Baltimore is trying to pass a law eliminating plastic bags. I heard it on the radio yesterday. The talk show host said he opposed the plan because paper bags are more expensive, and several businesses are opposing the law for the same reason. In my head, I thought bring your own bags!!!!! On a positive note, I noticed that I got 5 cents off my bill at Giant because I had my own bag :) Christy

Well that's cool....getting a credit for having your own bag! I like that!

You can use glass jars (pickles, jam, etc) with tight lids for some things you previously stored in plastic zip bags,
baby food jars are good for small things like garden seeds,
& you can wrap sandwiches in waxed paper or aluminum foil.

You can often find glass jars & baby food jars at garage sales for 5 or 10 cents apiece,
& you can always post a "wanted" on craigslist or freecycle.

Starbucks here saves (when they remember) the silver bags for me, & I use them for flower pots.

Punch drainage holes in the bottom, cut some off the top to make the "pot" the right depth, & voila!

They're light in weight,
they don't absorb heat like the black nursery pots (roots literally cook in black plastic pots here in Texas),
& they take very little storage space when folded flat when they're empty.

...that if you like uniformity or if you can't find enough re-cycled glass jars, you can buy them by the case wherever canning supplies are sold.

@christy:

I actually don't agree with banning plastic bags. (Would they still give away paper bags? That makes no sense to me.) But I think all stores should stop giving away any bags, as they're proposing in some areas.

Sure, I get also five cents off my purchases per bag. But that five cent discount doesn't motivate anyone. Instead, we should charge a 25 cent surcharge at the grocery stores per plastic/paper bag required by customers. That'll get people to look at reusable bags!

Part of the surcharge could go to supporting the development of new or improved recycling facilities or other "greening" projects. How cool would that be?

In the recent August issue of Self magazine, I recently found a note that confirms something I somewhat suspected. It might lead you to look at why you have such an aversion to plastic. If you don't like plastic because it's a problem in the disposable nature of our current society, then the article is probably irrelevant.

But if you simply think that plastic is "evil", as many seem to, consier this quote: "[i]t's easier to recycle and takes less energy to produce and ship than some glass." They also note that recyclable plastic is better than wax cartons... but I think we all knew that. :)

Just food for thought.

No, I didn't know that. What is wrong with wax cartons, like what Orange Juice comes in? If so, I think I've seen organic milk in them. Just curious, Christy :)

Hmmm.....they accept the wax cartons in my recycling.

They don't take waxed cartons in my recycling. So I try to buy in the plastic so I can recycle it. Plus I try to buy in gallon sizes, instead of the half gallon, which is usually what the waxed cartons are.

Yeah, I should have clarified that they said recyclable plastic is better than wax cartons primarily because many/most areas don't accept wax cartons. Our program doesn't, and I thought that was pretty universal.

Then again, our city is so bad that our recycling program doesn't even accept cardboard curbside. They also only accept plastics 1 and 2. I cringed when I realized that the organic lettuce I bought a while ago came in a plastic bin marked 5 - unrecyclable in our area. :sigh:

I think that perhaps your world view is a bit underinformed. Recycling doesn't whitewash the impact of your purchase. Most plastics are not recycled but rather they are downcycled into different products, and just because your recycling center accepts a product doesn't mean that what they are doing with it is any more ecologically responsible than throwing it in the dumpster. Glass and Metal are good candidates for recycling, so is newsprint (although reduction and reusing are better). In many parts of the country recycling outfits have people sort refuse into multiple bins (plastic bins) and send around an extra truck (burning oil) to get the bins and then they dump most of it in the same landfill that the rest of the refuse went to.

Brendan, I don't know to whom you're addressing your post, so I'll respond assuming it's me:

If I'm going to buy a container of juice, the point is that I'm not necessarily doing anything special by buying the juice in recyclable glass bottles over recyclable plastic bottles. Both take energy to transport and both take energy to recycle. The bigger issue is: which takes less energy to transport and recycle? Considering the weight, I can say that plastic certainly takes less energy to transport. I can't say about the recycling process any more than what the excerpt from Self said.

