People use single-use plastic bags for multiple other things after they get home from the store. Most commonly IMO for lining their bathroom wastebaskets. If you ban single-use plastic bags, people will just end up buying little trash bags to do that which are also not biodegradable, and will just waste time and money in having to pay for them.
Likewise, you can use them as doggy waste bags, mittens for touching dirty things, shoe covers if you’re doing yard work or cleaning the floors, carrying other stuff around later or getting more groceries (obviously), and even rope if you roll them up, alongside other things. I keep a drawer full of plastic bags for these various purposes, and other people I know keep a bunch of them too.
The alternatives we’d have to buy to fill these purposes, just like the trash bags in many cases are also not biodegradable, (nitrite gloves etc) so unless you’re going to ban all the plastics, attacking single-use bags is not going to do much but waste people’s money and time.
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People aren’t talking about a completely, 100% ban absolutely everywhere with no exceptions. Exceptions still exist. Exceptions always exist. It’s just general use places with easy to replace solutions.
I would be shocked if a meaningful percentage of single use bags got reused for any matter. I reuse the ones that I get for many things, and even in my case most of the single use bags that I end up with go in the trash without being repurposed.
They won’t be banned, they are just not free anymore to incentive people to actually bring their own bag. You realistically don’t need a new plastic bag every single time you buy something.
Yes most people reuse their bags (we all know about that famous bags of bags laying under the sink), but we should still produce less if we can.
Making single use plastic bags inconvenient to use is a feature of bag bans, not an unintended consequence.
Here in NY, plastic bags have been banned since 2020. Before that, you got a single use plastic bag for basically every purchase- even for 1-2 items. And most ended up in the trash. Or worse, littered.
Now people think twice about whether they really need bags for other uses. The ones who do, buy them. Others make do without. And the number of single use bags being used has decreased significantly, so it’s been successful.
People forget bags it happens, I have 5 in my car and I still forget to lift them sometimes.
I have gotten better with not buying them as much. There never be 100% ban the prices just go up lol
https://phantomplastics.com/shattering-the-plastics-illusion/
Banning these things in the UK Saved the supermarkets around £60million a year.
And they also then sold the bin bags people had to buy instead.
97% of all single use carrier bags in the uK were re-used.
The heavy bags for life (woven PPE not LDPE loop carriers) have to be used almost 100 times to have a lower carbon footprint.
Banning them in the UK was an environmental disaster – but somehow it’s held up as a beacon of environmentalsism.
They’re lying to us. about everything. and the stupid kids are lapping it up.
Then more idiots say “use paper instead” and it takes 8 times as many truck to deliver the paper bags burning fossil fuels to deliver those bags..
Trash bags aren’t banned. What’s banned are shopping bags. You can’t replace trash bags but shopping bags are just unnecessary.
We haven’t had single use plastic bags in the UK for years and we’re doing fine. Stop overthinking it.
I don’t know about global impact, but many cities that have banned them report an overall reduction in local litter. The things blow around and get everywhere…banning them is at least helpful on a local level, even if the macro level is unproven.
This is exactly what’s happened here in Canada. No more plastic grocery bags so I’ve had to buy rolls of bags for cat litter and small garbages. I still find myself looking for the “bag of bags” when I haven’t had any in years.
The legislation calls everything “single use” if it was made from non-recycled materials and is not expected to be recycled after use regardless of how many times the object is in fact used, for example: they’re calling your car dashboard a single use plastic even though you use it every day that you drive.
Edit: the naming is intentionally deceptive
That was always my argument when the UK banned them. I don’t think it has done much about the overall use of plastics, but it has dramatically reduced littering of them
I agree. Instead of reusing my plastic bags I get through stores and groceries for trash or carrying lunch and storing things. I now have to go out and buy new plastic bags that are most definitely going to be going into the ground.
i have a dog, buying the smaller bags uses less plastic than an entire disposable bag.
Most people use the plastic bag and throw it out. You are probably in the minority that reuses, that’s fine but you aren’t aware of the general uses of single use plastic…usually is thrown away after 1 use.
