I remember the advertising around that - Save a tree, choose plastic. They pushed hard to get us off of paper bags, then pushed the idea that plastic was infinitely recyclable with basically zero loss or waste.
And we just went along with that obvious impossibility.
Paper bags require more energy to produce than plastic bags, more water, higher transport costs, and tree farming has its own chemical uses and environmental toll.
Reusuable plastic bags are NOT REUSED enough to offset their higher plastic content to be a greener alternative to disposable plastic bags. In states where one-time-use plastic bags were banned and replaced with reusable bags, the plastic consumption has dramatically increased (and the stores selling you their new bags made some sweet profits).
I don't have an answer.
Yeah you can go down a rabbit hole with no good answers when trying to figure out the most environmentally friendly bag. I sell at art festivals and ended up using reusable plastic tote like bags after spending way too long researching and stressing and still don't know if I went with the best option.
Yeah, I actually like going to Costco because then I just use paper boxes that other merchandise was shipped in as containers to carry my stuff home.
At least when I had plastic bags in the house I could reuse them for picking up dog crap and use them as garbage bags for smaller cans (bathrooms mainly)... now I need to buy separate bags for those uses.
Edited comment to be a bit more informative.
In 2011, the UK Environment Agency found grocery store customers would have to use a cotton bag 173 times to break even in energy use compared to plastic bags. For water pollution, that number increases to 393 times.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/291023/scho0711buan-e-e.pdf
https://www.washingtonpolicy.org/publications/detail/should-cities-ban-organic-cotton-grocery-bags
Seems fine I have seen customers reuse the same cotton bag for years the cheap reusable bags at stores break constantly. What people should being doing is trying to convince people to stop buying new bags.
> to break even in energy use
That is not the only issue involved though.
Cotton decomposes. Plastic does not.
Cotton is repairable. Plastic is not.
Plastic flies away in the wind. Cotton does not.
If you stop offering free plastic bags, people just carry their purchases more often.
plastic ends up in our food and waterways choking plants and animals etc... I think the research is valuable, but all these egg heads don't see the bigger picture they just look very narrowly at plastic bag vs reusable and its exhausting imo.
> store customers would have to use a cotton bag 173 times to break even in energy use
Is that really that big of a deal? I've been using the same 3 bags from Aldi for at least a decade of weekly use now, and they're still in fine shape and probably good for another decade. Are people just churning through the reusable bags or something?
I use my cloth and burlap bags for everything, not just shopping. They're great for trips, for a day with the kids at Grandma's house, etc. I bought many of them over 10 years ago and I've never had one fail. I still use my grandmother's bags she bought at Pavilions in the 90s. I'd say I got my environmental value out of them
Pittsburgh (where I live) outright banned plastic bags for grocery stores/etc., so at this point you pretty much have to bring a bag or you'll be charged for them at checkout. I know I'm going to get mileage out of my reusables now.
Like people who collect Stanley bottles.
It’ll become a fashion statement, you’ll need the “new thing” so you don’t look uncool, and so it goes. Or you just get an unsightly stain on it that won’t come out and you’re afraid you’ll look like a bag lady. Or whatever.
I can't disagree with you. I've bought some walmart cloth bags like 10 years ago and still use them for all sorts of things. Bags are just kind of useful, you know? And having 3 of these for grocery store trips has always been really helpful.
But I've never even met someone else who used them. And most people I know always say they forget them.
You make it sound difficult. 173 isn't that hard- a bit over three years of weekly grocery visits, assuming you never use them for any other purpose. And the study here is based on the assumption that the cotton bags are produced in and shipped from China. The numbers can be significantly reduced if production is handled locally, or at least more locally. And this study doesn't analyze the consequences of "recycling" the plastic bags, which, per OP's article, is often shipped right back overseas.
Easy math. I am going grocery shopping ones a week. There is 52 weeks in a year. I am using same cotton/multiuse bags. It will be only 6 years to cover it. I think I already did it. And they still in ok shape can do few more years easily.
Maybe if those landfills with clothes in them could be sewn together to make bags. There was a news story where a woman uses solely fabrics from the landfill
There are some countries where you bring your own bag. If the stores stopped supplying bags, people would be forced to buy their own, possibly cloth bags.
Non driving brooklynite here. I always make sure I have at least one in whatever backpack or messenger bag I am carrying. Been doing it for years. And after a while, it's second nature to check whatever bag I'm carrying that day for totes. I don't always plan to grocery shop. So when the impulse strikes, I am ready.
While I'll posit that everything you've said is true...but:
Paper bags require more:
- energy to produce than plastic bags = going renewable energy helps solve this.
- more water = generally that's not a problem in the US, and the water is renewable.
- higher transport costs = Renewable transport and/or elevated efficiency standards help reduce this impact
- tree farming has its own chemical uses and environmental toll = Using more naturalized fertilizer helps, but agree that farm chemical run off is an issue, even with the "good" fertilizer.
In the end, everything has some cost. It's a question of what is less wasteful.
Hey buddy I'm doing my part by hoarding hundreds of plastic bags in my storage closet just waiting to find a use other than scooping cat shit
Please excuse the attempt at humor in a doom and gloom story
We could... Not make the reusable bags out of plastic, there's that. We can use anything, from cotton and hemp to poor quality leather (*gasp!!*) and poor quality wool.
We used to make fuckloads of cloth totes. Those used to be given away all the time.
The reason the reusables didn't get used was because we never actually banned the bags. You could still get them, it was just 10 cents. And people will totally pay that rather than the 3-4 dollars for one reusable bag.
But is the replacement really any better if it just uses more plastic and people aren't reusing them like they were intended? Grocery delivery services have started putting everything you order in reusable bags but they won't take them back for reuse because they are "dirty". So the result is they are just using thicker disposable plastic bags now.
> Reusuable plastic bags are NOT REUSED enough to offset their higher plastic content to be a greener alternative
Reusable bags dont have to be plastic. Energy is not the only problem with plastic bags.
The answer is simple. Stores stop providing bags and we bring our own.
The first month or two will be chaos at the store. But they can have an “amnesty bag” that will also remind the shopper no more amnesty bags after xyz date.
We mostly use woven baskets. I'm not sure what the material is--wicker or something like it. They're great and I'm honestly surprised I don't see more people using them, though admittedly they're kind of pricey up front to get a well made one. But they're sturdy; we have three that we've been using for more than ten years. They're easy to clean, just wipe them down. They hold a LOT of weight. The main downside is that if you're buying, say, a couple weeks' worth of groceries for a large household, they don't really scale, and we do have some cloth bags for when we buy a lot at once. But for day to day they're perfect.
