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So we have started buying the reusable bags for groceries and what not. We have about 18 now and keep them in the vehicles. We used to reuse the plastic bags for dirty diapers, but have not needed those for a couple of years now. We buy a couple more every time we go to the store in the hopes of not having to use the plastic ones anymore (except for the meats).
We do our grocery shopping at Wal-Mart and fill two carts every two weeks (we have a family of six). When we go to check-out on our last two trips, our cashiers have mentioned how much they hate the reusable bags. My wife has taken to bagging the groceries.
This isn't right. If they are going to push us to use them, their employees should be more willing to sack with them.
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They can hate them all they want, it's still their job to bag the groceries. I would hand the bags over while saying "I'm sorry to hear that."
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I have the reusable bags but forget to bring them in with me. I need to make it a habit somehow.
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sometimes when i just need a few things I don't bother with my bags and tell them I don't need a bag. They never believe me. They say, "are you sure?" and then when I say yes, they give me strange looks. It's ONE thing! I can hold it my hands. I still have to hold the bag too...it's not like the bag magically floats along side me back to my car.
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That's different. When I'm only getting one or two things, the checkers around here ask, "Do you need a bag, or not?" They're happy to skip bagging it!
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i got my bags from this site. Lots of options there.
my girlfriend refuses to buy reusable bags and makes her own out of t-shirts she picks up at thrift shops. She puts my green living to shame.
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I usually just buy my bags pre-made at thrift stores.
I do like the stuff bags for carrying around for unexpected needs/forgot my bags moments, though. And you can see they even have one made of 7 recycled water bottles, so it's not too much extra production.
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It takes about five years for a plastic bag to be reduced to nothing by the ultraviolet light in sunlight. The plastic came from petroleum, which is a mixture of hydrocarbon compounds. Then the plastic breaks down into carbon and hydrogen. That sounds like recycling to me.
One concern grocery stores have always had with people bringing used grocery bags from home, especially paper ones, is that some of those bags may contain cockroaches.
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I've started using Onya Weigh bags for my produce. I don't need them much because UK grocery stores seem to have a fetish for plastic wrapping everything, but I'm trying to switch to the open market, where they're more useful. So far I'm very happy with the bags.
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the site I linked to above also has produce bags. No offense EL, just providing a US based provider so it doesn't have to be shipped from UK!
I used to have a problem with the mass amount of produce bags i was going through, and then I started just reusing the plastic produce bags you get at the store, and stuffing them all in one of my reusables. But now i've taken to just piling most of my produce in one of my reusable bags in the cart and putting it right on the conveyor sans bag. Though i have a few re-usable produce bags that i bring for certain items.
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quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: It takes about five years for a plastic bag to be reduced to nothing by the ultraviolet light in sunlight. The plastic came from petroleum, which is a mixture of hydrocarbon compounds. Then the plastic breaks down into carbon and hydrogen. That sounds like recycling to me.
One concern grocery stores have always had with people bringing used grocery bags from home, especially paper ones, is that some of those bags may contain cockroaches.
posted
Ron has set up an experiment for us that can most likely be proven while we are all still here at Hatrack(unless the rapture finally happens)! Anyone willing to stick a plastic bag outside of their house for the next five years?
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quote:Originally posted by Eaquae Legit: I've started using Onya Weigh bags for my produce. I don't need them much because UK grocery stores seem to have a fetish for plastic wrapping everything, but I'm trying to switch to the open market, where they're more useful. So far I'm very happy with the bags.
Those are awesome! And great for the Farmer's Market, too! Thanks for the link, I'll have to see about getting some of those.
Oh, I forgot to mention that our local grocery stores also provide plastic bag recycling collection containers (and have as long as I can remember.) And, they give you a discount for using cloth!
Can you tell I live in CA?
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: It takes about five years for a plastic bag to be reduced to nothing by the ultraviolet light in sunlight. The plastic came from petroleum, which is a mixture of hydrocarbon compounds. Then the plastic breaks down into carbon and hydrogen. That sounds like recycling to me.
One concern grocery stores have always had with people bringing used grocery bags from home, especially paper ones, is that some of those bags may contain cockroaches.
And how many plastic bags are lying around in open sunlight? How many are buried in landfills? And how long does it take these carbon and hydrogen molecules to become petroleum again? Hundreds of thousands of years! And I don't know anyplace that is concerned about cockroaches in their customers reusable bags. Ron, you're ridiculous.
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quote:Originally posted by Strider: Ron has set up an experiment for us that can most likely be proven while we are all still here at Hatrack(unless the rapture finally happens)! Anyone willing to stick a plastic bag outside of their house for the next five years?