If they banned bags I just take the cart home with me
I agree (but not entirely) single use plastic bags often get reused and they are useful. However, I would still use them for things that would ultimately mean they’d be thrown away. Now instead of having 50 plastic bags in my cupboard I have 50 brown paper bags.
I haven’t purchased any new plastic items to replace what I would have used plastic bags for… just a bit mildly inconvenienced… that said every now and then I get a cheeky plastic bag from a delivery and go woohoo! But a mild inconvenience is worth helping out, maybe you need to think about whether you NEED to use plastic for those things.
We banned them in Canada and its been very unsuccessful. Everyone has a hundred cloth bags they never use and always forget at home when they actually need them. At least plastic bags could be reused and easily stored. Can’t remember ever just throwing away a plastic bag.
I’d LOVE to see a holistic study on the resources and energy used to produce and dispose of all these cloth bags. Id bet the farm its much worse for the environment.
I have two cotton canvas shopping bags that are more than 35 years old and which both get used at least once a week, each. So, more than 1800 times per bag. You can’t tell me that they are “worse” for the environment than a single use plastic bag.
Me and my family always used them for trash bags in the car, and dog poop bags.
There are biodegradable trash bags and dog waste bags. I’ve been using both for almost 15 years. It’s been 6 years since my grocery store eliminated plastic grocery bags and it has not been a problem.
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Any bags you don’t reuse you can hang on to and donate to a Goodwill type store for them to bag stuff from their stores. I drop them off with other donations.
Nah, it’s working out great in New Jersey tbh. Just needed like 2 years for us all to get used to it but now I’m happy we don’t have all those plastic bags flying around everywhere like we used to.
I live in an area that allows single-use bags and accumulate them. I am the “illicit” supplier of them to people who live in areas with bans. 🙂 So my bags aren’t just used once.
100%. I’m sure legislation around banning plastic bags is a scam by big grocers like Walmart, who were tired of giving away bags and wanted shoppers to buy them instead. The end result is the same amount of plastic bags being used, but the grocers get to sell them.
>If you ban single-use plastic bags, people will just end up buying little trash bags to do that which are also not biodegradable
Yes, and? Not everyone reuses every shopping bag. There will still be fewer bags being used.
We have banned them here in CO and it is awesome. There is way less of them stuck on the side of the road. There is still paper bags that you can use for some things. As well as buying small trash bags is actually better, because trash bags don’t break down as easily as those other shopping bags. I promise you end up finding a different way to do most of these things. You don’t really miss them after a while. Again start looking around and notice how many of them end up blowing around in nature.
I save plastic bags, but probably only half. They get home torn, or gross, or I just happen to have too many right now.
Now dog poop bags? Gloves? I use 100% of those for the intended purpose. The dog bags are even less plastic because poop is smaller than groceries. So that isn’t a 1:1 comparison.
Everyone is different, but I think you find the percent of poop bags, gloves and garbage bags thrown away the moment they get home, unused, much lower. So in a perfect world where plastic shopping bags could be replaced, it’s still very likely a net win.
The other plastic bag re-use I had was to take lunch to work. When I stopped using plastic bags I got an actual lunch box that lasted me years. So that’s definitely better.
Agree. This is like Starbucks going strawless but using more plastic in the strawless lid.
they don’t actually get banned in the US- i’m in chicago and they’ve been 7 cents each for what feels like a decade! and there is also a plastic bottle tax. they’re just using it to make more money for cook county, and i assume that’s going to happen in other cities if it hasn’t already.
In general attacking the consumer for plastic consumption is a huge waste of time.
My use of plastic bags is entirely because a company supplies them. It’s not the consumers fault that almost everything we buy comes in…you guessed it.. PLASTIC…but the bag we take all the plastic home in can’t be plastic because thats what is ruining the world.
So remember…its not the company’s fault for packing everything under the sun in plastic, it’s your fault for wanting to carry those items home. Oh and who makes those plastic bags? The same people packaging everything in plastic.
