San Francisco bans traditional plastic grocery bags
- Thread starter CBC News
- Start date
Passed Tuesday by the city's board of supervisors, the law prohibits large grocery stores and drugstores from using non-recyclable and non-biodegradable plastic bags made from petroleum products.
Which means that it is utterly meaningless. All of the plastic bags we use here (called T shirt bags) are recycleable, and, in fact, most are MADE from recycled plastic. Unless they're 20 years behind the Maritimes, that's a completely stupid, pointless, and worthless bylaw.
Or, possibly, the person who wrote the article is just clueless, and doesn't know that plastic bags can be recycled.
Which means that it is utterly meaningless. All of the plastic bags we use here (called T shirt bags) are recycleable, and, in fact, most are MADE from recycled plastic. Unless they're 20 years behind the Maritimes, that's a completely stupid, pointless, and worthless bylaw.
Or, possibly, the person who wrote the article is just clueless, and doesn't know that plastic bags can be recycled.
I must really be as old as my children think! Why? The use of "traditional plastic grocery bags" in the title of this report. "Traditional?" Oh my! To me, traditional would be the brown paper bags. I remember when grocery stores began using "traditional" plastic bags to replace the brown paper bags.I must have been in my mid to late teens at the time..Yes, I must be old;-)
Apparently less than 1% of plastic bags are actually put in for recycling. Most of them are just thrown in the trash.
yes that's true, but it still means that the new law means absolutely nothing. It basically means that nothing needs to change. All bags currently in use (or very nearly all) are allowable by that law, so the bags will continue to be used and continue to not be recycled.
it's not that hard to make a biodegradeable plastic bag. I suspect though that it'd cost a fraction more and so will never ever ever happen.
wherever there's a problem, look where the money is.
wherever there's a problem, look where the money is.
We use plastic bags for our compost - they're compostable bags. Essentially, the plastic is mixed with corn starch and other biodegradeables. Nice idea. But you can't buy the bags too far ahead of time. They don't last, for some reason. Ha.
Just heard a spot on CBC radio about bags made from maple sap. I guess it is the same premis as the bio-bags used for the green bin composting but the energy used to make them from maple sap is much less than using corn as a base material. According to CBC it is just a matter of scaling up production as the science is in place.
If I can find a link I will post.:smile:
If I can find a link I will post.:smile:
I specifically remember the first time I ever saw a plastic grocery bag. It was 1972 and I saw it blowing down the road and I remember thinking at the time that it was such a stupid idea that it would be banned almost right away. 40 plus years later and they are just starting to phase them out .
Paper bags aren't perfect but they're not all that bad either if made from a sufficiently heavy grade of paper. Our pulp and paper industry needs the work, now that newspapers have become obsolete, paper bags are recyclable and biodegradable.
Win, win, win...
A re-engineering of paper bags might be in order but we DO have the technology.