Originally published at: Plastic bag recycling project gives up the ghost | Boing Boing
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Boy, I really am sick of everything turning out to be one big fucking grift…
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Plastic bag recycling project gives up the ghost
But they’re an extremely low-effort Halloween tradition!
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I also wonder if anyone has done a good study on the lifecycle environmental impact of some of the low-quality “reusable” bags that are out there. Sturdy cloth grocery bags can last a long time and are probably better for the environment than single-use plastic, but there’s a whole lot of lower quality stuff out there that tends to fall apart after just a few uses. If a cheap reusable bag takes 10x the material to produce as a thin film bag, but falls apart after 5 or 6 uses, then we’re probably not coming out ahead.
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The local organic grocer quit taking plastic bags because, as they put it, the “reuse”/“recycling” of the bags is as fuel for incinerators. I figure that when I do end up with them, it’s better to just put them in the garbage (& in the ground) rather than (ultimately) in the air. Catshit vs. dogshit, as Tolstoy said (though not about plastic bags).
I’m under the assumption that very little, if any, plastics are actually recycled. The county where I live takes 'em (plastic containers, not bags - they don’t want them, either) with the rest of the weekly collection, but I figure it is, as someone else here on the BBS once put it, “wishcycling.”
And:
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One positive from this is that the message on many plastic wrappers has given me a valuable life lesson: “Keep Away From Children”
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and then there’s the problem that recycling generates micro plastics 
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Plastic recycling appears to be eco-theatre.
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Around me (Chicagoland) we’ve been led to believe that the plastic film/bags go to TREX in Texas where they use it to make composite boards (plastic and wood). They appear to be an active End-User but I’ve never confirmed if the stuff actually gets there or not.
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Now that we know that plastic recycling was 99% BS, can we move back to other packaging? Cans and bottles for soda, water, etc. Card stock and foil? I suppose it is still useful for a lot of food products just to keep things sanitary, but we definitely can reduce the amount overall.
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Even cloth is a greenwash. The cotton used to produce it takes up vast swaths of arable land and guzzles freshwater. One UK study suggests the average cloth bag needs to be used 131 times to have less emissions impact as an equivalent number of plastic bags, and if you factor in the other environmental impacts, it could be thousands of times. Woven polypropylene bags are apparently better - but still a lot of plastic!
I am in the environmental science field, and I cringe every time I’m handed a cloth bag at a conference or workshop.
Banning plastic bags is at worst a classic example of virtue signaling and at best fraught with unintended consequences. Though they have shown bans reduce the amount of litter.
Even a cheap “single use” plastic bag can be reused or repurposed. Honestly, I think we should just put a deposit on them so they get returned, even if they end up landfilled. Either that, or ban all bags and force people to come up with their own ways of carrying items home.
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Any feelings on paper bags? I know the wood pulp industry is not without it’s problems…
Maybe I’ll just start using wooden crates I could make myself with fallen branches from the neighborhood. /s
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i do think cloth bags are much better than plastic. a single grocery run can generate dozens of plastic bags, when two or three canvas bags can suffice. it doesn’t take long to make up that resource gap
and like you say, the reduction of litter is super important. especially considering so much of our plastic gets shipped over seas and dumped. and simply reducing dependencies on plastics is also good imo
the biggest use of plastic is behind the scenes. every grocery pallet generates a mountain of bags and cling wrap. so we’re not going to save the world with purely individual actions. at the same time, our actions can change the feeling of what’s acceptable- and i think that matters
eta:
more stores should offer the cardboard boxes that the products come in. some do, but not many. it’s at least a little bit of reuse help. ( maybe if more people asked for them? )
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Natural fibers don’t create the same kind of long-lasting environmental pollution as plastic bags though. The ecosystem is pretty good at breaking down plant fibers over time. Microplastics, not so much.
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My friend takes various feedbags and repurposes them into shopping bags. It doesn’t do anything about those bags being made in the first place, but it keeps them out of landfills. Plus they work wonderfully!
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I hope some environmental scientists are doing a case study on New Jersey. We banned single use bags (both plastic and paper) last year, or maybe two years ago now. So you’re supposed to take your own reusable bags into the store. And, of course, the store sells reusable bags. They sell 2 or 3 different quality bags, though. They sell really cheap woven fabric (cotton I guess?) bags for like $0.99 and then nicer, more durable tote bags for about $2 or $3. But those bags have some kind of coating on them that makes them feel awfully plasticky to me. Also, everyone I know now has about 100 of these bags in their car, garage, and closets, because you inevitably forget to take your bags into the store at least once a month. I have even started throwing them away occasionally because if I don’t, I’m going to end up looking like a hoarder with thousands of tote bags in my house. So I’m not convinced banning single use bags did anything other than adding a small surcharge to our grocery bills for buying reusable bags. Plus, this ban covers all stores, so pharmacies and restaurants also don’t have disposable bags anymore. Some of them don’t offer any kind of bag. You either bring your own, or you carry your stuff out in your arms. So I hope someone does a formal study on whether this ban actually did anything helpful. Because I suspect it didn’t.
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My nieces have had summer jobs working for grocery stores while in college and they reported that all the plastic bags the stores collected just wound up in the trash. I don’t get them very often anymore but I stopped bothering to recycle the ones I do get. I still recycle plastic containers - the ones that curbside recycling will take anyway - but I try to avoid them also, as much as is practical.
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My guess is a synthetic since that is what the cheap ones we have here are made of. We have a ban on single use plastic bags.
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