Rather than charging the consumer to use a plastic bag (10 cents where I am) they could literally stop producing them and they’d all go away. But no, don’t actually fix an issue, just push a cost onto the people.
There are biodegradable trash bags (all sizes) that can be used for waste baskets. Same with doggie bags.
Be Forreal. Most single use plastic bags are immediately thrown away. We don’t need them. Reusable grocery bags are fantastic, and while a plastic bag ban won’t fix plastic pollution, it’s a start.
If only we could get a ban on styrofoam and plastic bags around packaging…
For the convenience of my life, I really WANT to say you’re right. But you and I, we’re just not correct.
Single use plastics break down into microplastics, which have now been found in every organism tested, everywhere on the planet. Generally microplastics themselves are not toxic, but they interrupt countless biological functions in ways that effectively make them deadly. As more and more of them enter the environment, our blood and cells grow more and more saturated with them. Right not they’re probably not making you sick. But that saturation level is rising day by day. We could easily kill ourselves with plastic long before climate change gets us… but microplastics and climate change actually accelerate the problems that each other are causing.
I hate giving up the convenience, but we owe it to every living thing, now and in the future, to change what we’re doing.
Good on you for finding so many purposes for them, but most of the plastic bags wind up in the garbage. Creating purpose specific products for those uses is actually much better.
Trash bags – Some people don’t even line their small trash bins, which is even better. Otherwise there are more and more biodegradable trash bag options now.
Dog bags – I see a lot of dog owners now use the rolls of biodegradable waste bags that sure, you have to pay for, but are better for the environment so we don’t have piles and piles of biodegradable poop sealed in plastic prisons for eternity.
Mittens – What? What are you touching that you need to cover your hands in plastic bags to touch stuff? If you are doing some heavy cleaning and want to protect your hands, rubber gloves are a thing and way less wasteful.
Shoe covers – It’s called boots. Get a pair of boots that you can wear while gardening and clean them off every once in while or just leave them outside. For inside, they’re called slippers. One pair of shoes that can last for years is a much better option than sticking bags on your feet.
Carrying things – Ummm reusable bags. They’re everywhere, and their express purpose is to remove the use of single use bags.
Ultimately using plastic bags for all of these things is more of a “trying to find uses for this thing I have so many of” rather than a “I need this thing for all of these uses” thing. If you didn’t have so many plastic bags, you would just use the other items that were made for those jobs.
It spurred me to think about all the plastic I do buy. I replaced my bags with canvas shopping bags that last forever. I don’t use liners for trash bags either. I just dump my small cans into the big trash.
the ban helps with littering. less bags, less bag litter.
“Don’t ban single use plastic bags because you can use it for one more time to throw garbage.”
Probably not unpopular. What seems to be popular is the idea that you, the consumer, must pay and be inconvenienced by climate change rhetoric.
No more V8s or plastic straws, but rest assured that your carbon tax will subsidize mega-pollution belted out by the usual offenders… Power companies and manufacturers.
While this is *technically* true, the number of bags that get handed out is waaaaay more than I would need for reuse. By like at least an order of magnitude.
If I didn’t regularly go into homes that have a floor to ceiling pile of “reusable” bags cluttering up a whole corner of a room I might be more on board with the claim they have many uses. Honestly, my house got clean and organized the day I stopped pretending I was going to reuses the plastic bags I accumulated. Yes, I still keep some for small trash pickup and occasional uses, but most of us have more bags coming in than going out.
The best solution for reusable bags are cleanable totes that be “borrowed” from the store and then returned during a future visit.
Trader Joe’s uses these biodegradable plastic bags for produce. Why not just switch all bags to this material?
so buy them. this take is just “this thing is convenient for me so i should have it for free”.
Plastic bags have been banned in my state so long I forget other places still have them. Hasn’t been an issue here at all
Nah. If you need bags just go buy them. You shouldn’t get endless crappy bags for “free” with your groceries. Hopefully this is an unpopular opinion!
