LA vote could spell end for bag of a thousand uses

http://www.centurylink.net/news/rea...org>&news_id=18954051&src=most_popular_viewed

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Ah, the little plastic grocery bag, we hardly got to know you.

Although it seems as if the single-use grocery bag, as it's formally known, has been around forever, it wasn't until 1977 that it was introduced to U.S. supermarkets, a move that prompted perhaps the most asked question of the following decade: "Paper or plastic?"..........

Now, with the city of Los Angeles taking the first step toward joining nearly four dozen other California municipalities in outlawing them, the humble little polyethylene bag may be headed for the trash heap of history.


More at link....

Good riddance!

I agree, good riddance! these bags cause so much harm, and it's so easy to bring your own. I wish every city or state would ban them!

Bunch of bull if you ask me and you didn't but oh well! I use my bags for lining the small garbage cans in bathroom, bedroom, den, etc. Save money and I'm recycling them!

SDkid said:

Bunch of bull if you ask me and you didn't but oh well! I use my bags for lining the small garbage cans in bathroom, bedroom, den, etc. Save money and I'm recycling them!

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Me too. I also see people carrying them when walking their dogs. For those who live in neighborhoods where it is law to pick up after their doggy's doo doo.

They ban them at grocery stores, the same size bags will just sell more as can liners. Just exchanging one for another. Also, all the large grocery chains here have containers to recycle rather than toss these small convienence store plastic grocery bags.

so... As my DH asked...
Are the newspapers running these articles going to stop using plastic bags the papers are delivered in?:what:

I reuse them for trash liners too, but I could/would use recycled paper bags for the same thing. jmo

Next, the dang six pack plastics! Again, what was wrong with the light cardboard variety?

I think we just overdid a good thing, imo. We need to go back a step or two to find the lasting ideal in many packaging materials. (Like what's with all these infuriating clam shells and single pill bubbles, gosh, a small bottle and a cotton ball were too much? pfft)

I use those bags for a ton of things.
garbage
gardening stuff
litter poopy
all small garbage cans are lined with them
etc.

If they ban them then that means we just BUY plastic bags at the store.

What's the point?

Good for scooping poop:

Plastic bread bags
Chip bags, rice cake bags, apple bags, potato bags

For small trash pails - any of those bigger ones, plus department store bags

Or you can just go back to throwing any "wet" trash in the big plastic bag in the kitchen, and dry only for smaller pails in other rooms.

:twocents:

B-b-but if they ban them, when the breeze arises, what will alight in the limbs of their trees, blighting them with the cloying plasticity of their whiteness?

wfgodot said:

B-b-but if they ban them, when the breeze arises, what will alight in the limbs of their trees, blighting them with the cloying plasticity of their whiteness?

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The trees will be chopped down to make paper bags, which is why paper bags were once banned - to save the trees. Banning plastic bags accomplishes nothing.

I cannot understand what is so hard about bringing your own bags, so we don't have to use plastic OR paper?

Can someone explain? What am I missing?

Gardenlady said:

I cannot understand what is so hard about bringing your own bags, so we don't have to use plastic OR paper?

Can someone explain? What am I missing?

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Part of the argument is that using the reusable shopping bags can be a source of bacterial growth and ultimately a health hazard. Among other things,if you carry meat and the meat juices drip into the bottom of the bag then they leave behind germs and e coli is one of the most common bacterias found in the reusable bags. Of course they can be washed if cloth or sprayed down with an anti-bacterial if they are the plasticized type- but they can be a carrier of things like stomach flu and other bugs. Many people simply put the bags back in the car and do not wash them or the surfaces they come into contact with. I think norovirus is another one.

This whole issue is really big here with one of the underlying issues being the number of jobs that will be eliminated if the plastic bags companies lose this business.

TrackerSam said:

The trees will be chopped down to make paper bags, which is why paper bags were once banned - to save the trees. Banning plastic bags accomplishes nothing.

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Understood. But trees are renewable resources, harvested and replanted by the paper cartels, while plastic bags in the limbs of neighborhood trees are forever. (Slight hyperbole.)

