or the north, or deep south ... basically anywhere with moisture in the air. Either you put them down in a puddle by accident, or you get snow on them and it melts in your car on the way home. Either way, the bottom will fall out the moment you pick them up.
kjkjadksj 2y ago
Bankers boxes would probably last for years of use. Built in handles. Stackable and rigid in a vehicle.
- mulmen 2y ago
  This could work but you’d probably need to re-think the shopping cart too so they can be easily re-used.
ssl-3 2y ago
Paper bags are available in a range of thicknesses, just as approximately every other paper product is.

Etheryte 2y ago

I don't remember the exact figure off the top of my head, but if memory serves well it was in the ballpark of a decade that you could buy a new plastic bag every day and throw it away after, and it would still create less CO2 in total than one reusable cloth bag. Modern plastic is ridiculously cheap to manufacture whereas reusable bags waste a lot of energy and water. A good example of a movement where people feel good about themselves, but actually they're not making things better.

jahnu 2y ago
Last I read that was debunked. It was based on one study or article that made a really bad assumption and then it spread. Someone went and did the figures again and it was way off by a few orders of magnitude and in fact only a few uses of a reusable bag means it’s better. Like you I don’t have the link to hand sorry.
- mrspuratic 2y ago
  Externalities are hard. https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2020/04/30/plastic-paper-cotton-bags/ https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2020/04/30/plastic-paper-c... By estimated impact: cotton > paper > plastic, but more constructively: > Ultimately, the single use of any bag is the worst possible choice. The key to reducing your environmental impact is to use whatever bags you have around the house as many times and in as many ways as possible.
- coryrc 2y ago
  So it's better that I need to pay for thicker bags just to put in my wastebasket to collect trash? How is that better than getting a t-shirt bag from the store to carry my items home, then use the bag to line my trash, then throwing the mess away? By volume I throw away more diapers in a month than an entire lifetime of plastic bags. Fighting plastic bags is what the rich companies making actual pollution want you to focus on so you aren't fighting real pollution.
  - nozzlegear 2y ago
    > Fighting plastic bags is what the rich companies making actual pollution want you to focus on so you aren't fighting real pollution. Why can't we fight both? Reducing both plastic bag pollution and "real" pollution seems better than just one or the other.

Al-Khwarizmi 2y ago

We have that in Spain too. I still pay for the plastic bag like 50% of the time, because they're useful to take out the trash. Otherwise I wouldn't be paying the 5c but I would need to buy trash bags. PS: the best reusable shopping bag I have is a traditional Taiwanese shopping bag a friend brought from there. Light, beautiful, rugged, holds a lot of weight, seems indestructible. A pity they don't sell these here, I live in fear of losing it :D

teleforce 2y ago
Sound great, any particular brand?

happyopossum 2y ago

Similar thing in California happened about 10 years ago - 10 cents per bag. Unfortunately, it backfired - because the 10 cent bags are thicker (they can't be designed for "single use", so they have to be thick enough to be "reusable"), the amount of plastic bag waste in landfills has actually risen dramatically in that time. California kinda screwed up by not mandating paper bags, or carving out an exception for them to promote their use. [0]https://publicinterestnetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Plastic-Bag-Bans-Work-January-2024.pdf https://publicinterestnetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01... - page 14

JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> because the 10 cent bags are thicker (they can't be designed for "single use", so they have to be thick enough to be "reusable"), the amount of plastic bag waste in landfills has actually risen In New Jersey the problem was grocery delivery companies. Like, yes, if I have a constant stream of any packaging I’m going to dispose of it. In California, stores giving away free bags seems to have compounded the problem. Banning single-use plastic bags and adding a bag tax seems like the way to go.
- happyopossum 2y ago
  >In California, stores giving away free bags seems to have compounded the problem. Banning single-use plastic bags and adding a bag tax seems like the way to go. That's what California did, and it failed. Nobody is "giving away free bags"...

whycome 2y ago

Those reusable bags are made of plastic. They degrade in different ways. How many bags did they replace when they reach their end of life? Where do they go at the end of life? How much do they cost? The previous plastic bags may have been reused (ie for small garbage bags). Are consumers now just purchasing equivalent plastic bags for that purpose? I think there are so many unanswered questions and the benefits can vary by region.