If it's the option of recyclable plastic vs. landfill wax carton, I think it's an even clearer decision.

Ultimately, as you said, reusing is better than recycling, and reducing is better than reusing. Reduce>Reuse>Recycle. Ultimately, I daresay that any of the three is worlds better than landfill.

I'd like a solid reference for the last statement. If that's truly the case, I'd like to help spread the word. But I must be able to support it.

Ultimately, I daresay that any of the three is worlds better than landfill. Why do you say that recycle is always better than landfill? Many times it uses more energy and takes more space, and with something like wax and paper it might in the span of 500 years mean more waste left on the earth and more trees cut down.

Until we can find a source then recycling can't be held up as an option that is necessarily better.

Also I was just addressing the crowd, no one in particular.

I don't know what references you'll need to cite, but it'll take more than you've done so far to convince me that hiding non- or slowly-degrading trash in a big hole, using water and fuel to bury it, and leaving it for future generations to deal with is ever better than recycling. I just can't wrap my head around that.

Recycling takes fuel (to collect the recyclables, to move them through the plant, to run the electronics, to heat the boilers, the heat the melting vats) and some nasty chemicals are made and used as plasticizers, some of them evaporate. Some times in order to recycle some products (Like the precious metals in computers) in an economical fashion they dump gallons of caustic chemicals on to the boards and recover a fraction of a gram and throw away killograms of waste and gallons of spent chemical waste that they would not have thrown away before.

My whole point is that recycling is not with out draw back, and if it has an unknown drawback (to you and I) then you should be able to wrap your head around that drawback being possibly worse than the alternative, unless you are holding on to an unfounded belief, in which case you should lose it or find a foundation for it.

I never said that recycling didn't have any drawbacks. My point is that the drawbacks of using and recycling plastic may not necessarily be any worse than those of glass.

You bring up the fuel for transportation and melting. Glass uses fuel for the very same processes. Because plastic weighs less than glass, and because a bottle can be made with far less plastic than glass, it's very likely that products packaged in plastic use less fuel both in distribution and in collection of recycling materials. Again, I cannot and do not attempt to say which uses less fuel in the recycling process.

The belief that I'm holding on to is pretty much the accepted statement by every green/conservation group around. Keep crap out of landfills, partly by recycling when it's not possible to reduce or resuse. I don't know why I should find a foundation for that anymore than I should find a foundation for believing that my body runs better on vegetables than twinkies. Since you challenged that widely accepted idea that recycling > landfill, I'd expect you to provide some support.

But OK. You go your way and I'll go mine, and eventually we'll both find out that we both were wrong. ::grin::

Pax.

Everything we use takes energy of some kind to break it down for re-use or to just sit in a landfill for eons. Maybe we should consider that we use too much of whatever in the first place. I think someone mentioned something about a disposable and convenient society we live in. I certainly have a problem with that. Being a little more minimalist in our thinking and living might help. I mean people got by ok for quite a while without having all that we think we need today. Of course the media helps promote our thinking. We need to stand up and be responsible and stop being sheep. We all contribute to the problem and we can all make changes for the betterment of our world, globally and individually. Anyway, thatÂs what I choose to do.

In this economic climate, I don't think it's a good idea to charge people to use plastic bags. If I buy reusable bags, then that's money that I can't spend on groceries. If I'm charged 25 cents per every plastic bag that they put my groceries into, then that's money that I can't spend on groceries.

And I don't want them putting chicken in with my produce unless it's in a plastic bag. Even Whole Foods suggests putting chicken in a plastic bag even if I'm asking for paper bags.

My local Safeway recycles plastic bags. I bundle them up and every once in a while, take them in, and stuff them into the recycling bin.

I suppose I'll be attacked for this view, but I'm tired of people with money thinking it's okay to charge other people for their "transgressions" whether they can afford it or not.

