Bought or brought?
Only 36?
If you forget the bag, go home and fetch it.
This gives you a while to be annoyed and frustrated, which helps you remember next time.
If you just buy a new bag, it’s such a non-issue that you never learn.
I used this technique and it fixed a year of bad habits in two trips.
You gptta just be stubborn as hell. Refuse the bag, take your cart to the car, and chuck it all in
i don’t mind bringing the cart/handbasket back in to the store. i just don’t want to fill my pockets with bags.
Yeah, thats the way.
I have never paid for a bag.
Store them in the car…
I leave it in the car…every… time…
I put like 10 bags in my car every other… Month. Whenever I remember it.
Can’t you just put the stuff in the trolley unbagged then bag them when you get to the car?
It isn’t the case any more but there was a phase where my trunk was literally full, bottom to top not an inch to spare, of reusable bags, and they’d be forgotten.
It worked out nicely once though when I finally remembered and just grabbed a whole bag full of bags, and there was some Karen going off on the poor self checkout cashier girl about having to pay for her bags, and I was just like “here take whatever I got a trunk full”, and everyone was happy.
And then Albert Einstein clapped.
If it’s any of the Karens I know they would go off on you if it was a bag from a discount store like Aldi, Walmart, TJ Maxx, etc and only expect something like whole foods
😂 That actually did come up, but I was sorta the Karen in that sense. We got stuck in a politeness war of “just take any”, “oh no you tell me which”, and finally I relented like, “Well actually this Trader Joe’s one is pretty snazzy, here take TJ Maxx” or whatever
In retrospect talking about it now… she might have been fishing for permission to take the snazzy one.
Good 😤. Be better to the customer service, Karen.
Good deed and possibly faster queue? I would clap for you too, if I were there.
Right? Low key the only time in my life I’ve read a believable “and then they clapped” on the Internet. I wish I could shop when there’s a grocery bag hero about.
Gotta remember to put them back in the car after bringing groceries into the house though. Also what about second car?
Just put the second car in a bag. Then it’s handy when you go shopping.
Just need to have enough bags to support a slow “when you get to it” rotation. Bags stay in trunk (you might need to double the number of bags you have to support a second vehicle), then grab a bag of bags when going shopping, fill bags at store, empty and full ones go in trunk when leaving store, full bags go inside to wherever is most convenient, then when they are empty, place them near the door. Then, on some trip to the car, remember to grab the bags by the door and stick them into the trunk and you’ve completed one cycle for those bags.
If they get dirty, put them near the laundry instead of the door and either mix them in with another load of laundry or do them separately if you’re getting that many bags dirty often enough to justify a load of bags. If they aren’t specifically dirty, they should be fine. They aren’t like clothes where you’re slowly sweating and getting skin oils into them so need to wash them on the regular. Just turn them inside out to make sure the bits of onion skin all get washed out.
“Then, on some trip to the car”
This is the part that always gets me.I have gotten a couple extra bags just to have a double rotation. If I go to set my bags by the door and some are already there, I just suck it up and take them all to the car right then.
I don’t own a car, may I place mine in your car?
What have you DONE, Mahk??
How do we know if these are actually a good thing for the environment? It seems like it’s at least possible the excess waste offsets the benefit.
If you have a reusable bag, it uses more plastic than like 100 individual bags, but it produces less waste that floats in the ocean or decays in a landfill.
Lived in my house for a few years and bought like 3 plastic bags in that time. We also took a few from my partners family when we moved in so we did start with some.
Stats show a vast drop in how many plastic bags are used just by charging a tiny bit of money for them. Plus by having a cost now it makes sense to make them better.
It’s a complex question to answer. But, basically reusable plastic > reusable cotton > plastic > paper
https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/sustainable-shoppingwhich-bag-best/
The article briefly mentions this, but having lived in states with plastic bag bans, and states without - well drive through the countryside and count all the plastic bags in ditches, trees, streams. Paper might be more intensive to produce, but the lingering effects of plastic bags are being underestimated I think.
I always feel it’s so dishonest comparing the energy requirement between plastic and paper. Yes, paper takes a lot to produce, planting them, machinery for harvest, processing and so on. But energy is practically infinite with solar power. And while alive the trees are working as carbon capture, and when the bag gets thrown on the ground it puts the carbon back into the soil. I wonder how many paperbags have killed fish and turtles compared to plastic ones.
