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California governor signs law banning all plastic shopping bags at grocery stores. (www.voanews.com)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 61 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (20 children)

Which isn't the individual single use plastic bags every single item comes in.
It's just the one final plastic bag, all the other plastic bags are carried in.

I don't have a problem with the move myself. I'm single, with a supermarket just up the street. I use my own hand basket for my groceries. I never even use a cart.
But this policy always strikes me a tackling the smallest, least effective part of the problem. Banning plastic packaging would be FAR more effective. But also much harder. So this is just a way for politicians to seem like they are doing something, when they really aren't. In other words it's pandering.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Packaging is more effective to ban but also a lot more nuanced. Plastic packaging was developed over a lot of years and the products are designed for it so it would need to be a much longer term project.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 month ago (1 children)

My gf got me into bringing my own grocery bags and after a few times forgetting to bring them in, I got used to it. Now it’s automatic and can’t see doing it any other way.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (3 children)

We did this in Austin, and I hate it. It's probably fine if you go to the store and use your own totes, but my situation requires that I have to get my groceries delivered, so that isn't an option for me. And instead of plastic bags which I could crumple up to take up near-zero space and actually reuse, my house is filled with enormous paper bags that have already ripped before I got the groceries up the stairs in the first place and take up tons of space and have basically zero reuse value and go straight into the trash after one use. I used to reuse plastic shopping bags all the time; waste basket liners, collecting random odds and ends to throw away together, organizing and storing dozens of random cables and chargers, etc.

I wish there was a better way to dispose of plastic bags. Because while I understand the reasonings for the ban, the result is majorly inconvenient and ironically results in more single-use products in my life.

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[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (5 children)

In Seattle we did this years ago. In practice, people just treat the new "reusable" bags as disposable. This law is a stop gap and ultimately kicks the can down thr road to placate business interests and the bullshit plastic lobby.

Bring on the downvotes, folks, but the reality is that now people will be throwing away thicker plastic.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago

Yeah no. Plastic bags given in the UK were around 8.5 billion in 2014, which reduced to under half a billion by 2023 just from introducing a charge.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

That doesn't line up with my experience. Canada banned single-use bags in 2023, and I notice a lot less reusable bags discarded on the street than the single-use ones before the ban.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

In Hawaii every county did it independently around 10 years ago. Some counties have done it better than others. I don’t think I’ve had a single plastic bag on the big island in that entire time, but when I’m on Oahu I occasionally get them (for example the Apple Store thicker plastic bags that are “reusable”—somewhat true).

I don’t see people treating reusable bags as disposable, but it’s also completely acceptable here to just bring a cart full of stuff unbagged from target to your car here if you didn’t bring bags (groceries people will get paper if they forgot). I don’t think that’s as acceptable other places.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 month ago

Those are the bags this law bans.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

In Austin, most grocery stores switched to paper and sold canvas when we had our ban. Only Texas’ beloved H‑E‑B decided to sell thick plastic replacement bags and has continued to do so post-ban. Hopefully the California law counts these stupid thick bags as plastic in their ban.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago

Those stupid thick bags are exactly the 2014 loophole that this 2024 ban is closing.

[+] [email protected] -15 points 1 month ago (3 children)

So now instead of having plastic bags that can be re-used to line small trash bins or dispose of cat litter or pick up dog poo in the park, people need to buy single-use plastic garbage bags. Smart.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

people need to buy single-use plastic garbage bags.

or maybe they really don’t? not every bit of trash needs to be contained in a tiny plastic bag.

edit: for example, instead of dedicated bag for cat litter I can usually fit it in a partially empty large trash bag from around the house (as I take it out to the toter). And for dog poop I buy corn-starch based biodegradable bags.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

At the least the garbage bag could be made of biodegradable or plant-based plastic.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