I don't know that it's necessarily five years, but I'll believe that that number is close. Plastics that haven't been UV stabilized become brittle and break down quickly when they are left out in sunlight. In my experience, the brittleness usually shows up within about a year, although the intensity of the sunlight probably causes that to vary.
When you see estimates of hundreds or thousands of years for something to break down, usually it is assumed that the substance is in a landfill. Even organic things like vegetables take a long time to decompose in a landfill.
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Again, what percentage of plastic bags do you think are exposed to sunlight, and what percentage are buried in landfills?
Posts: 1711 | Registered: Jun 2004
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quote:Again, what percentage of plastic bags do you think are exposed to sunlight, and what percentage are buried in landfills?
The percentage has no bearing on whether Ron's statement about plastic degradation is true or not. That's a different question altogether, although an important one.
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fair enough. I apologize for jumping on the comment.
Since we live in this world, and not in some other idealistic universe where we all set out old plastic bags to degrade in the sun, lets talk about the practical reality of plastic bags.
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It does if Ron uses that factoid to declare that "it sounds like recycling to me."
I've done some googling, and some of the stats say that only 5% of the plastic bags are recycled. I'd guess that maybe 25% of those not directly recycled end up lying around, while the rest (the vast majority) end up in landfills. I haven't found a real, scientific source, so if anyone finds one please post it.
I feel like Ron is grossly misrepresenting the problem. If most (by far) end up in landfills, than this should be the scenario that is most important.
Posts: 1711 | Registered: Jun 2004
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quote:Originally posted by ElJay: They can hate them all they want, it's still their job to bag the groceries. I would hand the bags over while saying "I'm sorry to hear that."
What ElJay said, completely. I was going to type it myself, but she beat it to me.
Mention their comments on the survey you get on your receipt. Their manager should know that, and I am not just saying that as a potentially disgruntled customer. I was a manager, and if my people said anything like that their would be hell to pay.
Then again, I didn't work at Wal-Mart......their pay scale is already a close approximation of hell as it is.
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quote:Originally posted by Eaquae Legit: I've started using Onya Weigh bags for my produce.
Those look really great! I may have to pick up a few of those. I regularly participate in a produce co-op, so I don't need many plastic bags (and I save the ones I bring home from the occasional grocery store produce purchase), but those tulle ones look especially cool.
I've kept plastic bags for a long time to either re-use them for other things or take them to a recycling center. I've been bringing my own cloth bags to the grocery store for a couple years now. The only problem I routinely run into is when the cashier asks me how many bags I have (so they can credit me) and the bagger hasn't finished yet, so I don't know how many they'll be using (I normally have about 7 bags with me, but rarely need that many). I've never heard a bagger complain about them, but it does amuse me how often they treat the cloth ones as if they're plastic (meaning they severely underfill it). I do sometimes bag my own groceries, but that's normally because there is no bagger for that lane (even if I was using plastic, I'd still bag my groceries). It's a little annoying when I want to use the self check-outs, but there isn't a cashier there (to re-set the scales to account for my bags).
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quote:When you see estimates of hundreds or thousands of years for something to break down, usually it is assumed that the substance is in a landfill. Even organic things like vegetables take a long time to decompose in a landfill.
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I don't get a discount. I've heard of other stores doing that. That would be nice.
I do hate when they under fill the bags.
We have a mixed bag of bags. The first ones were pink and for breast cancer awareness, the next ones were Wall-E and Tink. Then we got some just regular ones from Wal-Mart and such.
Posts: 1766 | Registered: Feb 2006
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quote:Originally posted by Strider: the site I linked to above also has produce bags. No offense EL, just providing a US based provider so it doesn't have to be shipped from UK!
No worries! I didn't see them on that site. Local shipping = awesome.
Ludosti, they're more of a mesh than tulle. My housemates joke that I should wash my underwear in them - they're just a bit finer than those bags. My scales at work tell me they weigh about 10 grams each, which doesn't bother me but might others.
Posts: 2849 | Registered: Feb 2002
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quote:Originally posted by Juxtapose: theCrowsWife,
quote:When you see estimates of hundreds or thousands of years for something to break down, usually it is assumed that the substance is in a landfill. Even organic things like vegetables take a long time to decompose in a landfill.
Interesting article. All I can say is that I've found plastic bags that have been outside that pretty much crumble into dust at the slightest touch. These would have been subject to sunlight, water, and microbes, so perhaps that is why they have decomposed faster than bags that have only been exposed to one or two of the elements. I really don't know.
