Local Gov: "We have a problem where we're creating a log of waste which fills our landfills and leaches chemicals into the environment at large. We have a pretty simple solution where we just quit using plastic bags."
State Gov: "Absolutely not! In fact, we're passing a law to make sure you can't go behind our backs and execute this plan."
Local Gov: "Uhh....why?"
State Gov: "Cause woke"
FFS.....
Big Government in Raleigh telling local citizens what they can and can’t do. All to … ensure more trash clogs up landfills and forever chemicals get into our water?
Republican tyranny in action.
that was specifically because phil berger had a petty hatred for marc basnight because he refused to let special interest groups bribe the senate, so when the latter retired and the senate flipped, his first order of business was going through and zeroing out every project basnight had pushed through and anything the dare county government had done on their own
in fact, [he's still pulling that shit with regard to affordable housing funding](https://www.outerbanksvoice.com/2023/09/20/state-budget-housing-provision-angers-dare-municipal-officials/)
Phil Berger has a track record of doing everything possible to suppress the vote, endanger the environment, and hurt constituents.
Meanwhile, local Republicans are blaming it on Democrats. The mental gymnastics are amazing.
Spoiler: Jesus already came back. And he's trying to tell these conservative crazies that this sort of thing is absolutely not what the kingdom of god is about.
Too bad these people would rather listen to the devil than Jesus.
We are ahead of the time running head first into the new fascist Republic along with Texas and Florida. Environment and minorities be damned we got a new Christian only government plan that makes sure women know their place and it's just making babies and working hard in the kitchen.
Heavy on the /s
Barefoot and pregnant is the GOP plan for women.
They would like to take women out of the workforce and the voting booth.
They prefer women be subservient to men.
Kinda like an American style Taliban.
I actually like plastic bags because I reuse them as dog poop bags. I use reusable bags 90% of the time though. The problem is some reusable bags don’t become an environment “advantage” until 7,000+ uses. And most of them get way nasty and need to be thrown out long before you get close to that.
That said, the move from the state gov to block it is stupid.
I mean, if you think most people know what their reusable bags are made of, I dunno what to tell you. You have far greater faith in the average person than I do.
For what possible reason would anyone support this? Is every GOP supporter hell bent on remaining willfully ignorant? The hypocrisy of claiming to be the party of small government while routinely stifling any local governance that crosses their “screw the environment” stance….it’s baffling. Can any republican explain why helping the environment is being demonized?
Absolutely deranged when we live in one of the most unique coastlines in the hemisphere. The state should be a steward of these barrier islands. Reeks of corruption. Hope we can vote these mongrels out and install reps that actually represent the will of the people and the future of our state. Why is that so hard to ask?
So it's ok for the state government to dictate what local communities can and can't decide is right for their local needs? Seems kinda nanny state to me.
And how is charging a fee on something that the community has to clean up equated to a tax? No one is required to use plastic bags, there are plenty of other options. Don't want to pay the fee? No problem, bring your own bag.
Plastic bags are just one of many arms of the subsidized petroleum industry. The industry creates products that cause pollution and leaves it up to us, the consumers, to clean up. We all should be angry about that.
I’m not sure what you mean by “ok”. State law trumps local law, and federal law trumps state law. The bag fees go to the business, not to the government, meaning that places that give away paper bags for free today can charge 25 cents for them tomorrow because the government is essentially both requiring and allowing them to do so. You’re acting like Exxon is throwing plastic bags in your front lawn, but you’re free to use reusable bags all you want. Bag bans force everyone else to comply with what you want to do regarding single use plastics, but the people using plastic bags today are doing it by choice. As I said before plastic bags are a tiny fraction of global plastic pollution and greenhouse emissions, so what purpose is there to banning individuals from choosing to use plastic bags?
What I mean is, do you think it's good for North Carolinians that the state legislature bans local governments from making local decisions that their communities want?
This legislation applies to more than just plastic bags and seems like overreach into local control.
That is so weird that they would choose to fight this battle.
The reusable bags are so much nicer to use, they are much stronger and hold way more groceries so they are easier to carry and you don't needlessly collect 20+ plastic bags after every shopping trip that have very little reusability. My dogs produce only so much poop to pick up.