Can you honestly say that you actually use most of those bags? If you do, you're in an extreme minority. I throw away the ones with holes (a good chunk of them) because they can't be used as garbage bags (and they're notoriously difficult to recycle making most jurisdictions not even accept them; grocery stores who "take" them will often just send them to places like grocery warehouses which will unceremoniously throw them away). But despite the fact that I've been using my own bags for months only occasionally supplementing them with the thin, plastic store-provided ones when I physically don't have enough and the fact that I'm choosy with them, I still have a backlog of literal hundreds of shitty little plastic grocery bags sitting under my sink from when I didn't have my own bags. The cat litter or dog poop thing assumes that the person with the bag owns a cat or a dog (less than 60% in California, and this is still overgenerous because cats and dogs aren't the only pets) and that most of them use their grocery bags for waste disposal, which doesn't seem realistic.

That's not even including the gargantuan amount of bags that go to waste before you even get your hands on them. I can't tell you in my short time working at a grocery store how many bags get thrown away because they're defective or get ripped. I vividly remember multiple times getting a stack of literal hundreds of bags that's supposed to go on a bag rack, and a defect across the entire "ream" meant that I couldn't situate it on the rack correctly. Those all went straight into the trash.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Not the op, but we do use them in my house too. We use every one that we get. We can line them with paper (we collect our junk mail paper for this purpose) to prevent leaks if there happen to be any tiny holes.

Use a bag daily during dinner prep to collect all the food trash and packaging and stuff that needs to be moved to the main trash can. Also use them as small trash bags in the bathroom and bedrooms.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Using one bag every single day for dinner prep just to put its contents in the "main" bin seems wildly inefficient compared to just having a larger bag in your kitchen or bringing those same contents to the trash via a reusable bucket. Using bags inefficiently is better than not using them at all, but it still suggests a net benefit from banning store-issued plastic grocery bags. Having such easy access to them incentivizes people to reuse them in frivolous ways if they even reuse them at all, and I think this illustrates that.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

It is somewhat ineffecient spacewise. But my area tends to have fruit fly problems during the summer, so we use the smaller plastic bags to more tightly seal food waste to keep fruit flies from getting to it. Also reduces odors from the trash

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[–] [email protected] 44 points 1 month ago (4 children)

We did it a while back, you will adapt pretty quickly.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

Portland’s done it too. If you want plastic bags, they’re big and reusable and fairly expensive. Paper is really the only option at most places now. That said, I really wanna see the reusable cheap plastic ones banned, cause no one really reuses them.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 month ago (1 children)

In Austin we had a ban. The state overrode it a year later, but the damage was done...everyone realized how much easier it is to carry groceries in large tote bags that you can sling over your shoulder.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Or boxes; we use boxes. Carrying 3 - 4 boxes up stairs is much easier than 10 bags.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

One time, I went to a small, family-owned grocery store that used cardboard boxes, and I can totally attest to this. The boxes are a transcendental experience.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

Most NZ supermarkets just stack the boxes at the front after the checkout.

Are also keep a few in the back of the car.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 month ago

Great to see this. I have not seen someone bring their own bags except me in months.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

There was a plastic bag ban here* in my state. Still is technically. The only problem is the idiots who shoved this through left exceptions/loopholes that allowed basically every technically rural place here able to keep using plastic bags as long as they’re “reusable” which basically just made much thicker plastic bags be the norm. It’s fucking stupid and we need to forever go back to paper.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

Nah, fabric. And more grocery stores but smaller and locally owned so people don't need to do a bunch of shopping at once. And proper pay and worker protections and price controls so people can afford to have time to shop

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Crafty people: If you don't already, you should learn about plarn, aka yarn made from cut up disposable plastic shopping bags.

My wife makes it and turns it into forever bags.

https://warpedfibers.com/plastic-bag-yarn/

[–] [email protected] -4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I'm sorry.
If you want to make them, for the sake of making them. As an art project or something, that's fine I guess.
But as a functional blanket? That seems like the worst thing I can imagine.

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