I have no argument with Strider and White Whale about plastic garbage being a problem, though. Even if 100% of the plastic bags produced were put through an effective decomposition process, it would still be a waste of petroleum to make so many disposable bags.
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As much fun as it is to jump on Ron, it seems to me all he said was that if a plastic bag was left out in direct sunlight for five years, it'd break down and since the stuff in it is natural, would be a form of recycling.
I don't know the facts about each of those things (the five years seems reasonable to me; plastic bags do deteriorate if left out, and even if left in. But I do wonder about what exactly goes into a plastic bag, and whether it's all fossil fuels), but if he's right, that would be a form of recycling. Assuming of course one doesn't just pitch `em out the window of the car on the way home or something.
Cockroaches may seem like a stretch, but other insect infestations aren't so unlikely, necessarily. Some bugs are very small, and some people are terribly unsanitary.
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We went grocery shopping again last night and my wife spoke to the manager when we first got there. She said to report anyone that does that again.
When we checked out, we had a wonderful checker. She was very nice and was training a new girl. She explained the best way to sack these bags to the new girl. When my wife was HELPING sack, she said many people who have these types of bags help sack. They both thanked my wife for helping and using the reusable bags.
On a sadder note, our recycling center is unable to accept paperboard at this time. Their vendor does not take them anymore. They are in the process of finding a new vendor.
Why is paperboard so much more difficult to recycle?
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Who really cares if plastic bags sit in landfills? I know it's the green thing to be concerned with the earth and hate garbage, but have any of you ever seen a landfill encroaching onto a forest, or spilling over into a lake, or eating one side of town?
We have plenty of open space to put landfills. It seems like a non-issue to me. What's the real-world math behind using a reusable bag vs. using plastic bags in a year.
I could be wrong, but I have a feeling this is one of those environmental red herrings, where we feel awesome about saving the environment by using a cloth bag and we ignore the more important environmental concerns like industrial dumping or 3rd world deforestation.
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Toronto has to haul its waste enormous distances. They've tried, IIRC, tiny northern towns and Michigan. I don't know if they actually ever settled on a long-term solution. It's a big problem for the area.
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Not all trash goes into a landfill. A lot of it ends up in the ocean. . . it was going around all the news outlets a couple weeks ago about how Oprah mentioned that there's a floating island of plastic twice the size of Texas in the North Pacific, and how that got it more attention than being in the news had.
There's also the NIMB factor for "plenty" of landfill space. England is almost out. The price of disposing of waste on the east coast is about 4 times what it is in flyover land, because land is so much more expensive and they have to haul the trash a lot further.
Finally, stuff does break down in landfills, however slowly, and then leach into the water supply. That makes it harder to find a suitable place to situate them, and then they have to be monitored, with the leachate (actual word!) controlled and pumped before it reaches the water table.
I'm sure there's other reasons, those are just off the top of my head from stuff I've read about the subject.
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quote:Originally posted by ElJay: Finally, stuff does break down in landfills, however slowly, and then leach into the water supply. That makes it harder to find a suitable place to situate them, and then they have to be monitored, with the leachate (actual word!) controlled and pumped before it reaches the water table.
Any decent landfill is lined.
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quote:Originally posted by ElJay: Not all trash goes into a landfill. A lot of it ends up in the ocean. . . it was going around all the news outlets a couple weeks ago about how Oprah mentioned that there's a floating island of plastic twice the size of Texas in the North Pacific, and how that got it more attention than being in the news had.
The island of plastic is more or less a byproduct of accidental waste dumping. There's not any coastline left on earth that doesn't have trash all over it.
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Of course it's lined. They still have to pump out the leachate, or it finds a way out.
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And accidental waste dumping is an excellent reason to use reusable shopping bags instead of plastic, neh? If you're taking them home and keeping them instead of throwing them out, you know they're not going to end up in the ocean or loose in the environment instead of in a landfill. Or, in my case, incinerator.
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quote: They still have to pump out the leachate, or it finds a way out.
So...where does that go? And if we have a convenient place to put the leachate where it won't contaminate the water table, why don't we put the trash there in the first place?
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It gets sent to a water treatment plant, the solids removed and sent back to the landfill and the liquids treated and returned to the water cycle.
Here is an excellent, basic and clear article about how landfills are constructed and how they can fail. It also has links to tons of other articles on waste disposal issues. I have no idea about the biases of the site in general, just picked it out of google as a good overview of why and how landfill contaminants can escape, lining or no.
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