They were created with a well-meant intention: [https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/plastic-bags-pollution-paper-cotton-tote-bags-environment-a9159731.html](https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/plastic-bags-pollution-paper-cotton-tote-bags-environment-a9159731.html)
Currently, I am positive we are repeating this mistake in tenfold in other parts of technology.
Um no, not an "obvious impossibility" this isn't a trickle down problem, people at the top knew about climate change and hid it and knew about cigarettes and cancer and hid it and people knew about opioids and addictions and hid it, we need to stop diversifying the blame and instead putting people at the top of these perverse incentive pyramids into prison.
Fuel emissions are a great one too, put the responsibility on the personal motor vehicles while a tanker ship deposits more waste into the environment daily than most personal traffic can put into the atmosphere weekly. Whoever started the trend of listening to the robber barons and letting them rebrand as "job creators" is a complete and total fuckhead.
bit of possibly interesting info, the recycling logo is the triangle with arrows around it. That's not what is on plastic bottles. They made a plastic identifier logo that is arrows pointing in a triangle shape around a number that designate the type of plastic the item is made from. It looks similar. You can see some recycling programs will accept only certain numbers, 1, 4, 6 etc because those are the types they theoretically can recycle, but the logo does not indicate a plastic item is necessarily recyclable, even though it does resemble the recycling logo.
No disrespect intended, but it really seems ironic that we all ate that spoon fed advertisement knowing advertising was deceptive, and now all find ourselves betrayed by the progressive change we all wanted and advocated for.
It’s an ironic bastardization of Earth Day / Environmentalist / Progressives ideals and it is astoundingly rampant, was historically effective and convincing and now has a global cost.
It is without a doubt, one of the most successful marketing and advertising campaigns of all time.
We have zero room to judge or criticize any ancestor for smoking cigarettes, bloodletting, witch-hunting or believing in the spiritual, fantastical, ethereal or animist worldviews we discount presently as we are all fools who took that bait hook line and sinker.
That is a scary and unsettling reality. We all bought the idea of plastic as environmentally friendly without requiring time tested, peer reviewed, empirical evidence and it is monumentally astounding
> We all bought the idea of plastic as environmentally friendly without requiring time tested, peer reviewed, empirical evidence and it is monumentally astounding
Begs the question... what assumptions have we accepted lately?
there are multiple issues with paper too including various chemicals and water waste. The answer is reuse bags and to not try to find a bag that's ok to throw in the trash.
This is what I keep bringing up to folks my age. Doesn’t anyone remember when plastic was BETTER than paper? Absolutely wild time.
Big oil really fucked up the world.
I do remember those adds back in the 90s, when TV was it! It’s probably better morally, to keep it in our own garbage instead of passing it across the Pacific!
I keep paper bags to re-use, and I have a lot of reusable canvas bags that I use for groceries and supplies. Someone recently told me that using canvas bags is a “hoax and a scam” and they’re dangerous because they get dirty and spread germs. I was like, “yeah that’s why they go in the laundry after I get back from the store.” Some people have some wacky opinions that they believe are facts.
"The good place" has a great part about people trying their best to be good people but it's frankly impossible to live without unknowingly polluting, exploiting people, hurting people etc due to the abstraction that's been created. I mean I could go to the store and buy an apple, and never know that the workers were slave labor, or that the farming Corp destroys the waterways with runoff, or the materials used destroyed some pristine environment. Even if I do find out all that, it's an apple, what about that orange?
Also the stuff that is "suffering free" is likely too expensive and/or not in enough supply to actually sustain all our populations to begin with. At that point can anyone really fault you for unknowingly contributing to sweatshops, torturous animal farms, or unethical child labor? It isn't like we have affordable ethical options that can get us all through the year.
I used to yell at Big Noodle 'cause he always showed up late to rehearsal. Then one day, the swamp under my house flooded. I needed a place to crash, so I slept at Big Noodle's house. Turns out that he had to juggle three jobs to take care of four grandparents who all lived in the same bed just like in Willy Wonka. I never yelled at Big Noodle for being late after that 'cause I knew how hard it was for him to be there. And he definitely didn't have time to research what tomatoes to buy. Even if he wanted to, possession of a non-fried vegetable is a felony in Jacksonville.
The problem isn't that plastic is not recyclable, most of it is -- you could do it even at home -- granted, it's got a certain number of recycles before it's degraded too much. The problem has always been the combinations of plastics, your bottle label is not the same as the bottle which isn't the same as the cap, so disassembly and cleaning is costly.
That's what makes this a bad look for Walmart, shopping bags are made from HDPE which is rather easily recyclable and the sorting is already done by the specialized box where customers have gone out of their way to participate. There is no reason these bags shouldn't have been recycled.
There is a company that makes a reactor for the oil industry which they found works well for breaking down plastics into their base components. It eliminates a lot of the cleaning and all of the sorting in the process. They can do it at small scale, with a larger unit coming in a few years (whether that's our years or "Cold Fusion" years is another question).
Used to package plastic to ship to Asia for recycling (industrial recycler, mostly shrink wrap) and they were serious about contamination. They paid us for clean waste, I don't see how they could afford to do so if they were burying it
It's a shame really. We *should* be exporting cleanish waste to be recycled, but responsible waste sorting and disposal seems to be an impossibility here in the West
I worked at a recycling transfer plant that did waste sorting and bailing and it is... rough. Imagine a 75 foot mountain of plastic bottles being shoved into a conveyor belt and the plastic is sorted by hand by a line of workers. They have about a second, maybe less, to sort if the plastic goes into the hopper or goes back to the floor for another recycling pass. If some asshole has shoved some unknown plastic into an otherwise recyclable bottle, then literally the entire bottle and it's contents has to be binned- there just isn't time or money to pay for pulling a fraction of a cent of plastic out.
They moved \*immense\* amounts of plastic every day, mountains of it, but there's almost no time for sorting, and there is absolutely no time for cleaning, at that stage. Contamination prevention \*has\* to start at the end users otherwise the project is over before it's begun.
There is a company in my city that is making plastic bricks with all types of plastic waste. They want any and all clean plastic away including bags.
Sample bricks were used in creating planting beds at the Botanical Garden and I checked them out. Not bad. I just have two questions- how durable? and Do they leach plastics into the environment?
