0990: “Plastic Bags”

[drazen]

I think you have a problem with germs.

Others here have pointed out that mixing, say, meat and bread can be bad, if the packaging on the meat tears. It's also been demonstrated that if the reusable bags aren't properly cared for (which most people don't do, due to some combination of laziness and business), they are giant germ factories. Not so with single-use plastic (which I then re-use at home for mini-trash cans, bagging up loose recyclables, etc.)

I don't buy much when I go to the store, so I'd find lugging around reusables a pain -- I usually just use a hand-basket (I buy most of my heavy stuff in bulk separately from my weekly grocery run), so then I'm either stuck carrying a basket and a bunch of bags (since I usually need 2-3 bags to separate things) or having to use a cart (significantly slower to navigate the store) so there's enough carrying space to comfortably and conveniently fit both the bags and my groceries.

If it's 100+ trips to balance out, I only really go once a week with a few extra trips mixed in. And since I'd need 3 such bags, that's 300+ trips or about 5 years which hardly seems worth it to me for that level of inconvenience. Better solution? Bag in reusables, but be able to bring them back to a drop-off point at the front of the store like the can/coin machines. You drop the bags back off, the machine weighs them, you get a coupon for $0.25 off per bag returned (or whatever the rate would be) and the store then collects the bags, washes and decontaminates them in bulk, and the cycle begins anew. The obvious problem here is people overusing bags to get a bigger discount, but I guess you could only do this with the non-self-checkout lines where the store is bagging. Or you could make it something small like a penny per bag if you scan your store rewards card (although then people might hoard 200 bags).

[AvatarIII]

I think you have a problem with germs.

Others here have pointed out that mixing, say, meat and bread can be bad, if the packaging on the meat tears. It's also been demonstrated that if the reusable bags aren't properly cared for (which most people don't do, due to some combination of laziness and business), they are giant germ factories. Not so with single-use plastic (which I then re-use at home for mini-trash cans, bagging up loose recyclables, etc.)

I wasn't contradicting or refuting your point, reusable bags can certainly be germ factories, but you've got to admit, your post did sound a little germ-phobic, 3 mentions of sources of germs in as many short paragraphs, and none of those 3 instances were anything to do with keeping raw meat separate from other foods anyway, which is something any sane and intelligent person would do.

[Eebster the Great]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say everything is too fucking complicated. Not everything to do with this topic, just everything. I'm a little drunk but nevertheless, the point I make is solid: it isn't usually reasonable to worry about the minute details about every point that relates to public health.

At some point, people have to realize that generalizations are not always problematic. I admit cross-contamination of raw meat and other goods you don't intend to cook poses a plausible problem, even if there may be other even more plausible problems. This had even occurred to me when I made my last post but somehow it didn't really . . . "click". Anyway separating raw meat from other items makes sense unless there is some good reason not to. (Actually, even cooked meat poses some degree of risk if it is kept in the store unfrozen for long enough.)

E: Yes, I edit my spelling, even if there is no clear reason why doing so is necessary.

[scarletmanuka]

I read on the homepage for The Swedish Plastics and Chemicals Federation that a standard plastic bag weighing less than 30 g could carry 20 kg. Are the American bags of lesser quality or is he buying some heavy stuff? Maybe all circles are kettlebells without handles?

Australian bags, like the US ones, are much lighter and flimsier than this. I've had them break on 4kg loads before (though that's unusual).

[faunablues]

It's not even so much about the weight they can hold, but the thinness of the plastic means that anything with an edge will just break through (like a container of tofu or even a box of cotton swabs, if there's enough other weight in there). If it's going to be over 5lb, I'd probably double-bag the plastic (... which takes away the point of not just putting things in separate bags, unless it's a single heavy item).

And, +1 on the issues with reusable bags - they do take more time to work with. The problem is that you just get so used to the bags your store stocks (which is not a bad thing really; you can work with them very quickly), but then when you get a reusable bag it takes longer because it's not exactly the same, and they often to not stay open very well until there are already items in there. Paper bags are shaped to stay open, and the plastic ones are usually on the rack that holds them open. Reusables just tend to fold up again, and often have handles in awkward places when packing. I think it's a result of the fact that bags are now marketed to the customer rather than the store, so they're more about feeling comfortable, looking nice, and looking durable rather than being easy to work with or pack.

And though many complain about the excessive use of plastic and something like one item per bag, I'd always ask when using plastic how full they want it (people who asked for paper usually want them as full as possible). I'd say about half don't want them full, a quarter want you to actually pack them, and the last quarter actually wants the tiny amount of items per bag (hey, maybe they have use for the bags).