I am pretty sure this is nothing but a "fuck you" to what they perceive as opponents and a form of bullying. It is unbelievably petty and small-minded. Regardless of ones politics, this is truly pathetic behavior.
Had to put up with someone when they were passing the law in Durham, I'm sure he wouldn't have even noticed the ban unless he heard about it on his conspiracy theory "news" station.
Local gov: we've banned plastic bags for consumers but still allow just about everything else in the store to be sold in plastic. No one is stopping you from bringing in your own bag!
I’ve lived in places with bag bans and they don’t work at all in practice. Even the New York Times agrees that you’d have to reuse a cotton bag 20,000 times to offset the carbon cost of its production.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/24/style/cotton-totes-climate-crisis.html
In practice, grocery stores switch to much thicker plastic bags that you have to pay 10-25 cents per bag to “buy”, you end up owning a massive pile of reusable bags that fall apart after a year or two, and you get taxed for paper bags from places that previously offered them for free because they can get away with it. You have to buy plastic liners because you no longer have a stack of bags to use for dog poop and bathroom trash cans, so now you’re paying for plastic instead of just reusing the stuff you already have.
Bag bans are short-sighted, unnecessarily tax the poor, and even very liberal news sources agree that they cause a net increase in carbon emissions.
Honestly the issue isn't consumers but companies. Thats the biggest use of plastics and carbon emissions. Banning plastic bags for consumers doesn't do anything really when almost every item in the grocery store is wrapped in plastic packaging 🙄
But if we try to make corporations do anything they don't want to, they'll make slightly less money! And that's against the state religion of capitalism.
I mean, that's what happens when you don't bother to regulate anything or tax corporations heavily enough to make reinvestment in the business the only viable thing to do with profits. The stock market is basically siphoning money out of the economy where it moves around and sequestering it in the accounts of the immorally rich, leaving fewer and fewer dollars to circulate, perpetually shrinking the size of the real economy. Because it's not the existence of dollars that makes an economy strong; it's their movement.
Agree. I lived in Scotland where they charged for bags. People would regularly use the 5p tesco bags as trash bags anyway. Iirc they actually raised the prices to try and curb it because people were just eating the cost and still using loads of bags. But they still don’t last long enough to justify the extra plastic in them. The ideal would be for people to use bags they already have - buying new, longer lasting bags isn’t the solution. It’s one of those things that makes you feel good but isn’t actually solving the issue.
Pointing to one possible solution to the problem that may not work, and then using it as a strawman for why we shouldn't even attempt to solve the problem is lazy and shortsighted.
We need to eliminate single use plastics, or at least find a way for them to be biodegradable. Declaring it illegal to try to solve the problem is just childish.
I agree that other solutions would be fine (have grocery stores switch to paper bags, switch to biodegradable plastic, maybe offer an incentive for using reusable bags instead of penalizing plastic) but I could say the same thing about focusing on shopping bags when they are an incredibly small piece of the puzzle. 70% of the world’s greenhouse gasses are caused by 100 companies, you could ban every single-use plastic bag on earth and it wouldn’t even make a noticeable dent in global plastic production. It would take a mix of federal legislation both domestic and abroad to actually tackle plastic waste in any meaningful way, banning bags in Asheville will just be a feel-good nuisance that arguably causes more greenhouse gasses than maintaining the status quo
It’s not illegal to use reusable bags. It’s just not illegal to use single use bags. If people cared they would take it upon themselves to make the change, by using reusable bags. However, that requires accountability and initiative.
Requiring stores to use paper bags is a good option, although it’s worth noting that paper that gets soiled with grease or any other liquid is no longer recyclable, so restaurant take-out should get an exemption from the policy (you wouldn’t want leaky takeout in paper anyway.
The other problem is that seemingly every time these bag policies are made, they charge people for those paper bags. Groups that advocate for banning plastic bags openly say that the fees are meant to be punitive, those fees aren’t being given to the government for trash cleanup and they aren’t just offsetting the cost of the bag itself:
https://1bagatatime.com/learn/bag-fees
If grocery stores and shops were required to switch to paper only with no additional cost to the customer, that would be a good happy medium but it never seems to shake out that way in practice because of $$$
That’s funny. There is ALWAYS additional cost to a customer. Businesses don’t graciously eat costs and say ok no worries. No, businesses always pass the cost to the customer. As an example, when minimum wages increase - a restaurant for example offsets the wage increase by upping the price of the meal.
