Plastic Bags BANNED in New York State

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dainthomas

Lifer
Dec 7, 2004
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I like how he thinks that because he didn't throw it into the street or ocean, that it still didn't end up there, anyway. what a maroon.

"I've never shoved a plastic bag down a sea turtles throat, therefore it's inconceivable that they can kill turtles."
 

[DHT]Osiris

Lifer
Dec 15, 2015
15,258
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A few thoughts:
We re-use most of our shopping bags for small trash can liners and for cat remains, like others. I live in NY, and will be facing the ban in a year, or whatever.
You can buy plastic bags off Amazon at a cost of ~$.025/bag, half the price of the proposed $.05 per:
https://www.amazon.com/Thank-You-Bags-pk-1000-11/dp/B077GYP81Q
You can also buy biodegradable versions, looks like around $.04/bag, maybe the proposed $.05 is actually for biodegradable ones?
https://www.amazon.com/Interplas-MB-T-24TK-BIO-Biodegradable-Pre-Printed-11-5-Inch/dp/B00H4PXLH8

When I worked at Walmart, I remember one guy that came through my line periodically. Had one of those big plastic bins about the size of the shopping cart, or two half-sized ones, with all his stuff in them. He'd unload them onto the belt, cart his buckets down to me, and tell me to just throw everything back in, no bags. I assumed he just threw the lid on them at his car/truck, went home, and unloaded them as-is. That seems more and more like a very smart idea, and I think I might start doing it too.
 
Feb 4, 2009
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Please let this be a parody post. I genuinely hope nobody is this stupid.

As an NYC resident this plastic bag ban is amazing. I am 110% in favor of it. NYC is an incredibly dirty city and those fucking plastic bags are all over the ground, all the time.

Sounds like Massachusetts is going to follow. I’m fine with it.
Stores can pay the marginal amount more for paper bags. I certainly could get better at bringing reusable bags with me.
 

pmv

Lifer
May 30, 2008
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Is that paper bag inside your gut right now? Because microfibers from that plastic bag already are. THAT should be the alarm bell telling us we've really screwed the pooch this time.
We've created a synthetic from oil that is entering all water, and all life on the planet.


Well yes, plastics are a problem - but do you have a link that argues that a substantial proportion of those microplastics are from disposable bags? I'm open to argument on the topic, I'm OK with the plastic-bag levy, but my understanding is there are far more significant sources of that plastic contamination - disposable shopping bags are pretty small proportion of plastic waste. And paper bags have their own environmental costs, which is why the obvious approach is more reuse of bags.

What I'm arguing against is the notion that it's a solution to just exchange plastic disposable bags for paper disposable bags. Paper bags take far more energy to produce, for one thing, which will create further pollution along the way.
 
Last edited:
Nov 29, 2006
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Go grocery shopping. Place things in cart.
Pay for stuff.
Skip bags all together.
Put stuff right back into cart.
Pull cart up to car. Toss items in trunk or get all fancy an toss in to a collapsible car bin.

If need arises. Use reusable bag.

Is this an issue of people so dense that they can't figure out how to adapt?

I just use one of these in my car trunk. i can adjust the separators as needed. I dont need bags really. And it folds flat if i need my trunk for something larger etc.
81KqiDzER4L._SL1500_.jpg

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B000E81VN8/ref=oh_aui_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
 

fskimospy

Elite Member
Mar 10, 2006
85,581
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Well yes, plastics are a problem - but do you have a link that argues that a substantial proportion of those microplastics are from disposable bags? I'm open to argument on the topic, I'm OK with the plastic-bag levy, but my understanding is there are far more significant sources of that plastic contamination - disposable shopping bags are pretty small proportion of plastic waste. And paper bags have their own environmental costs, which is why the obvious approach is more reuse of bags.

What I'm arguing against is the notion that it's a solution to just exchange plastic disposable bags for paper disposable bags. Paper bags take far more energy to produce, for one thing, which will create further pollution along the way.

You can also just have reuseable bags like I do. They work fine. Really though, this is just an insanely good quality of life thing for NYC at least. The number of trash plastic bags flying around the city at any given moment is truly epic.

On a given day there are probably about 10 million people operating in the city in some way. If 10% of them buy basically anything at a bodega or go grocery shopping that's a million plastic bags a day. It shows.
 

nakedfrog

No Lifer
Apr 3, 2001
59,200
13,791
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Cute, but I'm being serious. This thread got me thinking. I'm not facing a bag ban but I'm not against it. I don't like all of the plastic waste, especially in the oceans. If I can voluntarily take steps to cut down or eliminate my use of plastics, why not? I see lots of responses about reusable shopping bags but what do you do about trash bags?
Buy them? I also collect the plastic bags from the grocery store to use for small wastebaskets (I recycle the ones with holes in them, there are a few stores around here that take bags for recycling), when I ran out of them, I bought a box of 4 gallon trash bags.
 

