Minneapolis Bans Single-Use Plastic Bags. City Economy Collapses!

[RavenSky]

I was walking past a fenced lot this morning. It was very windy. The chain link fence was fully opaque along large patches of it due the outrageous number of plastic bags blown against it by the wind.

I'm all for a ban on plastic bags, even though I also re-use them for other things.

 

[whichphilosophy]

http://www.kare11.com/life/mpls-city-council-votes-to-ban-plastic-bags/93702252

With a vote of 7-6, the Minneapolis City Council moved to ban plastic bags at retail stores with a proposed ordinance that will go into effect April 22, 2017.

Under the proposal, businesses can distribute paper, compostable or reusable bags, which will come at a 5-cent charge.

which will come at a 5-cent charge

which will come at a 5-cent charge


which will come at a 5-cent charge



which will come at a 5-cent charge​

.

This worked very well in the PRC. In fact a company providing these free is subject to severe fines if found guilty. Plastic bags are legal there but there is a charge This seems to have curbed excessive use. Many people used to use the free bags for garbage. I don't think many people want return to the days of groceries falling out the bottom of their paper carrier bags.

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I was walking past a fenced lot this morning. It was very windy. The chain link fence was fully opaque along large patches of it due the outrageous number of plastic bags blown against it by the wind.

I'm all for a ban on plastic bags, even though I also re-use them for other things.

Generally they are stuffed with rubbish and thrown out or thrown into the dustbin.

 

[bigfield]

I was walking past a fenced lot this morning. It was very windy. The chain link fence was fully opaque along large patches of it due the outrageous number of plastic bags blown against it by the wind.

At least you know where you can find some plastic bags when you need them.

 

[Metaphor]

My territory did this ages ago; you can either bring your own bags or get charged 10-15c for a 'reusable'/compostable bag. But I see many more people willing to carry a few items if that's all they've got.

As a child, I don't recall ever seeing a grocery store in Australia that used brown paper bags. I always, always saw this in American television and movies (with a batard or stick of celery sticking out, every time) and I thought paper bags looked way cooler than daggy plastic bags.

As an adult, I can't believe Americans ever put up with the no-handles, weak-bottomed nonsense that brown paper bags must have been. The mind boggles.

 

[bleubird]

I have three cloth bags.I shop for food once a week.One goes through the laundry each week.I keep one in my truck,so I don't have to remember.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

I guess I shop at a higher end store where my paper bags have handles and can easily hold 25 lbs for the walk home.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

My territory did this ages ago; you can either bring your own bags or get charged 10-15c for a 'reusable'/compostable bag. But I see many more people willing to carry a few items if that's all they've got.

As a child, I don't recall ever seeing a grocery store in Australia that used brown paper bags. I always, always saw this in American television and movies (with a batard or stick of celery sticking out, every time) and I thought paper bags looked way cooler than daggy plastic bags.

As an adult, I can't believe Americans ever put up with the no-handles, weak-bottomed nonsense that brown paper bags must have been. The mind boggles.

Having used many a paper grocery sack in my life, they were not weak bottomed etc. No more so than the flimsy plastic jobbies. Which became popular with stores because they were cheaper, and took up a lot less storage room. As a bonus, an empty paper grocery sack also made a good cat toy. Some stores I have shopped at give you your choice, plastic or paper.

 

[ideologyhunter]

I've been using my own totes since the early 80s. What is the BFD??? Cleaner house, cleaner streets, cleaner parking lots. Less waste of a miracle resource that we will miss a lot when scarcity mandates more conservation. If your biggest issue is freedom of choice, remember that scarcity will someday severely crimp that freedom. I just don't see the downside of curtailing consumption, especially when it's such an easy way to do it.

 

[dismal]

I was in the grocery store today and I saw exactly two people use their own bags and maybe 40 use plastic store bags.

I deduce from this that a vast majority prefer the utility and convenience of plastic bags. My guess is the people who brought their own bags might value the convenience as well if they were not caught up in progressive virtue signaling.

I'd point out in addition that there is a fee to dump things in a land fill. The fee is clearly not high enough to dissuade the use of plastic bags as they are remarkably light for the functionality they provide. I bet if the landfill tipping fee were 10x as high people would still use plastic bags. There have to be a thousand better ways to keep tons out of landfills on a utility value per ton of waste landfilled basis.

 

[RavenSky]

I guess I shop at a higher end store where my paper bags have handles and can easily hold 25 lbs for the walk home.

My territory did this ages ago; you can either bring your own bags or get charged 10-15c for a 'reusable'/compostable bag. But I see many more people willing to carry a few items if that's all they've got.

As a child, I don't recall ever seeing a grocery store in Australia that used brown paper bags. I always, always saw this in American television and movies (with a batard or stick of celery sticking out, every time) and I thought paper bags looked way cooler than daggy plastic bags.

As an adult, I can't believe Americans ever put up with the no-handles, weak-bottomed nonsense that brown paper bags must have been. The mind boggles.

Having used many a paper grocery sack in my life, they were not weak bottomed etc. No more so than the flimsy plastic jobbies. Which became popular with stores because they were cheaper, and took up a lot less storage room. As a bonus, an empty paper grocery sack also made a good cat toy. Some stores I have shopped at give you your choice, plastic or paper.

Paper bags )especially those with the handles) are also better for collecting the recyclables. We are having a problem in our building with people trying to recycle, but putting the recyclables in the plastic bags.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

I was in the grocery store today and I saw exactly two people use their own bags and maybe 40 use plastic store bags.