For me, I do have reusables - not many - that I usually forget. But I have a use for the plastic (cat litter!) and paper (recyclables). Also, I have a reusable that's the typical recycled-plastic stuff sold in stores for a dollar these days, and it has started getting holes in it! And when I've used it, it's not even packed that heavy.

[tups]

In Belgium, as in the rest of the EU, for the past few years, plastic bags have had an environmental tax on them, so the supermarket chains collectively decided they wouldn't offer them anymore. Overnight the whole plastic bag problem simply disappeared as by magic. Sure, you can buy a new reusable shopping bag for half a euro every time you go shopping, but I rather carry my items to the car in the trolley, or get a waste cardboard box from the stack, which they conveniently place at the exit of the supermarket. An entire kitchen cabinet that used to be filled with plastic shopping bags is now empty, and I haven't seen any of those abominable flimsy plastic bags literally in years.
Trash goes out in the community-authorised trashbags, and since we separate our waste (bags for organic waste are cheap, as are bags for plastic and metal; whereas bags for the remaining fraction are friggin' expensive).

I think it all works pretty well, and the plastic waste problem (plastic bags blowing aroung in the streets, anyone ?) simply disappeared from one day to the next.

Then I went to live in the US for a while - can you spell C-U-L-T-U-R-E S-H-O-C-K ? (Do you want me to double-bag that for you ?)

[Mirkwood]

In Belgium, as in the rest of the EU, for the past few years, plastic bags have had an environmental tax on them, so the supermarket chains collectively decided they wouldn't offer them anymore. Overnight the whole plastic bag problem simply disappeared as by magic. Sure, you can buy a new reusable shopping bag for half a euro every time you go shopping, but I rather carry my items to the car in the trolley, or get a waste cardboard box from the stack, which they conveniently place at the exit of the supermarket. An entire kitchen cabinet that used to be filled with plastic shopping bags is now empty, and I haven't seen any of those abominable flimsy plastic bags literally in years.
Trash goes out in the community-authorised trashbags, and since we separate our waste (bags for organic waste are cheap, as are bags for plastic and metal; whereas bags for the remaining fraction are friggin' expensive).

I think it all works pretty well, and the plastic waste problem (plastic bags blowing aroung in the streets, anyone ?) simply disappeared from one day to the next.

Then I went to live in the US for a while - can you spell C-U-L-T-U-R-E S-H-O-C-K ? (Do you want me to double-bag that for you ?)

As an American, I've got to say the culture shock works both ways. The idea of having to use officially approved garbage bags with artificially set prices seems like something you might find in a parody of a nanny state. And that's coming from someone who actually likes reusable bags.

[pennypyro]

i am a cashier and i do not do this...i try to conserve bags if i can.

[project2051]

As an American, I've got to say the culture shock works both ways. The idea of having to use officially approved garbage bags with artificially set prices seems like something you might find in a parody of a nanny state. And that's coming from someone who actually likes reusable bags.

Actually that is the way it is where I live (U.S.), for garbage service there is a commercial company, which you pay a monthly fee for a small dumpster cart, or you can get the same from the city. Which you pay the same whether you put out any garbage or not. Or you can buy a roll of the city garbage bags, which you fill and put out on the curb to be picked up. If you don't put out any garbage for a week or two your not paying for your nonexistent garbage pick up. I personally only throw out a 13 gal. bag worth sometimes once a week, but more often once every two weeks. So buying the bags would be a lot cheaper than the monthly fee. ( A 30gal. bin is $3 a week, and the bags around 20gal. are $1.50) I actually do neither, since I can just take mine to work and put it in the company dumpster.
Recyclables go in a bin that the city provides and empties weekly with no direct fee, because it's already added into your property taxes.

[OBloodyHell]

I live in Santa Monica where legislation has recently passed making it that you either have to bring your own bag or pay ten cents per paper bag they have to bag it in. (As you can probably guess, Santa Monica is chock full of extreme environmentalist-liberals.)

One reason I would never live in the Facio-Socialist Nation of Santa Monikkka.

"Reusable" bags are yet another retarded invention of Green idiots.

They utterly destroy the whole, smooth bagging process, which has gotten steadily more efficient and effective as time has passed.

Instead of a standard sized bag, open and readily available to the "bagee", we now have a differently sized bag (in some cases, multiple differently sized bags), which isn't automatically open, and which might or might not be sufficient to hold all the goods easily.