MrSquished

Lifer
Jan 14, 2013
23,003
21,127
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A couple towns in NJ have banned plastic bags, including one where I live. It's 10 cents per re-usable plastic bag at the grocery stores if you don't bring your own. It's an inconvenience but it's progress. Sometimes progress is inconvenient. But re-usables will just become a matter of routine. Really, it's not a big deal. I have my re-usables in my trunk now.
 

zinfamous

No Lifer
Jul 12, 2006
111,125
30,076
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Well you could reuse those plastic bags for small office trash can liners.

I was listening to a report this morning on NPR, within a few years after the CA ban, is that some data showed that purchases of small trash bags shot up after the ban, so it's possible a wash. Long term, though, the goal should be to make all trash liners compostable/biodegradable/recycled.

I guess there isn't much you could do with contractor-grade refuse needs, but it seems perfectly reasonable to find a path towards cities restricting home-use plastics to biodegradables (corn-based?) only.
 

senseamp

Lifer
Feb 5, 2006
35,787
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I was listening to a report this morning on NPR, within a few years after the CA ban, is that some data showed that purchases of small trash bags shot up after the ban, so it's possible a wash. Long term, though, the goal should be to make all trash liners compostable/biodegradable/recycled.

I guess there isn't much you could do with contractor-grade refuse needs, but it seems perfectly reasonable to find a path towards cities restricting home-use plastics to biodegradables (corn-based?) only.

Maybe the plastic bag industry should have spent the millions they wasted on misleading political ads and lobbyists towards R&D of better biodegradeable plastic bags instead. But instead they went for the easy way out and got themselves banned.
 
Feb 4, 2009
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I was listening to a report this morning on NPR, within a few years after the CA ban, is that some data showed that purchases of small trash bags shot up after the ban, so it's possible a wash. Long term, though, the goal should be to make all trash liners compostable/biodegradable/recycled.

I guess there isn't much you could do with contractor-grade refuse needs, but it seems perfectly reasonable to find a path towards cities restricting home-use plastics to biodegradables (corn-based?) only.

Wife & I were just speaking about this. Mid sized grocery plastic bag size are used to contain the waste from the cats litter boxes if we were to no longer get many plastic grocery bags we’d be forced to either use small dog poop bags (many of them) or use a 5-10 gallon plastic trash bag. Doesn’t sound like we’d be preventing that much waste and maybe generating more.
However reducing plastic bags isn’t a bad idea overall.
 

pmv

Lifer
May 30, 2008
13,602
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You can also just have reuseable bags like I do.

I'm arguing about arguing rather than the issue at this point, but I did say in the post you were replying to

which is why the obvious approach is more reuse of bags.

But I don't always have a reusable bag on me.

What does annoy me is that when they charge you 10p for a bag now, they give you a thicker heavy-duty bag instead of the old thin disposable bags. This seems daft to me, because it increases the plastic use and undoes some of the effect of giving out fewer bags. There's no benefit in the thicker bags because the limiting factor for bag reuse is not that the bags wear out, it's that you fail to have one with you when needed. I now have a stash of the new thicker bags, accumulated from shopping when I didn't have a rucksack or bag on me. And indeed the thicker bags are harder to stuff in a pocket.
 

whm1974

Diamond Member
Jul 24, 2016
9,436
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I'm arguing about arguing rather than the issue at this point, but I did say in the post you were replying to



But I don't always have a reusable bag on me.

What does annoy me is that when they charge you 10p for a bag now, they give you a thicker heavy-duty bag instead of the old thin disposable bags. This seems daft to me, because it increases the plastic use and undoes some of the effect of giving out fewer bags. There's no benefit in the thicker bags because the limiting factor for bag reuse is not that the bags wear out, it's that you fail to have one with you when needed. I now have a stash of the new thicker bags, accumulated from shopping when I didn't have a rucksack or bag on me. And indeed the thicker bags are harder to stuff in a pocket.
I learned to take the reusable plastic bags with me every time I go to the grocery store. And for $.11 I sure can get a lot of use out of them.
 

zinfamous

No Lifer
Jul 12, 2006
111,125
30,076
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Maybe the plastic bag industry should have spent the millions they wasted on misleading political ads and lobbyists towards R&D of better biodegradeable plastic bags instead. But instead they went for the easy way out and got themselves banned.

pretty much happens within all of these industries: protect the current, meager, short-term profits because that's all we know; and because improving tech is just too hard and thinking beyond quarterly numbers is impossible for our pea-sized corporate brains.