I deduce from this that a vast majority prefer the utility and convenience of plastic bags. My guess is the people who brought their own bags might value the convenience as well if they were not caught up in progressive virtue signaling.

Well, I was in the grocery store today and I saw exactly two women in miniskirts maybe 40 hijabs.

I deduce from this that a vast majority of women prefer the utility and convenience of hijabs . My guess is the women who wore miniskirts might value the convenience as well if they were not caught up in progressive virtue signaling.

 

[whichphilosophy]

I was in the grocery store today and I saw exactly two people use their own bags and maybe 40 use plastic store bags.

I deduce from this that a vast majority prefer the utility and convenience of plastic bags. My guess is the people who brought their own bags might value the convenience as well if they were not caught up in progressive virtue signaling.

Well, I was in the grocery store today and I saw exactly two women in miniskirts maybe 40 hijabs.

I deduce from this that a vast majority of women prefer the utility and convenience of hijabs . My guess is the women who wore miniskirts might value the convenience as well if they were not caught up in progressive virtue signaling.

Another thing that is interesting is that many women in hijabs also carry larger than usual dark handbags with then.

 

[Arctish]

Having used many a paper grocery sack in my life, they were not weak bottomed etc. No more so than the flimsy plastic jobbies. Which became popular with stores because they were cheaper, and took up a lot less storage room. As a bonus, an empty paper grocery sack also made a good cat toy. Some stores I have shopped at give you your choice, plastic or paper.

My mom always used a paper grocery bag when she made fried chicken. She'd put a couple tablespoons of flour, salt, and seasoning in the bag, toss in the chicken, roll the top closed and then shake it around to coat the pieces. Then she'd use the bag to drain the fat when the chicken came out of the fryer. When stores started using those flimsy plastic bags, the paper grocery bags were carefully set aside so we kids wouldn't 'waste' them on something else.

 

[ronburgundy]

We used to ask for paper until we got cats. We reuse them for emptying the cat litter box. Like many cat owners I know, we now have to start buying small disposable plastic bags, most of which seem to have more plastic in them than the grocery bags we reused. The same is true of people I know with small kids. They reused all their plastic grocery bags for various things, including dirty diapers, and now have to buy them (btw, disposable diapers are here to stay. Their US sales actually increased last year).

Again, I think the bans are a net benefit environmentally, but this is another way that the estimates of that gain (and of the % of such bags simply thrown out without reuse) are way over-inflated.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

We used to ask for paper until we got cats. We reuse them for emptying the cat litter box. Like many cat owners I know, we now have to start buying small disposable plastic bags, most of which seem to have more plastic in them than the grocery bags we reused. The same is true of people I know with small kids. They reused all their plastic grocery bags for various things, including dirty diapers, and now have to buy them (btw, disposable diapers are here to stay. Their US sales actually increased last year).

Again, I think the bans are a net benefit environmentally, but this is another way that the estimates of that gain (and of the % of such bags simply thrown out without reuse) are way over-inflated.

I'm not at all sure it's even a benefit environmentally (how long does the reusable bag last and what resources will be spent cleaning it?) and the gains are certainly overstated due to the reuse of grocery bags for a gazillion things around the house. There's also the safety issue with meat--meat should always be put in disposable bags, not reusable ones.

 

[ronburgundy]

We used to ask for paper until we got cats. We reuse them for emptying the cat litter box. Like many cat owners I know, we now have to start buying small disposable plastic bags, most of which seem to have more plastic in them than the grocery bags we reused. The same is true of people I know with small kids. They reused all their plastic grocery bags for various things, including dirty diapers, and now have to buy them (btw, disposable diapers are here to stay. Their US sales actually increased last year).

Again, I think the bans are a net benefit environmentally, but this is another way that the estimates of that gain (and of the % of such bags simply thrown out without reuse) are way over-inflated.

I'm not at all sure it's even a benefit environmentally (how long does the reusable bag last and what resources will be spent cleaning it?) and the gains are certainly overstated due to the reuse of grocery bags for a gazillion things around the house. There's also the safety issue with meat--meat should always be put in disposable bags, not reusable ones.

Previously, I mentioned that many people now put meat into those plastic bags found in the produce section. They contain less plastic than a standard grocery bag, so that only partly reduces the benefit of the bans, as does the people who do actually reuse the grocery bags for purposes that now require buying disposable plastic bags. Most people are switching to cloth bags, and for most purposes they rarely need to be cleaned (unless you put uncooked meat packages directly in them). Yes, the net benefit to energy use could be substantially less than proponents claim, but there is also the landfill issue and the litter issue.

 

[RavenSky]

I'm not at all sure it's even a benefit environmentally (how long does the reusable bag last and what resources will be spent cleaning it?) and the gains are certainly overstated due to the reuse of grocery bags for a gazillion things around the house. There's also the safety issue with meat--meat should always be put in disposable bags, not reusable ones.

Previously, I mentioned that many people now put meat into those plastic bags found in the produce section. They contain less plastic than a standard grocery bag, so that only partly reduces the benefit of the bans, as does the people who do actually reuse the grocery bags for purposes that now require buying disposable plastic bags. Most people are switching to cloth bags, and for most purposes they rarely need to be cleaned (unless you put uncooked meat packages directly in them). Yes, the net benefit to energy use could be substantially less than proponents claim, but there is also the landfill issue and the litter issue.

I'm still using shopping bags from the first time the re-usable shopping bag trend happened (in the 1970's). A couple of them are canvas bags I got from Publix back then. It is funny when the current Publix employees want to know where I got them.