Stand in any supermarket -- you know how to tell which lines have someone with reusable bags in them?

They're the lines with 4 people waiting while the others only have 1 person waiting behind the "bagee".

I long ago encountered an excellent definition of what is an advance to civilization:

"Civilization advances by increasing the number of important things we can do without thinking about them."

You have to:
a) remember to bring them
b) have enough to carry all you bought
c) have them all ready, open, and available for the bagger the instant they are ready to start bagging your goods.

Now, how was that not a decrease in your ability to not think about this problem ahead of time?

Cars are an advance. Buses, except in some densely populated places, are not.
Plastic bags are an advance. Reusable bags are not.

Plastic bags waste that most valuable of all resources -- human time.

[SirMustapha]

Plastic bags waste that most valuable of all resources -- human time.

Yes. Those five minutes you waste on the supermarket surely are surely going to ruin the world, no doubt about it. Just imagine how much you could accomplish with that time!

[Webzter]

Instead of a standard sized bag [...] and which might or might not be sufficient to hold all the goods easily.

Where does one find these magical plastic bags that don't readily tear and are always open and ready to receive purchased goods? Generally, I encounter plastic bags that rip if you look at them funny and only open after wasting precious time getting them to not stick together. I have been held up in line multiple times at the self-checkout because the person at the checkout was fighting to get bags open. I've seen similar, but not as long, hold-ups with the bagger-staffed checkout lines.

Contrast that with Costco where they shuttle people through checkout lines amazingly fast and either pile the purchased items in an empty cart or use random cardboard boxes. Obviously, the best advance for civilization is to do away with bags altogether and simply use boxes, if anything at all.

edit: for anyone interested, Santa Monica's Environmental Impact Report is actually a pretty interesting read (prepared in advance of the ordinance)... http://www.smgov.net/uploadedFiles/Depa ... %20EIR.pdf

[Egwene]

Where does one find these magical plastic bags that don't readily tear and are always open and ready to receive purchased goods?

In Sweden!

In my home we use as many regular plastic bags as we take home from the store. We use them for trash, transporting dirty/messy stuff and guinea pig poop. This seems a bit better than buying reusable bags to carry home your trash bags in.
I live close to my store so I usually don't even need a bag. I can fit one and a half (average filled) american bag on my left arm (sadly I have yet to learn not to put the key in my left pocket, causing me trouble when I get home). When I shop for several days at once, I use a bag. One bag. The meat is in plastic, the cleaning supplies are airtight and the fruit and veggies have their own little flimsy bags so they won't get dirty in the cart or during checkout. I have never ever experienced weird taste combinations or food poisoning due to this so you don't need to worry anymore.

Now, how do I manage such a feat?
Since the stores charge 30 cents per bag, they can afford to make them bigger and more durable.
In the bottom I put brick-shaped heavy durable stuff, like milk and yoghurt. I can easily fit 6 liters (there goes one american bag allready). Ice cream usually goes here too.
Next comes heavy durable stuff in wichever order makes them fit best (I play tetris with my food). Eggs go here. those boxes can take more than you'd think.
Next comes heavy fragile, followed by light (and usually bulky) fragile.
Finally I squeeze anything thinner (and some things thicker, like the meat) than 2 inches down the sides. The bag doesn't break. The bag never breaks (unless you put a sharp knife in it, I did that once).
And the loaf of bread NEVER fits in the bag because of all the oranges. (Probably imported from Florida or Spain, thereby making me an enemy of the environment by default. But I just can't help it. Tey're so juicy!)

Oh, and most of the supermarkets (the swedish ones, LIDL for one is german) offers a way around the entire "waiting-in-line-to-get-your-things-scanned-and-put-them-in-another-container" - circus. They provide you with a handheld scanner, letting you pack your bag directly from the shelf! Then you check out, handing over the scanner and paying at a separate desk. They ask if everything went smooth, help you with any glitches and send you and your bag on your merry way. And if the self-scan-desk happens to be unmanned, you get to skip in line at an ordinary check-out. Of course, there are randomly selected check-ups, but you still get to skip in line.

[OBloodyHell]

Plastic bags waste that most valuable of all resources -- human time.

Yes. Those five minutes you waste on the supermarket surely are surely going to ruin the world, no doubt about it. Just imagine how much you could accomplish with that time!

I dunno -- how many times do you go shopping in your lifetime? And what else could you be doing with a "mere" five minutes of not just YOUR TIME, but mine and that of every poor shnook caught in line behind you, Mr. Snark?