But if anybody in Cali needs plastic sacks should this come to pass, I have about four cupboards-ful of the white WalMart variety, wadded up and ready to go!

L.A.'s sweeping ban isn't in the bag yet

snip-
Banning plastic and paper bags will cost "a tremendous amount" of sack manufacturing jobs held mostly by Latinos in California, and export them to China, Daniels claims. He also said plastic bags can be and are recycled in great numbers, and charging a buck or two for reusable bags is a hardship for many families. He said the Koretz plan to have stores temporarily charge 10 cents for paper bags until an eventual ban is regressive, and he argued that proponents are over-estimating the amount of bag litter, underestimating the amount of recycling, and exaggerating the amount of damage to marine life caused by bags.

"You think 3 million people are going to clean their reusable bags after every use?" asked Daniels, who claimed that plastic bags account for such a tiny fraction of litter, banning them "will have zero environmental impact."

He was beginning to sound like a man whose main interest is selling bags.


Zero environmental impact?
By some estimates, the amount of plastic bags in California's waste stream is in the thousands of tons, many of them are not biodegradable, and the cost of disposal is in the many millions.
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/may/23/local/la-me-0523-lopez-bagban-20120523

JBean said:

Part of the argument is that using the reusable shopping bags can be a source of bacterial growth and ultimately a health hazard. Among other things,if you carry meat and the meat juices drip into the bottom of the bag then they leave behind germs and e coli is one of the most common bacterias found in the reusable bags. Of course they can be washed if cloth or sprayed down with an anti-bacterial if they are the plasticized type- but they can be a carrier of things like stomach flu and other bugs. Many people simply put the bags back in the car and do not wash them or the surfaces they come into contact with. I think norovirus is another one.

This whole issue is really big here with one of the underlying issues being the number of jobs that will be eliminated if the plastic bags companies lose this business.

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Ok I can understand these concerns. And I do take job loss seriously - there are way too many out of work as it is.

but we can't keep making something that is destructive, because of fears of job loss. We end up damaging the environment, so that people have work, but what are we working for if we are destroying out world (and I don't put that down to just plastic bags, of course, but taken together with our other destructive practices, it all adds up)?

I'm no economist, so i dont know how...but a solution must be found, if people will not take measures voluntarily. Perhaps as a larger part of encouraging more manufacturing in the US, the places that make these bags can be incentivized into manufacturing other products, or more environmentally friendly plastic bags (if there's such a thing?).

As for the germs ... Even using the occasional plastic bag just for meats (bags which are generally smaller and thinner than the grocery bags themselves) is a huge improvement over plastic bagging everything, and would keep germs from leaking into the fabric/reusables - for those who don't or won't wash theirs.

Where I do my marketing, it has been almost 5 years since the plastic shopping bags have been phased out. They still offer paper bags and of course the reusable 'cloth type' bags. I still have oodles of big brown paper bags on hand from many years of saving them. I use them for assorted purposes once in awhile. I use the reusable bags of which I have 3 or 4. They work just fine and no one in my house has gotten any strange diseases from them.

In the produce and meat departments, the giant supermarket I go to offers smallish degradable plastic bags for containing the produce and in the meat department they are especially good for chicken and fish. The other market I go to has the degradable plastic bags for the produce and has an actual butcher shop that uses small plastic bags sometimes (if you ask for an item to be freezer wrapped, or if for fish or poultry), and otherwise wraps their products in butcher paper which has a 'plasticized' side to it. I don't recycle that paper. I either recycle the plastic degradable bags or use them for kitty llitter stuff.

I looked up the manufacturer of the brand of degradable plastic bags that comes from the giant supermarket (Safeway) and it is manufactured by a company called Unistar Plastics LLC.

I looked up Unistar ( unistarplastics.com ) and found:

"Unistar manufactures plastic packaging for the supermarket, pharmacy, retail, and convenient store markets throughout North America. Our domestic facilities are located in Louisiana and Texas. We also operate facilities in Asia and South America."

I have been an avid recycler for many many years.