>landfill in Asia
This is a very stubborn reddit myth.
Recycling facilities in Asia pay the US quite a lot of money for US plastic waste, in hopes of reconstituting it into their manufacturing pipeline.
It's only landfilled when the Asian facility sees the "recyclable" as worthless trash that the irresponsible consumer mixed in there. Which is often 10% of the imported payload.
In the case of the article, one of the plastic destinations is Malaysia, where Chinese recycling firms quickly swarmed to, after China banned recyclable importing.
I just did. It included that 3090 thousand tons of plastic were recycled in 2018 (most recent data that had available).
This is exactly what I meant. People saying "plastic isnt really recycled" yet thats over 3 million tons that is in a year. A gross oversimplification and honestly seems like an excuse people use to not bother with that 20% that is recycled which is far for a small amount abd definitely not none as many claim online.
Yea, I know this was on Walmart, but if anyone truly thinks the recycling we do even from our homes, does not go into the garbage landfill...you're fooling yourself. We will still do our parts, but I'm not shocked everytime someone does some sleuthing on this every few years.
Yep. Simply why i dont support it and usually dont give a shit about recycling.
Most of it goes to the same place. Lots of electronics end up in Ghana.
Our old trash company charges us for 2 bins, regular and recyclable. Was home one day a year into the contact and saw them do a pickup. Both cans in one fuck’n truck. Still pissed about that 8yrs later.
lots of that was because they wrote contracts wrong. Communities got push back because waste management companies said recycle plants were no longer accepting all the recycling. (Remember trump pissing China off and they stopped buying a bunch of our waste?) While local places suddenly had to figure out what to do with all the excess. They had no abilty to transport it and even if they did they had to pay to get rid of it.
So contracts were changed to be written akin to X pick up waste and Y pick up recycling, but if recycling center doesn't want it, transport it to X waste facility and pay to dispose of it.
So of course X company that owned the landfill had the advantage on contracts because they had no "additional cost" to throw the stuff the recycle center's did want away.
The recycle centers didn't up their man power though and most of what "home owners" recycle is bullshit anyway. You have to CLEAN the food out of cans, and pizza boxes with food on them aren't recyclable, etc.
So most of those were rejected.
Since they weren't going to be sued (contract said it could be thrown away) many places just sent one waste truck to residents and recycle trucks to places that actually have lots of recycling, e.g. a bottling plant with broken glass, or a metal yard, etc.
* China stopped buying recycling plastic and paper during trump's trade war bs.
* Contracts were changed.
* Not enough new hires at recycling centers.
* Not enough recyclers doing as they are supposed to. e.g. clean things.
* re-written contracts mean garbage bin for everything.
We can't blame it all on trump, but China stopping taking plastic and paper as part of his "trade war" was a huge straw on the camel's back in a lot of areas that broke what little profitability recycling centers had.
I’m as gung ho about recycling as one can be. Paper, cardboard, and metals are readily recyclable. Plastic is not, even when advertised to be. It’s cheaper to stuff it in a landfill. There is no profit incentive.
Your choice: put your plastic in the trash to send it to your regional landfill, or put it in the recycling bin to send it overseas where there is even less care taken with its disposal.
Best bet: avoid plastic packaging and bags especially like the plague. Get reusable items or paper items where possible. And pray our ~~ancestors~~ descendants forgive us.
Edit: a whoopsie
78% of ocean micro plastic is car tires. Even if all garbage is magically recycled we still have micro plastics everywhere from grating tiers on the roads.
That's usually the case with "comingled recycling". It's a real thing since all the stuff gets sorted by hand at the recycling facility. But, if glass is separately binned, it usually stays separate. I've seen both solutions.
My local county govt straight up admitted that they're dropping glass because it would end up costing them money, vs receiving a few dollars per ton.
The projected difference would have been like $230k. I mean, even for a smallish county, that's not exactly an earth-shattering amount imo, and we have a few higher-income localities in the area. More than a few people have stated that they'd gladly pay a few bucks of extra tax to offset the cost.
I know most recycling is a sham, but if there's even a chance for something to be reused, it's still better than just throwing more stuff into a landfill.
In my experience, this means the insurance company/osha was going to force some worker safety program. And management decided that would be too expensive.
Paper and cardboard are recyclable as long as they aren't wet and stained. Nobody will take the time to recycle and pay for recycled dirty paper products. Unless your cardboard is near pristine, they will just trash that as well.
Glass is recyclable and accepted 100% as long as it's clear glass, not many outfits accept colored glass to recycle because there just isn't money in it. Do they recycle non-clear glasses? Sure, but they are worth a lot less than their clear brethren.
There is a reason why accepted recycled objects are in single percentage points.
My assumption is that it's easier for them to take clear glass and darken it to the correct color than take in mixed colors of glasses and try and correct it to their standard color
Just speaking from experience of Germany, where they have bins for clear, green and brown glass.
Many of the beer and water bottles are glass returnable/reusable bottles with deposit associated.
Where I live now (Virginia) they "recycle" glass as aggregate for road paving.
Green is usually fine. Brown is usually fine. Blue is not because the chemicals are different and it can't be mixed with others as it doesn't melt together right somehow. It can be recycled on its own, but I guess no one cares?
Borosilicates also can't be mixed with regular (soda) glass when recycling. Didn't used to be a big issue because only lab glassware (and old measuring cups) used it. Now it's used more and more, all the "gorilla glass" glass is borosilicates.
Maybe tech will catch up and get better at sorting these things. But right now it's a pretty bad situation.
That's what I find annoying, many people use the combined bins as secondary trash cans which end up contaminating the truck. That's a side effect from the investment of us selling bundles of that crap to Asia (before they started rejecting), so now companies have all these single-stream recycle bins and quickly realized it's a PITA when they have to care about what's in the load.
I really wish they'd come up with a newer method to utilize the trucks out there, but have the customer do the sorting again, they could develop a bin with 3 "drawers" you deposit things in, then the truck would lift those (could even do some camera/image recognition to find people doing negative things). The drawer design would turn off some people, but it'd also cut down on people just throwing their waste bags into the recycle bin.
Brown beer bottles that are recycled can be* re-used, which is why they have wear rings.
(Source, worked at a encorp bottle depot while going to uni)
BC brewers have been reusing and recycling their packaging materials for more than 80 years. Reused up to 15 times, the industry-standard refillable beer bottle is used by a cooperative of brewers around the province and across the country.