Rather than punishing people, a far better tactic -- IMO -- would be to reward shoppers 25 cents for every reusable bag they use, or reward them for the plastic bags they bring in to recycle.

And, btw, I do compost and reuse. Kitty litter pails make great plant pots.

I'm not saying that glass definitely beats plastic or that paper beats plastic; what I am saying is that I don't KNOW and neither do you apparently. People acting like sheep has gotten us into this mess, and people acting like sheep isn't going to get us out. There has been a great deal of media hype about recycling but that doesn't mean that recycling is better from any standpoint. We need to find some information for ourselves and not trust the mass media science reporter, because all of the real science reporters were let go years ago and now the same tool that gives us stories about cute things that kids do is the one writing about things he has no clue about in the scientific world. Just because something seems at a gut level to be green doesn't mean that it is, recycling is an economic thing before it is a green thing, what people accept is based on what someone can make money off of, not what is good for the world.

Again, I'm not rooting for or against any particular product, I just think we should think first and then act, or act and think then consider acting differently, but thinking has to be part of the solution. If you watch sheep you see them flock one way, and the flock can change direction and behave differently, but they have no reason to think that the changed direction is any better, they can narrowly avoid getting away from a predator too. The environmental damage and waste aren't the problem, they are a symptom of the problem, the real problem is people being intellectually lazy and not thinking, a Few dozen hours spent figuring out what is best to do willl go alot further in the long run than a few dozen hours doing potentially the wrong thing.

I have watched grocery store employees empty the plastic bag recycling boxes and walk to the dumpsters out back and empty the bags there - mixed right in with regular trash .
I have witnessed the same thing with recycling trucks . Our separated recycling bins were missed and not been picked up . I asked the extra driver ( and truck ) that was sent out to collect my bin contents about this . He said Oh , yeah . We just dump this in the landfill with the regular trash .
I was a doubter until I investigated and started asking around . I could not believe what I was seeing . The stock answer seems to be - we can't be bothered and this keeps the customers happy . I feel like a sheep .

Gatormom I am shocked but not terribly. How could we really expect our dollars to be spent on what we think they are spent on. Again I will say that we should at least reduce and reuse. What is another eye opener is how these movie stars campaign for all of us to do our duty to protect the earth and then they go flying around the world in their private jets. Makes me ill. I don't know how anyone in good conscience can be like that.

In his defense Ed Bagley jr. Really does walk the walk.

Paul McCartney I believe it was bought the new lexus hybrid before it came out, and to get it to him as rapidly as possible Toyota shipped it air cargo, emitting more green house gases than the car could every possibly save.

I have seen the recycling I put out on the curb at my mother's house thrown into the refuse truck on occasion too. I also agree with Brendan about there being no easy answers, and I also tend to look past the green 'hype' I see so much anymore, because now the corporate pr are using it as a sales tactic to further increase our desire to consume.

There are many plastic things I can do without in preference to another material. It doesn't have to be just food packaging. I use glass and ceramic refrigerator storage containers. I'm sure I have the first set of corning ware someone ever gave me and they've still got another thirty years of miles on them. If I absolutely have to have a snap tight plastic container, and sometimes I do, then I have a couple of good quality ones you would not consider disposable. Disposable is sometimes necessary, but not for every day life!

The products I must buy in plastic, I buy the biggest size I can use and then just refill the smaller containers. I even serve my bar-b-ques and picnic meals on real plates. I save the inevitable plastic bags one gets anyway from stores to tuck the dirty dishes back into a basket to wash later. If I have a party with lots of kids, who usually will grab a new plastic cup each time they want a drink, I mark their names on them so they can reuse them for refills. And when I buy soda, which I don't buy a lot of, I make sure to buy the largest plastic liter bottle I can, instead of individual cans or plastic bottles for use at home.

I too have many reusable bags. My favorite is when I go into stores and the cashier is still confused by my bag (from that store).

