Is your city/state/country going to ban plastic grocery bags? Has it already done so?

 

  LOL, great graphic. 

  Pre-Covid, the state of California was on a drunken frenzy to ban the evilness of plastic grocery bags, it was an effort that began sometime around 2010 (or before) and eventually evolved into ballot measures and legislation. All of that screeched to an immediate halt when Covid struck, and all of a sudden no one and nothing could touch anyone or anything, so plastic grocery bags were restored to their former status in society and held up as heroic methods of protection from human contact with other humans and the things that humans touch. The same villain that threatened the environment was completely ignored in its insipid plot to ruin oceans and fauna.
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 NYC has banned plastic bags  You'd be hard-pressed to find a store still using them.  Unfortunately, the graphic is all too true, but I guess you have to start somewhere.

Don't get me wrong...I hate plastic in general.  However, some of what you list here is recyclable.  The plastic bags and disposable diapers are both big contributors to the landfill problem and I support getting rid of both.  The EPA said years ago that they were going to ban the bags.  They have not.  Some municipalities have banned them.  I'm not aware of a state banning them, but it's possible I wouldn't know it. 

Plastic bags were banned here years ago.  Stores got around the ban by making a "thicker" plastic bag and labeling it as "reusable" (supposedly up to 100 times).  {Of course, they can't be recycled either as it's virtually impossible to recycle ANY kind of plastic in this state.}  When Covid hit, reusing any type of bag was strictly forbidden.  Within a few months, no store had any plastic bags, and ALL stores began to charge .10 for paper bags (an option in the law that banned plastic bags).  Stores and warehouses that had leftover "banned" bags quickly brought them back (who's going to challenge them?), and charged for them as well (even ones with holes that broke halfway to the parking lot).   I now have several large bins filled with paper grocery bags (barrel size) sitting out in front of my garage.  

Now they want to ban the bags one uses for produce and meat, or make them "compostable" - which simply means they break down to microplastic particles one can't see (if you can't see it anymore, it no longer exists). 

I use plastic grocery bags as garbage can liners for used cat litter.  Same thing as using a Hefty trash bag, except this way the grocery bag gets used twice.  Paper bags aren't great for used cat litter, and Waste Management won't take used cat litter if it's not "contained".

"The Bag Waste Reduction Law" New York State

"As of March 1, 2020, all plastic carryout bags (other than an exempt bag) became banned from distribution by anyone required to collect New York State sales tax..."

We had a sufficient amount of notice that this law was coming. It was more important to me than most folks since I do all my grocery shopping on line, and delivered (due to disabilities). In the interim, most of my grocery store contacts didn't know how those home delivery orders would be handled. My suggestion at that time was to use the method that was used in the '50s, deliver groceries in the cartons that products were delivered to the store in. That's how my family's groceries came (there was no supermarkets in my town at that time). No, they couldn't (wouldn't) do that. I suspect that they resell the cardboard. 

Since then I've been paying .15 per brown paper bag (.10 state tax, .05 store fee). I don't really pay for all of them, the store shopper has mercy and only charges me for about half. I started saving all the bags since I had paid for them. Eventually, they filled a whole closet so I've had to dispose of them in the recycling. 

I'm all for reducing plastics in our environment. Like Element's original posting, I've wondered how long it will take society to address that list he posted. Back in the (ancient) '50s, everyone in our neighborhood burned the household trash in barrels in the backyards. In the '60s, I lived in an apartment building that has a trash chute to the furnace in the basement. There was no plastic in the trash then. How on Earth did we live like that?!

This post was edited by NYAD at November 29, 2022 9:23 PM MST

Apparently there is a Federal move to ban plastic bags nationwide.  

Several years ago. Despite the graphic you chose, reducing plastic use is a net positive for the environment.

In UK, not a ban as such, rather a nominal charge for each plastic bag used with an exception for food retailers such as butchers. At one stage, the charge applied to paper bags as well. 

There is some pressure to reduce the plastic items in your list, but it does not appear to be very effective. 

This post was edited by Malizz at November 30, 2022 11:45 AM MST

Single use bags have been, a nominal charge has been applied to thicker, reusable plastic bags. I carry them with me when I go shopping, no biggie.

Continuing Malizz' point, many UK shops do now offer heavy-duty bags that can be used many times if you are careful with them.

Examining one from Aldi, it looks as made from some sort of woven plastic fabric given an outer coating; and it is quite rugged.

Also the goods' own packaging - of any material - has to be recoverable as far as possible, and the makers put basic advice on the labels, along with the standard triangular "recycling" symbol where appropriate.

At work I had sometimes to put in the salvage skips, used computer packing. These were typically heavy-duty cardboard boxes containing moulded polystyrene-foam "nests". However, many other items arrived with the shock-absorbing parts now as ingenious cardboard origami; or with those polystyrene foam "maggots" replaced with ones made from vegetable material - and reputably edible though I did not test that!  

We do have extensive "recycling" systems in the UK but they vary in detail from County Council to County Council, possibly depending partly on whoever buys the salvaged waste for re-processing.

At least some of the thermoplastics can be processed into new versions. One type gives rather rough "new" plastic mouldings or extrusions; typically long rectangular bars for use as roofing battens, garden-furniture parts - and sleepers on miniature-railways! The stuff I have handled is chocolate-brown, rather crude quality, rich in gas-bubbles and tiny flakes of what seem to be metals; machineable if you don't mind its whiff of urea when hot; but not suitable for high-quality engineering parts. I do not know if it can be re- recovered.

The bigger headache is the non-recoverable thermoplastics.... Just what do we do with all those fibre-reinforced resin wind-turbine blades, printed circuit-boards and luxury boat hulls when they eventually wear out? These materials are not salvageable!

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I think though all these schemes and intentions are hampered by what I see as an appalling lack of basic scientific and engineering knowledge among most politicians, journalists, "green" (indeed) campaigners and the public at large. Claiming being "tech-savvy" means only knowing how to use complicated gadgets - but not the English language.

By this ignorance, paralleled in other fields, the very word "plastic" has become a catch-all condemnation that takes no account of plastics' basic classes, their many types, multitudinous object forms and purposes, sensible alternatives for purpose, and their material recoverability or not.