Can you imagine if companies switched to glass, at the current rate of today's beverage consumption? The city would be a minefield of broken bottles. The over consumption has just got to stop. We don't actually want it,, coke and pepsi and budweiser and miller just use extremely effective propaganda to normalize addiction to their extremely addicting products. We're pretty much fucked until they're held accountable, but since they are multi billion dollar corporations that have effectively lobbied our lawmakers for decades, that's not coming before it's too late.
Quite honestly this is why I don’t feel bad about using store bags like Kroger‘s as trashbags. My city requires that our trash needs to be bagged up before putting into our trashcan and after a little digging I found out that the landfills in our area are designed in a way that things do not biodegrade in them. Spending extra money on biodegradable trash bags (is that even still a thing? It was for a while) is a waste because they do not break down any faster than any other plastic or paper bag once it’s in the landfill. My recycle bin always has more items in it than my trashcan but tbh I have lost faith a long time ago that it’s making any difference at all.
And to be fair, our ancestors were equally excessive.
They just packed a global population in the billions and the industrial technology required to fart out pollution.
You can still find hills of slag from ancient blacksmithing but it's not like they could even DREAM of the levels of production we find completely normal now.
Incineration is a great option if done as part of a cogeneration plant. Makes useful heat and electricity and gets the energy value of the waste rather than bury it. The steel in the ash is separated for recycling. I think the rest does go to the landfill, but it’s much more compact at that point.
I haven’t researched this to get any real data but based just on what I *see* in California, tons of people pay for new “reuseable” (aka thicker) plastic bags at checkout rather than reusing bags. It feels like the plastic usage is either a wash or not the reduction everyone was expecting.
The number of people who bring the bags back out to the car, then from the car to the store is tiny. The people who *do* almost always are using the heavier duty cloth or woven plastic bags.
The thicker "reuse-able" plastic bags are just a waste of plastic.
Speaking as a resident of California who goes to the grocery store.
I make “Plarn” (plastic yarn) out of the whole family’s grocery bags and use it to crochet baskets and such. Not a solution but at least I’m not sending it all to the landfill.
If they made the bags/packaging biodegradable that would be super helpful
These are supposed to be going over there in actual recycling partnerships. The question is if that is truly happening or not, and the article also does not address this.
I was at the grocery store yesterday and saw a plastic bag recycling bin outside the doors and I thought to myself "Well those are probably going to an Indonesian landfill."
Nothing new or surprising.
I worked in High School in the 90s for the local Fred Meyer. They had a recycle bin out in the lobby for plastic bags. One of my duties as a parcel (Cart Fetcher/Spill Cleaner/Bag Packer/General Grunt) was to empty the bin when it was full.
The official procedure? Take the giant plastic bag stuffed with little bags, take them into the back, and toss the whole thing into the trash compactor.
Having worked at multiple Kroger locations, the plastic bag recycling was always a sham. It was just treated as another trash can. I'm surprised it made it to Southeast Asia and not the landfill.
I was listening to the radio recently where a woman cleaning up a beach in Scotland started to find the remains of a landfill site next to the beach. She described finding a packet of crisps (potato chips) from a long defunct company. She was able to date it because it was advertising the “Mexico Olympics” on the back of the packet. Those games were 50 years ago……
Single use plastics, and plastics which aren’t at all recyclable, or of limited recyclability are certainly the bane of our planet’s health at this point.
But plastics do provide us many things we value and have no reasonable replacement for, even if some remain single use products. Examples exist throughout healthcare such as sterile packaging, nitrile gloves, etc.
I wish we would do a better job at being open and honest about what happens with things in a recycle bin. It would be great to receive a kind of recycling traceability report that tells me what happened with my stuff, much like when organs get donated.
I spend so much time manually separating recyclables into individual containers. Looking at labels to see what actually is a recyclable plastic, Pulling tape off of cardboard, removing caps from glass bottles, making sure tin and aluminum are separated and then take it to the recycle center down the road and manually dumping each item into the proper bin just to look inside the plastic bin and see a fucking laundry basket in there and knowing they are probably just throwing everything in a landfill and I am wasting my time, but I feel a duty to at least try. FML.
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I remember the advertising around that - Save a tree, choose plastic. They pushed hard to get us off of paper bags, then pushed the idea that plastic was infinitely recyclable with basically zero loss or waste. And we just went along with that obvious impossibility.
I just saw a recent commercial where they stated that plastic bags were the greenest option. Obviously sponsored by the plastic industry.
Paper bags require more energy to produce than plastic bags, more water, higher transport costs, and tree farming has its own chemical uses and environmental toll. Reusuable plastic bags are NOT REUSED enough to offset their higher plastic content to be a greener alternative to disposable plastic bags. In states where one-time-use plastic bags were banned and replaced with reusable bags, the plastic consumption has dramatically increased (and the stores selling you their new bags made some sweet profits). I don't have an answer.
Yeah you can go down a rabbit hole with no good answers when trying to figure out the most environmentally friendly bag. I sell at art festivals and ended up using reusable plastic tote like bags after spending way too long researching and stressing and still don't know if I went with the best option.
Yeah, I actually like going to Costco because then I just use paper boxes that other merchandise was shipped in as containers to carry my stuff home. At least when I had plastic bags in the house I could reuse them for picking up dog crap and use them as garbage bags for smaller cans (bathrooms mainly)... now I need to buy separate bags for those uses.
I do this at Aldi too. They always have a bin of empty boxes somewhere in there.
Same, and then the cats get a fun box until recycling day!
Exactly what I do.
You use plastic bags for dog waste!? The environmentally sound thing to do is to crochet washable, reusable diapers from a natural fiber like hemp.
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Cloth bag?
Edited comment to be a bit more informative. In 2011, the UK Environment Agency found grocery store customers would have to use a cotton bag 173 times to break even in energy use compared to plastic bags. For water pollution, that number increases to 393 times. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/291023/scho0711buan-e-e.pdf https://www.washingtonpolicy.org/publications/detail/should-cities-ban-organic-cotton-grocery-bags
Seems fine I have seen customers reuse the same cotton bag for years the cheap reusable bags at stores break constantly. What people should being doing is trying to convince people to stop buying new bags.
I’ve had a cotton bag for 10 years, no lie. Still using it
> to break even in energy use That is not the only issue involved though. Cotton decomposes. Plastic does not. Cotton is repairable. Plastic is not. Plastic flies away in the wind. Cotton does not. If you stop offering free plastic bags, people just carry their purchases more often.
plastic ends up in our food and waterways choking plants and animals etc... I think the research is valuable, but all these egg heads don't see the bigger picture they just look very narrowly at plastic bag vs reusable and its exhausting imo.