You want to waste your time doing stupid things, by all means, more power to you. Just don't waste mine with your damnfoolishness.

Considering how MANY people go shopping each and every day, how many accumulated HUMAN LIFETIMES would be lost just in a single day of shopping?

A: Assuming we define a lifetime as 72 years, (5x) 20x24x365.25x72 == about 12.5 million trips. How many of those take place in America per day? Now extend it to the entire industrialized world that uses the American style shopping market? What's that? A billion and a half people?

Nawww... let's just blow it off with a flip handwave.

I sneer at your stinking handwave.

Where does one find these magical plastic bags that don't readily tear and are always open and ready to receive purchased goods? Generally, I encounter plastic bags that rip if you look at them funny and only open after wasting precious time getting them to not stick together. I have been held up in line multiple times at the self-checkout because the person at the checkout was fighting to get bags open. I've seen similar, but not as long, hold-ups with the bagger-staffed checkout lines.

LOL, what nation do you live in? What lame-ass shopping market do you use? The typical American shopping bag is sitting on a rack made specifically for it. It doesn't require any wrestling except to place the set of bags on the rack, and it really requires you be a congenital idiot to be unable to do that quickly (I know this -- I've occasionally done the job when there was no bagboy available, rather than forcing the cashier to do it... and sometimes that rack was out, because the cashier had her own and no reason to re-load the one for the bagboy)

These bags can handle, typically, the weight of not just one, not just two, but THREE two-liter bottles of soda, without breaking, not less than 19 times out of 20 -- I know, I always tell them "3 to a bag, single bag it", and they try to argue... You can't toss them around, but they do consistently hold that much weight readily, if the proper weight bags are being used by the store (it's categorically stupid to use lower-weight bags, because if you double bag constantly, you're not saving anything, except for the occasional idiot customer that demands everything be double bagged).

It IS true that sharp things WILL slice them open, and this IS adequate reason to double bag. Few things are that sharp in my experience. Perhaps one bag in 20, again, will fail due to this -- probably less.

[J Thomas]

Plastic bags waste that most valuable of all resources -- human time.

Yes. Those five minutes you waste on the supermarket surely are surely going to ruin the world, no doubt about it. Just imagine how much you could accomplish with that time!

I dunno -- how many times do you go shopping in your lifetime? And what else could you be doing with a "mere" five minutes of not just YOUR TIME, but mine and that of every poor shnook caught in line behind you, Mr. Snark?

You want to waste your time doing stupid things, by all means, more power to you. Just don't waste mine with your damnfoolishness.

Considering how MANY people go shopping each and every day, how many accumulated HUMAN LIFETIMES would be lost just in a single day of shopping?

A: Assuming we define a lifetime as 72 years, (5x) 20x24x365.25x72 == about 12.5 million trips. How many of those take place in America per day? Now extend it to the entire industrialized world that uses the American style shopping market? What's that? A billion and a half people?

OK, imagine for a moment that you aren't buying produce, the only thing there which is individualized and not a commodity. Why not order online, and let them deliver? You don't have to drive there and back. You don't have to wander through the aisles. You don't have to wait while your items are bagged. They do it all, as efficiently as they can. They collect 42 cans of pork and beans and distribute them to individual orders. Etc. They send the truck around to lots of homes, with a dispatcher who makes a stab at solving the traveling salesman problem. They choose packaging that works for them. All you have to do is take delivery. And the delivery truck could have an automated system that tells a website how far it is from your house and how many deliveries it has before yours.

Far, far more convenient. The only problem is you have to pay for that service. And also it would be a lot of trouble to show you realtime videos of the produce and let you choose, and you'd probably rather not take potluck.

But it's obviously so much easier and more convenient, and the price would come down if more people did it. Why do people waste their lives this way? Maybe it's built in. Maybe our instincts tell us we need to be out on the savannah foraging for food, and we don't feel satisfied without that experience.

Maybe online groceries should include a jungle adventure. You hunt through the jungle for your food. You find a can of asparagus and have to decide whether you want it. You find a beef carcass that could give you some tenderloin, but first you have to stare down the lion who's eating it. Perhaps it would take several shoppers working together to drive off the lion, the hyenas, and the vultures. Then you get your beef and perhaps choose to continue hunting together. If you get too impatient with the game you can opt out and just check things off menus and use the search function to find stuff. (Have you ever wasted shopping time looking for items when you weren't sure where they were on the shelf?) I'm not sure that would improve sales, but it's plausible it might.

[SirMustapha]

I dunno -- how many times do you go shopping in your lifetime?

