I remember save the trees campaign years ago. I’m convinced it was all started by the plastic industry.
Yup. Logging industry, at least in the US, is remarkably renewable. I remember reading that we have significantly more trees than we did 100 years ago because we’ve improved logging methods. No more clear cutting for pulp or lumber, proper replanting, and age-tracking for proper harvest.
In other words, saying “don’t use paper, save a tree” is akin to saying “don’t eat fries, save a potato.”
Didn’t we already do this like five years ago? I haven’t seen a plastic shopping bag in a long time.
edit: single use plastic bags, this appears to be targeting the reusable ones too.
Grocery Outlet in IB and CV both offer plastic bags to me even as I am putting my backpack, or one of their reusable bags on the counter.
Not sure about north of San Diego, though.
I realized after commenting that the new law includes the reusable ones with the thicker plastic too, not just the single-use ones I was thinking about. I’m up in Riverside these days and I always take my groceries home in a cardboard box or two, for the record, so this probably won’t change anything for me.
As long as it also requires them to carry paper bags that’s perfect
In France they didn’t always have bags available, and if they did they were usually for sale and were reusable. Everyone just brought their own bags.
In my country (Jamaica) you either have to beg to use their old boxes from inventory or just carry it all out by hand if you forget your bags.
Canada works pretty well without them. If you forget your bags though you have to buy more.
I keep several reusable bags and I’ve almost never had to use the paper ones. The few times I have, the bags fell apart halfway home lol.
The best places keep a pile of all of their cardboard boxes by the registers, so you can grab one or two or ten depending on how much you’re buying. I only get paper bags if they’re out of boxes or I need more trash bags.
If they don’t just tell them you need help to your car.
As long as you don’t expect them to be free
for us there is a law that if there is one item they wont give us plastic bags
good. My balls are already maxed out on microplastics
Microplastic is stored in the balls
Mine are stored in the toenails, Mountain Dew is stored in my balls.
Great! Now do other 49.
Hawaii hasn’t had plastic bags for almost a decade at this point. Styrofoam takeout containers have also been banned since around COVID.
Some stores let you buy a paper bag for a few cents, otherwise it’s reusable bags you bring. Takeout containers have all transitioned to cardboard or PLA containers.
Austin tried years ago and Texas said no.
Colorado has had this law for a couple years now
They’re on their own. Pretty sure Texas likes the poison.
Yes in 2018, the TX Supreme Court struck down plastic bag bans in Laredo even though the small city was saving something like $250,000/year in waterway cleanup. The other cities, including Austin, that had a plastic bag ban lifted their ban after the court ruling.
It was great under the bag ban, the cities were so much cleaner. Grocery stores all had some thicker Reusable plastic bags that could be bought and would hold up for a long time as long as you didn’t overfill them. They also sold cloth bags, not to mention the people carrying Ikea bags around the stores.
Those thicker bags suck, it’s just even more plastic. That’s what California just banned and I’m so happy.
Yeah the ticker bags that would last a year or so before the handles fell off were more plastic, but it was at least a step. I saw more people using cloth and other sturdy Reusable bags after a few months.
Can we ban plastics in the fishing industry next?
I know little to nothing about fishing on a commercial scale. What are viable alternatives to plastics in that industry?
What asshole downvoted a legit question of someone asking for more info on something they admit they don’t know much about…?
People do this all the time, and it’s super annoying. I’d love for someone to explain why they downvote an honest question.
I do it accidentally sometimes. Especially right now since im pretty sure my instances last update moved everything a bit to the right for some reason.
The downvotes you and I got are “funny”
Hemp it would be a viable alternative due to its rot resistant properties.
Hemp was used as the primary material for this purpose until the oil industry helped feed the anti-cannabis movement.
Interesting. I was thinking more about lines and lures. It didn’t occur to me that such a large amount of ocean trash would be plastic based rope and nets.
Commercial fishing is probably the biggest contributor to ocean plastic pollution.
Much like commercial industry is the biggest contributor to atmospheric pollution.
You know, I think I’m beginning to see a trend here.
Fishing industry is evil and sucks big times. They just dump their gear (e.g. nets and longlines) in the open water and it’s a bane for turtles, sharks, whales, sea birds, seals etc. It’s not an accident. The gear seems to be deliberately dumped as the expensive stuff is removed. Read this article if you want to know why they do it. In addition those trawler/fish factory vessels are often part of ghost fleets where 75% of them kill every living being within a miles long radius for weeks on end without any controlling instance.