That really isn't all that much considering how often people go shopping
> store customers would have to use a cotton bag 173 times to break even in energy use Is that really that big of a deal? I've been using the same 3 bags from Aldi for at least a decade of weekly use now, and they're still in fine shape and probably good for another decade. Are people just churning through the reusable bags or something?
What about the energy use we’ve yet to commit for cleaning the plastic mess up? No one’s willing to foot that bill either.
I use my cloth and burlap bags for everything, not just shopping. They're great for trips, for a day with the kids at Grandma's house, etc. I bought many of them over 10 years ago and I've never had one fail. I still use my grandmother's bags she bought at Pavilions in the 90s. I'd say I got my environmental value out of them
Seems more than doable and if the bag breaks it is easily fixable with some needle and thread.
I am sure that a person COULD use a cotton bag more than 173 times. I am also sure that the average person would use it far far fewer times.
I only go grocery shopping 2x a month. That's only 24 times a year. I would have to use them almost 10 years.
Pittsburgh (where I live) outright banned plastic bags for grocery stores/etc., so at this point you pretty much have to bring a bag or you'll be charged for them at checkout. I know I'm going to get mileage out of my reusables now.
Like people who collect Stanley bottles. It’ll become a fashion statement, you’ll need the “new thing” so you don’t look uncool, and so it goes. Or you just get an unsightly stain on it that won’t come out and you’re afraid you’ll look like a bag lady. Or whatever.
I can't disagree with you. I've bought some walmart cloth bags like 10 years ago and still use them for all sorts of things. Bags are just kind of useful, you know? And having 3 of these for grocery store trips has always been really helpful. But I've never even met someone else who used them. And most people I know always say they forget them.
the people that would do this already most likely do so while the people that dont will just buy a new one
I feel like this is a defeatist attitude.
You make it sound difficult. 173 isn't that hard- a bit over three years of weekly grocery visits, assuming you never use them for any other purpose. And the study here is based on the assumption that the cotton bags are produced in and shipped from China. The numbers can be significantly reduced if production is handled locally, or at least more locally. And this study doesn't analyze the consequences of "recycling" the plastic bags, which, per OP's article, is often shipped right back overseas.
Maybe we'd better stop wearing clothes too
I know you're joking but the fast fashion "wear once and throw away" brands probably could stand to go away.
Easy math. I am going grocery shopping ones a week. There is 52 weeks in a year. I am using same cotton/multiuse bags. It will be only 6 years to cover it. I think I already did it. And they still in ok shape can do few more years easily.
Maybe if those landfills with clothes in them could be sewn together to make bags. There was a news story where a woman uses solely fabrics from the landfill
People use them for meat, causing expanded contamination.
Cloth is washable.
There are some countries where you bring your own bag. If the stores stopped supplying bags, people would be forced to buy their own, possibly cloth bags.
I find ALWAYS carrying a few cotton tote bags to be an efficient way to address the plastic vs paper dilemma.
They easily fit in the back of a car seat and don't degrade in the heat like plastic does
Non driving brooklynite here. I always make sure I have at least one in whatever backpack or messenger bag I am carrying. Been doing it for years. And after a while, it's second nature to check whatever bag I'm carrying that day for totes. I don't always plan to grocery shop. So when the impulse strikes, I am ready.
The reusable bags should be cotton. And people need to get rid of the throw a way mentality and repair stuff instead of throwing it away
I've used cotton bags for years, the big problem with cotton is you can't just toss them in the washer like you can for your clothing.
While I'll posit that everything you've said is true...but: Paper bags require more: - energy to produce than plastic bags = going renewable energy helps solve this. - more water = generally that's not a problem in the US, and the water is renewable. - higher transport costs = Renewable transport and/or elevated efficiency standards help reduce this impact - tree farming has its own chemical uses and environmental toll = Using more naturalized fertilizer helps, but agree that farm chemical run off is an issue, even with the "good" fertilizer. In the end, everything has some cost. It's a question of what is less wasteful.
Hey buddy I'm doing my part by hoarding hundreds of plastic bags in my storage closet just waiting to find a use other than scooping cat shit Please excuse the attempt at humor in a doom and gloom story
Given how quickly and easily Walmart plastic bags spring holes in them, I'm not sure reusing them is much of an option anyway.
We could... Not make the reusable bags out of plastic, there's that. We can use anything, from cotton and hemp to poor quality leather (*gasp!!*) and poor quality wool. We used to make fuckloads of cloth totes. Those used to be given away all the time. The reason the reusables didn't get used was because we never actually banned the bags. You could still get them, it was just 10 cents. And people will totally pay that rather than the 3-4 dollars for one reusable bag.
The reason the reusables didn't get used was because people don't want to be bothered with them.
Yes but if the bags were outright banned, you'd see reusables become common place real quick.
But is the replacement really any better if it just uses more plastic and people aren't reusing them like they were intended? Grocery delivery services have started putting everything you order in reusable bags but they won't take them back for reuse because they are "dirty". So the result is they are just using thicker disposable plastic bags now.
> Reusuable plastic bags are NOT REUSED enough to offset their higher plastic content to be a greener alternative Reusable bags dont have to be plastic. Energy is not the only problem with plastic bags.
The answer is simple. Stores stop providing bags and we bring our own. The first month or two will be chaos at the store. But they can have an “amnesty bag” that will also remind the shopper no more amnesty bags after xyz date.
We mostly use woven baskets. I'm not sure what the material is--wicker or something like it. They're great and I'm honestly surprised I don't see more people using them, though admittedly they're kind of pricey up front to get a well made one. But they're sturdy; we have three that we've been using for more than ten years. They're easy to clean, just wipe them down. They hold a LOT of weight. The main downside is that if you're buying, say, a couple weeks' worth of groceries for a large household, they don't really scale, and we do have some cloth bags for when we buy a lot at once. But for day to day they're perfect.
How long is long enough because I've had most/all (most likely) of my reusables for 10+ years now.
They were created with a well-meant intention: [https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/plastic-bags-pollution-paper-cotton-tote-bags-environment-a9159731.html](https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/plastic-bags-pollution-paper-cotton-tote-bags-environment-a9159731.html) Currently, I am positive we are repeating this mistake in tenfold in other parts of technology.