“energy is practically infinite with solar power” No it isn’t.
On Earth’s surface, sunlight is intermittent. Tall objects such as trees interrupt it, you’ll get to produce a small fraction of the power you expect for a few hours in the morning and evening and full power for about 4 hours in the mid-day. You need to figure out how to use it while you’ve got it, or store it for later. That gets bulky and expensive real quick.
Considering our current energy consumption, we need to capture about an hour of the Sun’s energy being intercepted by Earth.
There’s 8760 hours in a year, so if we can intercept one 8760th part (~0.0114%) of the energy thrown our way. We can power our current demand levels, sure it would require some massive batteries
But it’s not impossible to think the tech being able to develop into energy mining from the surface of the ocean. Which covers 70% of the entire surface and only experiences shade through clouds. Assuming solar could capture 10% of the energy concentrated at their location, we’d basically have energy covered for decades if we plastered 1% of our surface with it. Or 1.43% of the surface of our oceans.
That would allow us to consume 8.7 times more energy than today.
For reference, the silicon cells we use today capture in the ballpark of 15-22% of the sunlight they receive. So getting to an average of 10% is possible.
You know you can just place the solar panels out of the shade of trees right? If done right you’ll be producing decent power from a little after sunrise to a little before sunset, and of course much more midday.
-
I live in a forest, so no I can’t. My property is shaded by trees I don’t own.
-
Even if I could, solar panels work best when aligned perpendicular to sunlight, and fixed solar panels spend most of the day oblique to the light. Any panel that doesn’t move will give you a bell curve of power throughout the day. Mine do. I can go out there, align them with the sun with a little sundial thing, half an hour later they’re making 10% less.
Don’t mistake me as anti solar. I have solar panels in the sun making power right now. They’re useful, but they have limitations.
-
And yeah, you’ll want to store it. We’ve got batteris for that.
I hate paper bags as they are so weak and just can’t reasonably be reused
Might be worth considering wicker baskets. Ideally from someone who produces them locally. They might also be able to fix them, so they hold up a bit longer. Or make it yourself. Can be a fun project.
Yeah, the breakdown in impact doesn’t cover the qualitative difference with the elimination of disposable bags.
I know it’s obvious, but shouldn’t it be: reusable plastic > reusable cotton > single-use plastic > paper
Oh, yes. That is more specific and better communicates the list.
How much material and energy goes into making those thin plastic grocery bags? They’re apparently extruded as a tube and then crimped and cut, Compare that to a woven polyester bag.
The whole “reduce, reuse, recycle” thing: I’m a woodworker, I don’t buy 600 grit sandpaper for rubbing out finishes, I use paper grocery bags. So I get shop supplies for free and use less plastic. Plastic bags mostly get re-used as trash bags, only the ones that are very torn get recycled. I don’t buy purpose built trash bags.
If you HAVE a re-usable bag, use it. Sure. Stacking up re-usable bags that you don’t take to the store IS worse.
I can’t find the video now, but a couple years ago there was a science creator who broke down the overall environmental cost (co2 production, manufacturing chemicals, microplastics, etc.) of producing the materials needed to make the various bags, manufacturing, transportation, and time to break down/end of life impacts. The single use plastic bags were less impactful than any reusable bags by far. This can be increased by reusing the single use bags as you would a reusable bag before using it for garbage like you do. Only paper bags were marginally better than single use plastic, but even that is unsustainable as it is still a single use item, and produces all kinds of chemicals during the pulping process. Not to mention only ~50% get recycled, leading to more forestry to supply materials.
All that to say you’re right. The 3 R’s are the way to go.
My personal pet peeve are the “environmentalists” who rush out to buy new “environmentally friendly” options rather than using what they currently have until it needs to be replaced. Particularly since most of the organic replacements don’t last as long. Yes, the plastic version will end up in the landfill regardless, but they could have reduced their overall impact by 5 to 500 organic whatevers in the meantime. Eco-consumerist nonsense. /rant
I think I recall something similar.
How much material and energy goes into making those thin plastic grocery bags?
its where they end up. They last >100 years.
Do Hefty bags break down any faster?