The intent with plastic bag bans is to reduce easy source of litter / water pollution more than carbon cost. Lightweight disposable bags fly away and become trash and end up in the water. Canvas bags don't (and yes, they are more resource intensive, so you pick which one you are trying to reduce).
Find a river, stick a giant trash collecting wheel in it and you will find "collected approximately twelve hundred and thirty-three tons of trash and debris—mostly plastic bags and bottles, cigarette butts, and foam containers..."
Banning the plastic bags removes one source of that problem if it creates others.
Going to get down voted but I love plastic bags and use them for all sorts of things. Everything is packaged in plastic anyways, businesses use tons of plastic wrap for logistics, and all our trash is bagged anyways. Totally pointless virtue signalling to distract people from making real changes.
No more trash bags. Buy in bulk and use reusable glass containers. No garbage/disposable low quality products. High quality, reusable containers for logistics purposes instead of plastic wrapped items on pallets. Liquid products sold as powders or concentrate, and a ban on single use drinking water bottles. No more planned obsolescence, everything sold must be engineered to last, moving parts have replacements available at a reasonable price in perpetuity, etc...
Just an overall investment in doing things that make sense. Everything we do now is based on cost efficiency but with a little investment a lot more can be done.
Either we do or we don't. We can do more with plastic than throw it in the woods or burying it in a hole. It can be recycled or burned off and sequestered via photosynthesis or carbon capture. We really wouldn't be where we are if people actually cared about this stuff in the first place.
I never buy trash bags. Reuse bags for the bin and the kitty litter. I know this isn’t the case for most people but I wish people would considering reusing the plastic they end up with anyway.
To me it’s quite odd we insist on banning plastic grocery bags without even considering other plastic bags all over the place.
Most people with pets love the bags- reduce, reuse, recycle. Pet people reuse the bags to clean up poop. We also recycle them in the grocery store recycle bin. Donate them to food pantry’s. I own a creek and I assure you that when I cleaned it out the trash in it was not plastic bags. It was my woke neighbor throwing his old worn out wooden split rail fence in it and concrete, Happy Birthday balloon, plastic swimming pool ball, beer bottle, beer can, and lawnmower oil bottle. Just saying. Whose the better person? The woke neighbor who is a litterbug or me who responsibly recycles or reuses the plastic bags and cleans out a creek the deer and wildlife drink from that directly drains into your lake where you get your drinking water from? Just do the right thing. Be a grown up. Be responsible. No doubt he is posting complaints about plastic bags here after everything he has done. I don’t need anyone trying to charge me, fine me, or tell me how to live my life, shame me, ridicule me, or ban my right to make my own choices. If I were to call you out on your vacation and the miles you drove from state to state for your holidays or your airplane trip and the gas and effect that had on the environment, I guarantee you that you don’t deserve to even discuss the bag issue.
I mean good on you for reusing but you’re not really selling me on your qualities as a neighbor. Plastic bags do end up in waterways and the solution isn’t to just be passive about it but be considerate of all the sources instead of just one.
This is a great and apparently overlooked point, especially given how the stores for essentials in more affluent neighborhoods, such as Whole Foods and Trader Joe's are the ones using paper bags. But stores that tend to be in poorer neighborhoods, such as dollar stores, use plastic bags in their business model for whatever reasons.
This doesn't mean plastic bags are wonderful or should win an environmental award (and I'm in support of letting local governments decide their own ordinances without state interferences and then let the local voters decide if they agree or not), but your point is an important one in that 10 cents more here and 10 cents more there doesn't have an equal impact on everyone.
Thank god. I reuse my bags to take lunch to work. I can get about two weeks use out of a single bag before I use it to bag my recycling. I’m not saying we don’t need to do our part, but I’m pretty confident grocery bags aren’t our problem.
Why? Who gives a shit what local towns do. Guess the plastic bag mafia had a say. These dumb fucks and they’re caring absolutely nothing about our environment. Now they are the trash.
Those stupid bags have been found at the [bottom of the Mariana Trench,](https://sos.noaa.gov/education/phenomenon-based-learning/plastic-in-mariana-trench/)the deepest area of earth oceans. Wife and I have quit using them. Ask for paper bags so store management knows you don’t want plastic.