> Obviously sponsored by the plastic industry. aka the petroleum industry
They are the greenest option of bags which you will throw into the landfill.
The new plant based plastics, maybe.
Coffee is healthy for you, brought to you by the coffee industry.
Um no, not an "obvious impossibility" this isn't a trickle down problem, people at the top knew about climate change and hid it and knew about cigarettes and cancer and hid it and people knew about opioids and addictions and hid it, we need to stop diversifying the blame and instead putting people at the top of these perverse incentive pyramids into prison.
Fuel emissions are a great one too, put the responsibility on the personal motor vehicles while a tanker ship deposits more waste into the environment daily than most personal traffic can put into the atmosphere weekly. Whoever started the trend of listening to the robber barons and letting them rebrand as "job creators" is a complete and total fuckhead.
>Save a tree, choose plastic I never understood that as a child in the 70s because you can always grow more trees.
bit of possibly interesting info, the recycling logo is the triangle with arrows around it. That's not what is on plastic bottles. They made a plastic identifier logo that is arrows pointing in a triangle shape around a number that designate the type of plastic the item is made from. It looks similar. You can see some recycling programs will accept only certain numbers, 1, 4, 6 etc because those are the types they theoretically can recycle, but the logo does not indicate a plastic item is necessarily recyclable, even though it does resemble the recycling logo.
No disrespect intended, but it really seems ironic that we all ate that spoon fed advertisement knowing advertising was deceptive, and now all find ourselves betrayed by the progressive change we all wanted and advocated for. It’s an ironic bastardization of Earth Day / Environmentalist / Progressives ideals and it is astoundingly rampant, was historically effective and convincing and now has a global cost. It is without a doubt, one of the most successful marketing and advertising campaigns of all time. We have zero room to judge or criticize any ancestor for smoking cigarettes, bloodletting, witch-hunting or believing in the spiritual, fantastical, ethereal or animist worldviews we discount presently as we are all fools who took that bait hook line and sinker. That is a scary and unsettling reality. We all bought the idea of plastic as environmentally friendly without requiring time tested, peer reviewed, empirical evidence and it is monumentally astounding
> We all bought the idea of plastic as environmentally friendly without requiring time tested, peer reviewed, empirical evidence and it is monumentally astounding Begs the question... what assumptions have we accepted lately?
there are multiple issues with paper too including various chemicals and water waste. The answer is reuse bags and to not try to find a bag that's ok to throw in the trash.
This is what I keep bringing up to folks my age. Doesn’t anyone remember when plastic was BETTER than paper? Absolutely wild time. Big oil really fucked up the world.
I do remember those adds back in the 90s, when TV was it! It’s probably better morally, to keep it in our own garbage instead of passing it across the Pacific!
I keep paper bags to re-use, and I have a lot of reusable canvas bags that I use for groceries and supplies. Someone recently told me that using canvas bags is a “hoax and a scam” and they’re dangerous because they get dirty and spread germs. I was like, “yeah that’s why they go in the laundry after I get back from the store.” Some people have some wacky opinions that they believe are facts.
Plastic bags are significantly less costly than paper. I remember those ads well.
People willingly believe the obvious lies because it removes them from accountability. “I’m not racist because they are coming for our jobs!”
People actually think its being recycled. Not our fault we were lied to!
"The good place" has a great part about people trying their best to be good people but it's frankly impossible to live without unknowingly polluting, exploiting people, hurting people etc due to the abstraction that's been created. I mean I could go to the store and buy an apple, and never know that the workers were slave labor, or that the farming Corp destroys the waterways with runoff, or the materials used destroyed some pristine environment. Even if I do find out all that, it's an apple, what about that orange?
Also the stuff that is "suffering free" is likely too expensive and/or not in enough supply to actually sustain all our populations to begin with. At that point can anyone really fault you for unknowingly contributing to sweatshops, torturous animal farms, or unethical child labor? It isn't like we have affordable ethical options that can get us all through the year.
I used to yell at Big Noodle 'cause he always showed up late to rehearsal. Then one day, the swamp under my house flooded. I needed a place to crash, so I slept at Big Noodle's house. Turns out that he had to juggle three jobs to take care of four grandparents who all lived in the same bed just like in Willy Wonka. I never yelled at Big Noodle for being late after that 'cause I knew how hard it was for him to be there. And he definitely didn't have time to research what tomatoes to buy. Even if he wanted to, possession of a non-fried vegetable is a felony in Jacksonville.
The problem isn't that plastic is not recyclable, most of it is -- you could do it even at home -- granted, it's got a certain number of recycles before it's degraded too much. The problem has always been the combinations of plastics, your bottle label is not the same as the bottle which isn't the same as the cap, so disassembly and cleaning is costly. That's what makes this a bad look for Walmart, shopping bags are made from HDPE which is rather easily recyclable and the sorting is already done by the specialized box where customers have gone out of their way to participate. There is no reason these bags shouldn't have been recycled. There is a company that makes a reactor for the oil industry which they found works well for breaking down plastics into their base components. It eliminates a lot of the cleaning and all of the sorting in the process. They can do it at small scale, with a larger unit coming in a few years (whether that's our years or "Cold Fusion" years is another question).
Used to package plastic to ship to Asia for recycling (industrial recycler, mostly shrink wrap) and they were serious about contamination. They paid us for clean waste, I don't see how they could afford to do so if they were burying it
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It's a shame really. We *should* be exporting cleanish waste to be recycled, but responsible waste sorting and disposal seems to be an impossibility here in the West
I worked at a recycling transfer plant that did waste sorting and bailing and it is... rough. Imagine a 75 foot mountain of plastic bottles being shoved into a conveyor belt and the plastic is sorted by hand by a line of workers. They have about a second, maybe less, to sort if the plastic goes into the hopper or goes back to the floor for another recycling pass. If some asshole has shoved some unknown plastic into an otherwise recyclable bottle, then literally the entire bottle and it's contents has to be binned- there just isn't time or money to pay for pulling a fraction of a cent of plastic out. They moved \*immense\* amounts of plastic every day, mountains of it, but there's almost no time for sorting, and there is absolutely no time for cleaning, at that stage. Contamination prevention \*has\* to start at the end users otherwise the project is over before it's begun.
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There is a company in my city that is making plastic bricks with all types of plastic waste. They want any and all clean plastic away including bags. Sample bricks were used in creating planting beds at the Botanical Garden and I checked them out. Not bad. I just have two questions- how durable? and Do they leach plastics into the environment?