Since I moved out of my mother's house, about three times a week on average, or so.

And what else could you be doing with a "mere" five minutes of not just YOUR TIME, but mine and that of every poor shnook caught in line behind you, Mr. Snark?

What I could do with your five minutes? Maybe laugh hysterically at your Internet-rage?

Considering how MANY people go shopping each and every day, how many accumulated HUMAN LIFETIMES would be lost just in a single day of shopping?

What's the point in thinking cumulatively if time cannot be transferred from person to person? 1000 people wasting one minute of their lives is completely, abhorrently different from one person wasting 1000 minutes of his life. I feel miserable just pointing this out.

A: Assuming we define a lifetime as 72 years, (5x) 20x24x365.25x72 == about 12.5 million trips.

Wait, what does that calculation even mean? 72 years times 365 days times 24 hours times 20... what? times 5... what? between parentheses? What?

I sneer at your stinking handwave.[/b]

Amazing.

Now I understand why people say my complaining and criticism is boring.

[Webzter]

I dunno -- how many times do you go shopping in your lifetime? And what else could you be doing with a "mere" five minutes of not just YOUR TIME, but mine and that of every poor shnook caught in line behind you, Mr. Snark?

I don't know about you, but I'm not stupid enough to shop when there's enough of a crowd to cause a line at the checkout.

Since I moved out of my mother's house, about three times a week on average, or so.

Good lord! Do you not realize how many valuable minutes of your life and the lives of those behind you in line that you're wasting by not optimizing your shopping list and only going once a week!?! The humanity! I calculate it at being virtually hundreds of... wait, where was I. Oh yeah, lots of wasted time and all that. You'll rue something or other one of these days.

[Eebster the Great]

I dunno -- how many times do you go shopping in your lifetime?

Since I moved out of my mother's house, about three times a week on average, or so.

And if you value your time at 10 dollars an hour, you probably waste a full ten bucks a week on shopping! If instead you consolidated to one time per week you could maybe waste just $5!! That's more than the cost of a Starbucks coffee!!! What a waste!!!!

[EpicanicusStrikes]

I dunno -- how many times do you go shopping in your lifetime?

Since I moved out of my mother's house, about three times a week on average, or so.

What an amazing coincidence. I have almost the exact same schedule with your mom since you moved out of her house, as well. Only we don't call it shopping...

[Egwene]

I wonder exacly how much money (if we assume, as everybody seems to do, that time is money) I'm saving on a daily basis by not having facebook.

[J Thomas]

Considering how MANY people go shopping each and every day, how many accumulated HUMAN LIFETIMES would be lost just in a single day of shopping?

What's the point in thinking cumulatively if time cannot be transferred from person to person? 1000 people wasting one minute of their lives is completely, abhorrently different from one person wasting 1000 minutes of his life. I feel miserable just pointing this out.

Is it completely different? Maybe. If I get one dollar from a million different people, that's completely different from taking a million dollars from one person. Yes! Please send me your dollar right now.

A: Assuming we define a lifetime as 72 years, (5x) 20x24x365.25x72 == about 12.5 million trips.

Wait, what does that calculation even mean? 72 years times 365 days times 24 hours times 20... what? times 5... what? between parentheses? What?

That one took me a minute too. He calculates how many 3 minute intervals there are in a 72 year old person's life. Then he figures how many trips it takes to waste that many 3 minute intervals.

I don't know why he did that. Figure one minute to understand what he's doing and one minute to post, I'm approaching another 3 minutes lost right there.

[jawshoeaw]

I would love to see grocery stores put a sign on the front of every parking space that says "don't forget your old bag."

But they should put the same sign on the exit to the store as well, so you don't leave your wife in there accidentally.

I saw this, I think at a Trader Joe's or maybe one of the "natural" food stores. I ran out and grabbed my bag (do not translate into Latin).

Worst scenario: I ran out to get my bags but got distracted in the car by seeing some random object. Went back into store. At checkout, began quietly cursing as I realized I had again forgotten my bags. Ran out and got 'em for real. Checkout woman glared at me when I asked if she would remove items from store bag and put into my bag.

Runner-up: any time they take the store bag that they started to load with your groceries and throw it (the original bag) away. Aaaargh!

It Switzerland, they charged my $0.50 a bag, and that was 15 years ago! Best idea ever.

[Eebster the Great]

I ran out and grabbed my bag (do not translate into Latin).

wat

[Kisama]

I ran out and grabbed my bag (do not translate into Latin).

wat

I don't get it either.