Auto Industry went through this in the 70s, fighting hard against the science behind the dangers of lead. "The catalytic converter will DESTROY our industry!"
 

whm1974

Diamond Member
Jul 24, 2016
9,436
1,567
126
pretty much happens within all of these industries: protect the current, meager, short-term profits because that's all we know; and because improving tech is just too hard and thinking beyond quarterly numbers is impossible for our pea-sized corporate brains.

Auto Industry went through this in the 70s, fighting hard against the science behind the dangers of lead. "The catalytic converter will DESTROY our industry!"
If I was running a Corporation, I will damn well try to produce the best products and/or services possible. Not to mention keeping said Business alive as long as I'm running it.
I do believe that Corporations should be more focused on keeping the folks that actually buy their products happy instead of maximizing "shareholder value".
 

ibex333

Diamond Member
Mar 26, 2005
4,094
123
106
Is that paper bag inside your gut right now? Because microfibers from that plastic bag already are. THAT should be the alarm bell telling us we've really screwed the pooch this time.
We've created a synthetic from oil that is entering all water, and all life on the planet.


Then you would have to ban ALL plastics. not just the bags. And don't say "its a start" because it's like a grain of sand in the sea of plastics dumped in the oceans.
 

pmv

Lifer
May 30, 2008
13,602
8,508
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Ah, yes, the classic "we can't fix everything, so let's just do nothing" plan.

I think he has a small point. Plastic carrier bags are not a significant part of that particular problem. They _are_ a significant part of littering and of harm to wildlife, so reducing their use is fine for that reason. Overselling it as a cure for plastic pollution in general risks people smugly patting themselves on the back for having done their bit and then not making more important changes.
 

nakedfrog

No Lifer
Apr 3, 2001
59,200
13,791
136
I think he has a small point. Plastic carrier bags are not a significant part of that particular problem. They _are_ a significant part of littering and of harm to wildlife, so reducing their use is fine for that reason. Overselling it as a cure for plastic pollution in general risks people smugly patting themselves on the back for having done their bit and then not making more important changes.
Eh, I don't think we have to ban ALL plastics to solve the microplastic issue, so I don't think I'd agree that he has a point... I might agree that he was accidentally right about something, despite his best efforts.
 

pmv

Lifer
May 30, 2008
13,602
8,508
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Eh, I don't think we have to ban ALL plastics to solve the microplastic issue, so I don't think I'd agree that he has a point... I might agree that he was accidentally right about something, despite his best efforts.

Yeah, not all plastics, but I'm pretty sure there are more relevant products to focus on for that issue. Perhaps he would resist efforts to do anything about any of them, though.

I feel it's significant that here the plastic-bag-levy is pretty much the only environmental measure that the Daily Mail ever campaigned forcefully in favour of. At the same time they campaign _against_ any efforts to reduce car use.
 

nakedfrog

No Lifer
Apr 3, 2001
59,200
13,791
136
Yeah, not all plastics, but I'm pretty sure there are more relevant products to focus on for that issue. Perhaps he would resist efforts to do anything about any of them, though.

I feel it's significant that here the plastic-bag-levy is pretty much the only environmental measure that the Daily Mail ever campaigned forcefully in favour of. At the same time they campaign _against_ any efforts to reduce car use.
I was legitimately shocked at how quickly the US moved to ban plastic microbeads from cosmetics.
 

dainthomas

Lifer
Dec 7, 2004
14,635
3,507
136
I think he has a small point. Plastic carrier bags are not a significant part of that particular problem. They _are_ a significant part of littering and of harm to wildlife, so reducing their use is fine for that reason. Overselling it as a cure for plastic pollution in general risks people smugly patting themselves on the back for having done their bit and then not making more important changes.

I wonder how many posters remember those horrid thick Styrofoam containers mcdonalds used to cram everything in back in the 70's/80's? They probably had a half life of a hundred million years and you'd find pieces of them everywhere. Everything like those that gets replaced with a more biodegradable/sustainable option is a win.
 

SMOGZINN

Lifer
Jun 17, 2005
14,221
4,452
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Overselling it as a cure for plastic pollution in general risks people smugly patting themselves on the back for having done their bit and then not making more important changes.

I would agree that you should not oversell it, but it is a part of that problem and everything that works towards a solution to that problems helps. So, while it will not make a much of a dent in that problem it will make some progress on it. We are going to solve most of these problems one bite at a time.
 

WelshBloke

Lifer
Jan 12, 2005
31,408
9,299
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I was legitimately shocked at how quickly the US moved to ban plastic microbeads from cosmetics.
I think those fuck up the waste water treatment system so they were probably going to end up costing the government a significant amount of money.