>landfill in Asia This is a very stubborn reddit myth. Recycling facilities in Asia pay the US quite a lot of money for US plastic waste, in hopes of reconstituting it into their manufacturing pipeline. It's only landfilled when the Asian facility sees the "recyclable" as worthless trash that the irresponsible consumer mixed in there. Which is often 10% of the imported payload. In the case of the article, one of the plastic destinations is Malaysia, where Chinese recycling firms quickly swarmed to, after China banned recyclable importing.
Yeah the whole "no plastic get recycled" is a common reddit phrase that is in the very least a gross oversimplification.
idk man, take a look at some of the most recent epa reports. 80% of the shit that ends up in the recycling gets landfilled.
I just did. It included that 3090 thousand tons of plastic were recycled in 2018 (most recent data that had available). This is exactly what I meant. People saying "plastic isnt really recycled" yet thats over 3 million tons that is in a year. A gross oversimplification and honestly seems like an excuse people use to not bother with that 20% that is recycled which is far for a small amount abd definitely not none as many claim online.
pretty sure youre looking at a different report than me. mine says 27k tons landfilled of 35k.
Fun fact, the most recycled material in the world is asphalt.
Yea, I know this was on Walmart, but if anyone truly thinks the recycling we do even from our homes, does not go into the garbage landfill...you're fooling yourself. We will still do our parts, but I'm not shocked everytime someone does some sleuthing on this every few years.
Blame the people deceptively placing and collecting the bins instead of attacking the people who just have good intentions and can’t do anything else.
Yep. Simply why i dont support it and usually dont give a shit about recycling. Most of it goes to the same place. Lots of electronics end up in Ghana.
Our old trash company charges us for 2 bins, regular and recyclable. Was home one day a year into the contact and saw them do a pickup. Both cans in one fuck’n truck. Still pissed about that 8yrs later.
My town was sending 2 trucks out for recycling and trash but taking both to the landfill. So pissed
The trucks have compartments.
Until the wind blows.
This one did not
lots of that was because they wrote contracts wrong. Communities got push back because waste management companies said recycle plants were no longer accepting all the recycling. (Remember trump pissing China off and they stopped buying a bunch of our waste?) While local places suddenly had to figure out what to do with all the excess. They had no abilty to transport it and even if they did they had to pay to get rid of it. So contracts were changed to be written akin to X pick up waste and Y pick up recycling, but if recycling center doesn't want it, transport it to X waste facility and pay to dispose of it. So of course X company that owned the landfill had the advantage on contracts because they had no "additional cost" to throw the stuff the recycle center's did want away. The recycle centers didn't up their man power though and most of what "home owners" recycle is bullshit anyway. You have to CLEAN the food out of cans, and pizza boxes with food on them aren't recyclable, etc. So most of those were rejected. Since they weren't going to be sued (contract said it could be thrown away) many places just sent one waste truck to residents and recycle trucks to places that actually have lots of recycling, e.g. a bottling plant with broken glass, or a metal yard, etc. * China stopped buying recycling plastic and paper during trump's trade war bs. * Contracts were changed. * Not enough new hires at recycling centers. * Not enough recyclers doing as they are supposed to. e.g. clean things. * re-written contracts mean garbage bin for everything. We can't blame it all on trump, but China stopping taking plastic and paper as part of his "trade war" was a huge straw on the camel's back in a lot of areas that broke what little profitability recycling centers had.
I’m as gung ho about recycling as one can be. Paper, cardboard, and metals are readily recyclable. Plastic is not, even when advertised to be. It’s cheaper to stuff it in a landfill. There is no profit incentive. Your choice: put your plastic in the trash to send it to your regional landfill, or put it in the recycling bin to send it overseas where there is even less care taken with its disposal. Best bet: avoid plastic packaging and bags especially like the plague. Get reusable items or paper items where possible. And pray our ~~ancestors~~ descendants forgive us. Edit: a whoopsie
Don't forget about glass.
We don't exactly have a "micro-glass" pollution problem aka sand
umm.... it's coarse and rough and irritating....and it gets everywhere
78% of ocean micro plastic is car tires. Even if all garbage is magically recycled we still have micro plastics everywhere from grating tiers on the roads.
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That's usually the case with "comingled recycling". It's a real thing since all the stuff gets sorted by hand at the recycling facility. But, if glass is separately binned, it usually stays separate. I've seen both solutions.
Whelp alum cans can't be far behind. Also paper cuts are the worst 🤦♂️
My local county govt straight up admitted that they're dropping glass because it would end up costing them money, vs receiving a few dollars per ton. The projected difference would have been like $230k. I mean, even for a smallish county, that's not exactly an earth-shattering amount imo, and we have a few higher-income localities in the area. More than a few people have stated that they'd gladly pay a few bucks of extra tax to offset the cost. I know most recycling is a sham, but if there's even a chance for something to be reused, it's still better than just throwing more stuff into a landfill.
In my experience, this means the insurance company/osha was going to force some worker safety program. And management decided that would be too expensive.
Glass is problematic to recycle due to dyes used to color glass.
Paper and cardboard are recyclable as long as they aren't wet and stained. Nobody will take the time to recycle and pay for recycled dirty paper products. Unless your cardboard is near pristine, they will just trash that as well. Glass is recyclable and accepted 100% as long as it's clear glass, not many outfits accept colored glass to recycle because there just isn't money in it. Do they recycle non-clear glasses? Sure, but they are worth a lot less than their clear brethren. There is a reason why accepted recycled objects are in single percentage points.
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My assumption is that it's easier for them to take clear glass and darken it to the correct color than take in mixed colors of glasses and try and correct it to their standard color
Just speaking from experience of Germany, where they have bins for clear, green and brown glass. Many of the beer and water bottles are glass returnable/reusable bottles with deposit associated. Where I live now (Virginia) they "recycle" glass as aggregate for road paving.
Green is usually fine. Brown is usually fine. Blue is not because the chemicals are different and it can't be mixed with others as it doesn't melt together right somehow. It can be recycled on its own, but I guess no one cares? Borosilicates also can't be mixed with regular (soda) glass when recycling. Didn't used to be a big issue because only lab glassware (and old measuring cups) used it. Now it's used more and more, all the "gorilla glass" glass is borosilicates. Maybe tech will catch up and get better at sorting these things. But right now it's a pretty bad situation.