I recently realised that I don’t even need to use up my dwindling supply of former grocery now mostly garbage bags for smaller garbage cans around my place. Previously, I would remove the bag from the bin, tie it up and drop it in the main garbage, usually after emptying it because otherwise it would be too full (and I’m in a condo with a dumpster, so timing garbage pickups isn’t an issue).
My new method is to just grab the whole smaller bin and dump the contents out into the main bin, reusing the bag unless it got destroyed since it was last emptied. My main bin is my kitchen bin, so the others are mostly getting dry things anyways. It’s the adhesives that can mess up the bags now, though if it’s just a piece of sticky paper, could just leave it stuck to the bag for a while if it isn’t interfering with other things going in.
I’ve been using fancier store bags (sometimes the reusable plastic ones, sometimes the paper ones that already look like gift bags just with the store name instead of Elsa or whatever) as gift bags, mostly because buying special packaging for gifts is just a waste, especially because the kid only cares about what’s on the bag until they can get at what’s in the bag, then it usually sits somewhere maybe holding a bunch of gifts for a bit, probably getting ripped before it gets folded flat to be used in the future, though I’m sure some people just throw them out.
There hasn’t been a plastic bag ban in my area, so I do dispose of them. I even use an office size trash can as a kitchen trash can. I’m a bachelor, kitchen scraps and cat litter will smell intolerable long before I fill a kitchen bag anyway.
I used to throw huge bags of bags in recycling. We used to have bags blowing around everywhere. I can see it made a huge difference in my house, but we’re not idiots, you go shopping, you bring a bag and some type of payment for said goods.
The shitty little “reusable” bags that wear out after a few uses are def worse than the micron-thin plastic were overall.
My state banned plastic a while back and I will way, i don’t see bags stuck all over the bushes, roadsides and trees anymore so that’s a plus.
I got a dozen or so insulated Wegmans large cooler bags that have lasted 5 years so far. (6 for each car) They’re double-stitched, hardcore zippers no signs of wear. I suspect their realistic lifetime is my and my wife’s death. It’s not like the kids are going to pine over the bags or anything. Now the real question, assuming they’re evergreen (jury is still out) is 25-35 years of waste reduction from a 0.001 disposable plastic bag actually net negative against 12 large textile bags with thick plastic liners, zippers, and insulation?
The bags probably host $200 in total and I’m quite sure I could buy a lifetime supply of disposable plastic bags for $200.
Not seeing plastic bags stuck to a tree every quarter mile feels good. I think reusable is probably the right answer, even if it’s not a huge ecological win.
In my case, I largely use store plastic bags for trash bags since they have way less plastic than a regular kitchen trash bag.
You can get frames that go over cabinet doors and such that hold them open.
That’s opposite where I live. Garbage bags are flimsical thin bags, while grocery bags are durable heavy material so you can carry 6-7 bottles of 1.5 l. without it breaking.
brought*
Yeah, I know this is a shitpost, but this typo they left in changes the entire meaning.
All depends on how many of those bags I’ll need.
If I’ve got a lot of grocery bags at home, then I’ll go with the reusables, since I’m stocked on trash bags. But if I’m running low, I’ll get a fair amount of plastic bags since I’m able to keep my trash output down to a couple of small bins; there’s one under the kitchen sink and one under the bathroom sink.
I fully believe the anti-backpack attitudes among todays youth is the work of big plastic/paper bag.
There are tons of businesses near my work (next to a middle school and a high school) that have a posted no backpacks allowed rule on the door. Mostly because of shoplifting, and sometimes there is a pile of backpacks outside the door and a bunch of kids inside when school lets out. But there are probably many reasons they don’t want to carry a backpack when they don’t have to.
Well that’s stupid. Hope they go out of business.
They have a nonstop line 80% of the time they’re open.
I if forget one I own it and carry everything in hands. Or more often take it to the car in a shopping cart, dump everything inside and worry about taking it to my apartment later.
Honestly i wonder why people don’t do just that
I remember reading about how filthy those reusable bags get for most people. Since most do not wash them.
I have these nylon ones that scrunch into these tiny little bundles that I keep in my bag all the time. Can’t leave them behind without also leaving my wallet behind.
This is the Way.
If you don’t carry a purse or anything, you can tuck one in a pocket.
36? Amateur.