If you’re now under the assumption that it would be better to buy fish from fish farms. It also sucks tremendously. At least when farmed in open pen sea cages out of multiple reasons:
- Pesticides and Antibiotics are released into the sea
- Viruses and parasites escape into the sea
- Salmons escape and alter natural biodiversity
- Excess food and waste lead to oxygen deprivation in the surrounding waters (dead zones)
https://www.worldwildlife.org/industries/farmed-salmon
In addition (and I don’t know why WWF isn’t calling it out): Whales are essentially hunted because of farmed fish. That’s my own conclusion. They don’t openly admit it but because whales need tons of krill they are a direct competition to the omega-3 supplement market and feed for salmon farms. The culprits are Norway (they are real eco terrorists if you look behind their green facade at home), Ruzzia, Japan & Scottland. Not only whales but also penguins and seals depend on krill. And those animals are already suffering from H5N1 (with animal agriculture being the culprit again).
What the greedy bastards don’t get is, when they kill off the whales, they kill off the krill too. As so often humans disturb eco systems developed over millions of years. In this case it’s the poop loop.
The intention of my wall of text is to move the people who have a modicum of interest left to save the oceans to consider to ditch any fish caught in the oceans or bred on salmon farms (btw they are feeding them chicken bones too). Humans need Omega 3 DHA & EPA fatty acids. You can easily get those via algae capsules. That’s where fish get theirs from essentially.
Only we the consumers have the power to break the vicious circle but we’re to uneducated and complacent. As long as there’s a market they’ll ruthlessly plunder the ecosystems till nothing is left. Some say we’re already nearing that moment with parts of the oceans.
Commercial fishing is terrible not only for the environment but leaves a large amount of trash in the ocean. It creates a ton of micro plastics and fucks up entire biomes.
if you ever watch a documentary of the great pacific garbage patch it usually shows the most rampant and dangerous items from aquatic life tends to be discarded fishing nets. They all suck though, just nets suck more and get cut off all the time.
One viable alternative is to use nothing and let the fish live their lives.
And then Jesus gave them fish to eat, taught men to lead other men to water and teach them to fish and feed them forever, on fish.
Yes, this is what’s commonly known as a “joke” where Jesus is a stand-in for muix and the audience is the downvoters, and it is an exaggeration made for comedic effect. I’m not basing my actual morality on the God of the Bible – the same entity as Jesus if you’re unitarian or essentially the same entity with some mental gymnastics thrown in if you’re trinitarian – who had a temper tantrum and flooded the entire Earth to wipe all but one human family and two of every species of animal from the face of the planet.
Fishing is catastrophic for the environment, and it results in the needless deaths of literal trillions of fish every year.
Well then it must be too late for salvation, as so many men have already learnt to fish.
In Austria, we banned plastic bags ~ 5 years ago. We only have paper bags that are ~ 70c each. Before that we had 30c plastic bags.
Oh, and that is the price per bag. People here just get some high quality bags, baskets… and use them over and over.
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.We can’t afford to think like this. Climate is such an unthinkably massive issue that we need all of it, and then some more, and then some more.
There is no project big enough that we don’t need 50,000 more projects of equivalent scope to get things where they need to be.
Think like what? Think this is just one small pice. Small enough that it almost doesn’t matter, and shouldn’t take any energy or news inches from the larger problem of plastic packaging? Because honestly, it sounds like we’re on the same page there.
Also plastics aren’t much of a climate issue. They’re part of a more broad environmental issue.
It might be unclear if you’re advocating a comprehensive plastic policy, or whataboutism directed at just one other use of plastic.
Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Like @[email protected] said, this is closing a loophole that was in the original grocery bag reduction law.
I’m saying it shouldn’t be praised as a solution, but recognized as a very small step forward. Afterwhich we ramp up the pressure for real solutions.
I don’t think anyone is calling this the single solution to anything.
It’s simple another small step on the path.
Take enough steps and you’ll keep moving towards a goal
No, no, they’ve expended their political capital on this and that’s about all we’ll get from them, but just as long as someone tells you to not let perfect be the enemy of good, you must be satisfied with the outcome even if it achieves little to nothing.
Arguing against it or pointing out flaws means that you’re now arguing against “what’s good” and that’s morally and ethically wrong and shows that you’re an outsider to the in-group.
California has been working toward legislation that reduces plastic in packaging. It’s not as good as it should be, but it represents about as much departure from the status quo I think California can reasonably get when people raise so much fuss over even superfluous things like plastic straws and grocery bags (and because California is already really throwing around their weight here in compelling out-of-state producers to change their manufacturing). And this new law is just closing a loophole on a 2014 law that at worst was actively making things worse or at best was making the law fail to address the issue. This isn’t “pandering”; it’s addressing a real, ongoing, actual issue in a sensible way.
Excellent! That should be bigger news than this little stuff.
Yeah. The whole shit-show is depressing really.
Firstly, you’re entirely correct - it’s a tiny part of the problem.
Secondly, it shifts the “blame” for plastic on to consumers. “Oh we’ve been so bad all this time using plastic shopping bags”.
Thirdly, it provides a feeling of resolution. “I’m so happy now we’ve done the hard work to buy these $0.10 reusable shopping bags and solved the plastic problem”.