For example in Target, "I can't find the tag."
Me, "I already purchased the bag."
Cashier, "Oh...do you want me to put the stuff in the bag"?
Me, "Yes, put it all in the bag."
And, I've found myself explaining that if everything I buy can fit in the bag, put it in my reusable bag. I don't need two items in the reusable bag and one in a plastic, just to lighten the load.

I've also gone in stores, hand the cashier a resuable bag and a second later see the cashier dismissing the bag and placing my goods in plastic bags. Really!?

Sarah

I also enjoy the reactions from many cashiers and about my bags. Often it's genuine admiration (they're pretty and roll up nicely - the only drawback is that they don't stand up, so they're inconvenient for the baggers). Other times it's cluelessness.

1) At stores where they empty your cart, I typically cover the food at the near-to-them end of the cart with my bags. I had a cashier pick up the bags and toss them back to the cart, by the child seat. "Um, those are my grocery bags. Could you please use those?"

2) Many cashiers try to find the price, of course.

3) Wal-mart clerks (yeah, I know, evil Wallyworld - I'm working on it) are most often very perplexed when I wanted them to use my bags. Often the only way they understand the concept is if I just have them pile up the groceries and I bag them. I had another Wallyworld clerk reluctantly use the bags, but then place the big duffelbag I was purchasing in a plastic bag. Um, no. That's not quite what I'm trying to accomplish.

4) Eggs do not need to be placed in their own special plastic bag while I have half-empty cloth bags. Really. Thanks. I once had a bagger who was clearly very distressed at my request that the eggs just go on top of my nearly full bag. He was visibly reassured and relaxed when I said, "I promise I won't be mad if they break." You could actually see his whole posture change and hear his blood pressure go down. Poor kid.

I understand that it's frequently simply course of habit that they use plastic right after I hand them the bags, but other times it's definitely people who are unclear on the concept.

Oh, on a related note:

5) Can we please have a button added to self-checkouts so that I don't have to pile up all my groceries like an idiot on the scales, then finally bag them after paying?!? I have yet to find a system that doesn't complain when it feels my (rather light) bags on the scale. Man, I hate looking like that much of a freak because of their moronic system, and I feel awful that it makes people behind me wait longer.

Oh, witeowl I did find one supermarket that has a "my bag" button. A trick I found for stores that don't have a such button is to put the bag down on the scale at the same time I'm placing the first item in it. Usually, that works with out "please wait for an attendant."

I too, or my boyfriend, will usually ask to bag when in grocery stores where the cashier is expected to bag.

Sarah

I'm seeing some improvement with the cloth bags. At the grocery store I put the bags first on the conveyor belt and most are good about using them. I was pleasantly surprised recently when I went into a discount store and the cashier actual reached over to take the bag from me.

witeowl - the eggs only thing is probably so ingrained in the kids from their training that it may take a little time to adapt....being the creatures of habit that we are.

theanalyst: I've tried sneaking it on with the first item, but it always "catches" me. Too accurate, I guess. :-( I'll have to keep my eyes out for a button like that. Maybe I'll do the smart thing and ask the attendant if he/she knows the best solution. Duh!

Wally World They'll insist on putting stickers on stuff to get past their 'welcome' person because I assume that's how they spot shoplifters. If it's not in a Wally World bag, you are suspect. I don't shop there if I can avoid it but the few times I have, and used my own bags, I have been intercepted on the way out and had to cough up receipts as they eyeballed my purchases.

Wally World...I crack up at the nickname. If only you knew what I called Walmart. Let's just say, I refuse to go in that store at all costs. Hahahaha.

Sarah

In the Scandinavian countries, there are no bags of any kind at the stores. You have to bring your own. I think that would be great! Making grocery bags is already becoming a cottage industry in this country. Just think how many jobs would be created if we had no plastic bags.

Did you know it costs roughly $4,000 to recycle enough plastic bags to be resold for $100? Tell me somebody's not getting some subsidies there, so we're paying for those bags anyway.