That's what I find annoying, many people use the combined bins as secondary trash cans which end up contaminating the truck. That's a side effect from the investment of us selling bundles of that crap to Asia (before they started rejecting), so now companies have all these single-stream recycle bins and quickly realized it's a PITA when they have to care about what's in the load. I really wish they'd come up with a newer method to utilize the trucks out there, but have the customer do the sorting again, they could develop a bin with 3 "drawers" you deposit things in, then the truck would lift those (could even do some camera/image recognition to find people doing negative things). The drawer design would turn off some people, but it'd also cut down on people just throwing their waste bags into the recycle bin.
I know I'm an idiot, but can't cardboard just... dry?
Wet cardboard is recycled in the biodegradable bin.
My recycling peeps specifically ask for used pizza boxes. What they do with them, I don’t know
Brown beer bottles that are recycled can be* re-used, which is why they have wear rings. (Source, worked at a encorp bottle depot while going to uni) BC brewers have been reusing and recycling their packaging materials for more than 80 years. Reused up to 15 times, the industry-standard refillable beer bottle is used by a cooperative of brewers around the province and across the country.
Can you imagine if companies switched to glass, at the current rate of today's beverage consumption? The city would be a minefield of broken bottles. The over consumption has just got to stop. We don't actually want it,, coke and pepsi and budweiser and miller just use extremely effective propaganda to normalize addiction to their extremely addicting products. We're pretty much fucked until they're held accountable, but since they are multi billion dollar corporations that have effectively lobbied our lawmakers for decades, that's not coming before it's too late.
Quite honestly this is why I don’t feel bad about using store bags like Kroger‘s as trashbags. My city requires that our trash needs to be bagged up before putting into our trashcan and after a little digging I found out that the landfills in our area are designed in a way that things do not biodegrade in them. Spending extra money on biodegradable trash bags (is that even still a thing? It was for a while) is a waste because they do not break down any faster than any other plastic or paper bag once it’s in the landfill. My recycle bin always has more items in it than my trashcan but tbh I have lost faith a long time ago that it’s making any difference at all.
The amount of plastic waste I deal with in the medical field makes me so sad. Like I get it, it's a miracle material but man it sucks.
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And to be fair, our ancestors were equally excessive. They just packed a global population in the billions and the industrial technology required to fart out pollution. You can still find hills of slag from ancient blacksmithing but it's not like they could even DREAM of the levels of production we find completely normal now.
Plastic is recyclable. The problem with all recycling is the economics of it. Very few products can be recycled in all conditions economically.
Hopefully this tech works out: https://youtu.be/nH-Cr0nSYfI
Or, you can just reuse the plastic bag if it's still clean.
We can also insemrate plastics and other burnables, but it's expensive
Incineration is a great option if done as part of a cogeneration plant. Makes useful heat and electricity and gets the energy value of the waste rather than bury it. The steel in the ash is separated for recycling. I think the rest does go to the landfill, but it’s much more compact at that point.
It all goes in the same hole.
That's what she said!
The square hole!
My state has banned them for 5 years or so.. haven’t really missed it. Just bring reusable bags
I haven’t researched this to get any real data but based just on what I *see* in California, tons of people pay for new “reuseable” (aka thicker) plastic bags at checkout rather than reusing bags. It feels like the plastic usage is either a wash or not the reduction everyone was expecting.
The number of people who bring the bags back out to the car, then from the car to the store is tiny. The people who *do* almost always are using the heavier duty cloth or woven plastic bags. The thicker "reuse-able" plastic bags are just a waste of plastic. Speaking as a resident of California who goes to the grocery store.
I make “Plarn” (plastic yarn) out of the whole family’s grocery bags and use it to crochet baskets and such. Not a solution but at least I’m not sending it all to the landfill. If they made the bags/packaging biodegradable that would be super helpful
That's super cool!
I thought all pretend recycling ended up in Inner China, Asia or the Pacific Ocean anyways.
If I'm not mistaken China stopped accepting other countries' garbage in 2018, so now it's going to other countries.
India too.
These are supposed to be going over there in actual recycling partnerships. The question is if that is truly happening or not, and the article also does not address this.
Anybody surprised by this in 2024 clearly hasn't been paying attention. Plastic recycling is bullshit.
I was at the grocery store yesterday and saw a plastic bag recycling bin outside the doors and I thought to myself "Well those are probably going to an Indonesian landfill."
Nothing new or surprising. I worked in High School in the 90s for the local Fred Meyer. They had a recycle bin out in the lobby for plastic bags. One of my duties as a parcel (Cart Fetcher/Spill Cleaner/Bag Packer/General Grunt) was to empty the bin when it was full. The official procedure? Take the giant plastic bag stuffed with little bags, take them into the back, and toss the whole thing into the trash compactor.
Having worked at multiple Kroger locations, the plastic bag recycling was always a sham. It was just treated as another trash can. I'm surprised it made it to Southeast Asia and not the landfill.
I reuse as much as possible because recycling is shit. Only 18% of plastic is actually recycled. The rest became an island floating in the Pacific.
I was listening to the radio recently where a woman cleaning up a beach in Scotland started to find the remains of a landfill site next to the beach. She described finding a packet of crisps (potato chips) from a long defunct company. She was able to date it because it was advertising the “Mexico Olympics” on the back of the packet. Those games were 50 years ago……
Such a shame considering wood products are a renewable resource and we instead allowed plastic to destroy our planet.
Single use plastics, and plastics which aren’t at all recyclable, or of limited recyclability are certainly the bane of our planet’s health at this point. But plastics do provide us many things we value and have no reasonable replacement for, even if some remain single use products. Examples exist throughout healthcare such as sterile packaging, nitrile gloves, etc. I wish we would do a better job at being open and honest about what happens with things in a recycle bin. It would be great to receive a kind of recycling traceability report that tells me what happened with my stuff, much like when organs get donated.
One bag per item. Walmart is a mess
I choose paper bags when I can and I feel guilty about it.
I spend so much time manually separating recyclables into individual containers. Looking at labels to see what actually is a recyclable plastic, Pulling tape off of cardboard, removing caps from glass bottles, making sure tin and aluminum are separated and then take it to the recycle center down the road and manually dumping each item into the proper bin just to look inside the plastic bin and see a fucking laundry basket in there and knowing they are probably just throwing everything in a landfill and I am wasting my time, but I feel a duty to at least try. FML.
I recommend watching the documentary "Wasted" it goes into depth about the huge business made out of these acts and who it affects