Fourthly, you have to wonder how many plastic shopping bags were actually single use. For example, a lot of them were made from recycled plastic, and a lot of them were re-used as garbage bags, which are now purchased anyway.
On balance, I think it’s within the realm of possibility that these laws do more harm than good. Honestly, just tax plastic producers and see how quickly producers using plastic to package their products magically fine innovative new alternatives.
to buy these $0.10 reusable shopping bags
This literal exact sentence tells me you didn’t read past the headline; those shitty $0.10, thicker “reusable” plastic bags are exactly the loophope in the 2014 ban that this 2024 law is designed to close. The thing you’re accusing this law of allowing people to do is the one thing it expressly outlaws. Media literacy is dead.
On balance, I think it’s within the realm of possibility that these laws do more harm than good. Honestly, just tax plastic producers and see how quickly producers using plastic to package their products magically fine innovative new alternatives.
Seriously. The way to solve this is to simply put a tax on all plastic packaging. Use those funds to subsidize plastic recycling. Set the tax at whatever level is necessary to make recycling viable. And if the most viable ‘recycling’ method is to just burn the plastic in an incinerator, so be it. Yeah, it’s expensive to build an industrial incinerator that can properly scrub and filter out all the nasty fumes plastic gives off when it’s burned. But it can be done. It’s more expensive than just stuffing the plastic in a landfill, but by burning it, we solve our plastic problem in the here and now, rather than letting it slowly leach out into the environment for future generations to deal with.
Recycling plastic will always be difficult, and it may never be practical for some cases. But all plastics burn. And if you have the right incinerator, they can be burned without releasing toxic fumes into the air. Tax plastic packaging, all of it. Tax it, and use the funds to subsidize plastic waste incineration. Plastic is made from oil, and it still can be used as a fuel. Burn it and be done with it.
I wouldn’t limit it to plastic packaging. Micro-plastics come from all plastic.
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.
All the more reason to advocate for it, and not be distracted by a nearly meaningless win.
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What do you do wrt vegetables? I always end up using those thin plastic bag to wrap them, even uf I bring a big reusable bag to carry it all out
I have a hand-held basket I got more than a decade ago from Staples. I just put all the loose fruit and veg in that.
Original Associated Press article instead of giving traffic to Voice of America
Edit: and a good LA Times article explaining the glaring flaw with the original 2014 law.
Thank you!
Yeah np; VOA is I feel overall pretty tame as national propaganda outlets go, but it’s nonetheless expressly conceived of and funded as a propaganda outlet, so that’s not much of a compliment.
Plus, a news agency article from its own website tends to have a better shelf life than syndicated versions of that article.
VOA seems very factual and accurate in their reporting. Their bias exists in that they’ll never report on something that doesn’t align with US interests.
We did it a while back, you will adapt pretty quickly.
They banned single use a decade ago. My family switched to reusable bags. A lot of stores realized that they could sell “reusable” plastic bags, thicker single use bags, and get around the law.
So the rollout went like this, stores gives you free plastic bags your entire life, about a week where people were told “no plastic bags, you gotta bring your own,” then the plastic bags were back but a bit different and the store would sometimes charge you a bag fee (although a lot of places effectively waived the fee). This meant that no one adapted and they continued doing what people had always done with their plastic bags, sone reuse, mostly discard.
People always complain about unintended consequences of laws, I’ve always gotten the impression from those people they would prefer we don’t make the laws. I would love it though if we could iterate on our laws faster than, pass the law, every company finds a loophole a week later, close loophole after a decade of unintended consequences.
And yea, having reusable bags is not difficult.
I just wish they would ban the plastic bags and force paper bags. The thick plastic bag problem came from not mandating paper only. Plus a lot of those polyester bags were so poorly made, they didn’t last long enough to male a difference.
Maybe it’s just me wanting to go back to the stores of my youth when plastic was a rarity.
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.
Or boxes; we use boxes. Carrying 3 - 4 boxes up stairs is much easier than 10 bags.
I have giant tote bags and can usually fit almost all my groceries in one. Slinging that over my shoulder is easier to carry than boxes
I have 3 hungry boys to feed, I’m not sure I could carry all of our groceries in one trip. , 😁
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.
Most NZ supermarkets just stack the boxes at the front after the checkout.
Are also keep a few in the back of the car.
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.
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.
I used to forget my bags all the time until I got some actual nice bags made for groceries. They’re way bigger, sturdy enough to hold anything, and can stand freely as I load groceries in them. I don’t forget them now.
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.
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.Ok? First of all, the site says that it uses plarn for part of the weaving. Secondly, you don’t have weave with it or make a blanket. As I said, my wife knits them into forever bags.
Great to see this. I have not seen someone bring their own bags except me in months.
Nice to see California catching up to Colorado.
Ah, Lemmy with the backhanded compliments - at best
