One important thing I’d like to thing is that we separate our garbage into:
– metals
– plastics
– glass
– paper
– organic
– misc.

We take care of the organic ourselves but the rest goes into color-coded garbage bags. Plastics are blue and I don’t really know what happens to them in the end, but I think it’s recycling, and not being mixed with the other ones and thrown into the ocean where they kill animals. At least I really really hope so.

What a response. I didn’t expect such a (fab) slew of comments from everyone.

I’ve read every single comment and I want to respond to a couple.

I love hearing all the examples from countries like the NZ or California that SUCCESSFULLY banned plastic bags.

If everyone does it, no one will lose business, it’s just the rule for that state and no one is going to be favoured or exempted.

I agree wholeheartedly with the idea of charging everyone $0.25 for a biodegradable plastic bag instead of $0.05 for a bad one.

I think that re-using plastic bags is a good thing… but if we could re-use BIOdegradeable plastic bags so that everyone biodegrades, it’d be a lot better.

Also, to the commenter who said about how annoying it’d be to pay $1 each time… that’s the whole point!!! If it’s annoying, and irritating, then bring your own bag and put it in your purse or leave it in your car so that you don’t have to pay the $1. But if you pay it every time, you’re going to get irritated.

I like the bags that fold up into a tiny little thing with a clip.

It’s irritating, but you’ll get used to it.

And if it costs you money, all the better I say. Because you’re going to finally take notice that your plastic-happy habits are hurting the environment, and you’ll carry your own bags from now on.

As for the picking up the poop thing, I haven’t figured out a situation for that yet… but I’m talking about banning bags IN GENERAL and making people buy/pay for plastic biodegradeable bags. It’s not to target dog owners, it’s to make it a general, blanket rule.

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Anna: True, you have to wash cloth bags…. except I don’t use detergent any longer, and vinegar with lemon juice does the job.

It’s not feces being spread all over the bag (I hope), and you’re washing the bag, what, once every two months or so?

And only if a tomato decides to commit suicide inside the bag.

Besides, the chemicals being released from washing the bag are the same as if you were to wash the bag with your clothes,.. so no EXTRA harm done there, and chemicals being released could be a lot better than all the plastic that is clogging the oceans and landfills that just won’t break down.

Don’t you need to wash your cloth bags? Doesn’t it waste water and release chemicals into the environment? Is that green?

Americans are so dependent on plastic bags, which I really noticed for the first time when I went home for Christmas.

I went to a drugstore to get some hair product. I told the cashier I didn’t need a bag, and she was kind of shocked: “It’ll get wet!” (It was raining.)

Oh the horror. What would I ever do if the plastic bottle holding my favorite hair goop got wet?

For small trips, you don’t even need specialized bags. My everyday bag is huge, and when I go out, I make sure there’s lots of empty space for shopping stops.

For people with families, Germans either buy plastic collapsible crates, or they throw an empty carton from the fresh foods section into their cart (which BTW are much faster to pack than a bunch of plastic bags). It’s not a huge deal here.

However.

We also reuse all the grocery bags we do bring home. We use them as garbage bags for all the trash cans in our house. We do need some sort of bag to hold the trash, and I’m not sure that it makes much sense to outlaw plastic grocery bags, thus forcing me to pay actual cash for plastic Glad bags instead, you know? Either way, there’s still plastic bags being thrown away.

I have been a dog owner for years, and in all the dog parks near my house, there are *biodegradable* bags in dispensers that dog owners can take for free to clean up after their dogs. I think that this is where the real solution is. Rather than make consumers pay for either plastic grocery bags or premium plastic bags such as Glad to use as garbage bags, instead why not legislate that grocery stores must use only biodegradable bags instead of the ones we have now? Why should the consumers pay the price for an item that we are actually recycling for a completely necessary use? To me, this is just like how the government forced restaurants and food manufacturers to eliminate trans fats from their products. Now grocery stores should be forced to create a grocery bag that is not harmful to the environment.

If that were the case, I think I would probably use my canvas grocery bag about 75% of the time, but take home grocery bags 25% of the time to ensure I have enough bags for trash. And I wouldn’t feel guilty about it anymore. I wouldn’t even mind if they were to charge me, say, 25 cents or so for each biodegradable grocery bag I took.

-Steve @ fluxlife