Honestly, I threw away more single use bags than any I use that I bought to use for the purposes you say. Before going to re usable bags I got so many there is absolutely no way I could use them all (I ended up having huge wads I’d take to the grocery store for “recycling” which I doubt actually got recycled but at least I felt a little better about the waste).
as a plasics engineer, I just want to say, plastics is not the problem. it never was. its just the humans that use it
There are biodegradable “plastic” bags that are exactly like plastic bags.
I’d much rather use paper bags, in a situation where I’m shopping and I need to get a bag.
Currently I live in an area where most stores charge you per plastic bag used; nothing major, like 4¢ a bag, but because it’s a price you’re actively choosing, you definitely think twice before taking more than you may need
Nice try oil companies
Thank you for stating the obvious. My state banned plastic bags three years ago for the usual inane reasons. Instead of using the bags from the store for my small trash cans, I have to buy a box of them. But I’m still using a plastic bag! It’s just the clueless idiots in state government with their feel good bullshit policies that accomplish nothing but costing the residents more money. They pretend to care about the environment but then they legalize cannabis and the packaging of the edibles use the most plastic of almost any other product and it’s illegal to recycle!
Banned for years in the UK. Great not seeing them blowing around in the wind all the time any more.
Given that’s what I remember about them I do t think they were used for other things as much as you think.
What bothers me about it is that the things we are buying have egregious packing. Multiple layers of plastic and cardboard many times over. There’s no regulation there but we instead choose to punish the end user by giving them a bag that’s tearing in half before you get out of the store.
So youre saying single use bags can be used twice? And that makes it way better?
Also now they introduced recyclable plastic bottles that give you money when you return them at stores. Great I love that we now have hobos raiding trashcans for worthless plastic bottles so they can waste everyone’s time and be disgusting.
When we lived in a area that got rid of the bags, we just ordered more plastic bags from Amazon to use around the house to collect trash etc. to replace the ones we didn’t get at Walmart. We actually created more plastic waste than we saved.
I disagree vehemently
all tgey have to do is make those bags out of a plastic that is biodegradeable, it cant be that hard!?
Remember the 3 R’s are Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. Yes Reusing is nice, but Reducing is still more important.
No, buddy. Use the biodegradable bags you get in the produce aisle for dog waste or buy some. If you must line your bathroom trash, buy plastic, but I bet you’d get along fine with an unlined can.
Literally went to the store today just for plastic grocery bags for various household uses…
They said they only had paper now. This is California.
I guess I’ll buy plastic grocery bags on Amazon?
Nothing infuriates me more than spending X amount of dollars in a store and having to buy a bag to carry said items out. I bought your items, the least you can do is give me a bag to carry the items out.
In WA, they make you buy your plastic bags, but they’re these weird super-thick plastic reusable ones that are useless for everything but buying more groceries. And they smell like cigarettes. One thing I also noticed out here is that they don’t have plastic bag recycling bins at stores. Back east (NY, VA, MD, NJ, PA), even the places with bag bans or pay-to-use bag policies have plastic bag recycling bins all over the place. But since living in WA, I’ve thrown away more plastic bags than I ever did back east (which was none; they were always used in waste baskets and for animal waste and as a car trash, etc.).
Banning anything is always the easy way out and never actually solves the underlying issue.
I don’t think I’ve ever used a ‘single use’ plastic bag just once. They get re-used to carry things until they get holes, they’re used as bin liners or a rubbish bag for dry rubbish- I’ve used that particular bag since 2010! (It’s fairly sturdy, thicker plastic, I’ll be using it until death if it holds up.)
I use fabric bags for grocery shopping, but still need bin liners/bags to carry wet or potentially leaky things in.
I save all of mine and my mom turns them into “yarn” and crochets them into reusable bags
they need to focus on the plastic use of the manufacturing/shipping side of products. products get shipped with so much packing crap in the crate and then the product itself is loaded with bs packaging and lastly the surge in online ordering requiring it to be wrapped up again to ship from a big truck.