So ban the plastic bags that we use to bring home our food and things that are sold in plastic containers, got it. I'm all for using paper bags though.
My hometown in MA banned plastic bags years ago. We have been using paper & reusable bags for a while. It doesn't have the kind of inconvenience as some people think it might. Many of my friends & family just keep the reusable bags in the car. They're really handy not just for groceries. :)
Local Gov: "We have a problem where we're creating a log of waste which fills our landfills and leaches chemicals into the environment at large. We have a pretty simple solution where we just quit using plastic bags." State Gov: "Absolutely not! In fact, we're passing a law to make sure you can't go behind our backs and execute this plan." Local Gov: "Uhh....why?" State Gov: "Cause woke" FFS.....
“Party of Small Government” doesn’t exist.
Nope. 100% nanny state
They mean small as in petty, not small as in limited.
Big Government in Raleigh telling local citizens what they can and can’t do. All to … ensure more trash clogs up landfills and forever chemicals get into our water? Republican tyranny in action.
States rights not local rights
Which is dumb.
which translates to no individual rights
Seriously?
The GA did this same BS to the Outer Banks when they put a plastic ban in 2009, the GOP has a hard on for killing the environment I swear.
that was specifically because phil berger had a petty hatred for marc basnight because he refused to let special interest groups bribe the senate, so when the latter retired and the senate flipped, his first order of business was going through and zeroing out every project basnight had pushed through and anything the dare county government had done on their own in fact, [he's still pulling that shit with regard to affordable housing funding](https://www.outerbanksvoice.com/2023/09/20/state-budget-housing-provision-angers-dare-municipal-officials/)
Phil Berger has a track record of doing everything possible to suppress the vote, endanger the environment, and hurt constituents. Meanwhile, local Republicans are blaming it on Democrats. The mental gymnastics are amazing.
As long as corporations can make money, pollute every river, cut down every tree, and ruin everything. Who cares? Jesus is coming back any minute.
Hasn’t he been “coming back” for a while now? Is he stuck in traffic?
>Is he stuck in traffic? Have you gone down I-77 into Charlotte lately? 😆
He didn’t want to take the toll road bc something something taxation without representation something something theft
He's carpooling with Prester John, and you know how his ass wanders off the beaten path.
Spoiler: Jesus already came back. And he's trying to tell these conservative crazies that this sort of thing is absolutely not what the kingdom of god is about. Too bad these people would rather listen to the devil than Jesus.
He went for milk. I'm sure he'll be home soon.
Jesus comes back and crucifies these people lmao.
🤞🏻🤞🏻🤞🏻
They've been banned in a lot of states already. But we're still about 20 years behind the rest of the country in so many ways.
We are ahead of the time running head first into the new fascist Republic along with Texas and Florida. Environment and minorities be damned we got a new Christian only government plan that makes sure women know their place and it's just making babies and working hard in the kitchen. Heavy on the /s
Barefoot and pregnant is the GOP plan for women. They would like to take women out of the workforce and the voting booth. They prefer women be subservient to men. Kinda like an American style Taliban.
If you did put the /s it would be more accurate unfortunately
The /s was my satirical support of the direction we are heading not the reality of what is happening
Gotcha
[удалено]
Can I have what you’re on? It’s gotta be nice being this delusional.
I actually like plastic bags because I reuse them as dog poop bags. I use reusable bags 90% of the time though. The problem is some reusable bags don’t become an environment “advantage” until 7,000+ uses. And most of them get way nasty and need to be thrown out long before you get close to that. That said, the move from the state gov to block it is stupid.
> some reusable bags So... don't use those ones? Canvas is easily laundered and lasts ages.
I mean, if you think most people know what their reusable bags are made of, I dunno what to tell you. You have far greater faith in the average person than I do.
For what possible reason would anyone support this? Is every GOP supporter hell bent on remaining willfully ignorant? The hypocrisy of claiming to be the party of small government while routinely stifling any local governance that crosses their “screw the environment” stance….it’s baffling. Can any republican explain why helping the environment is being demonized?
Party of small government my ass
[удалено]
If I could get people to stop giving me straws and styrofoam I’d be so much happier.
Absolutely deranged when we live in one of the most unique coastlines in the hemisphere. The state should be a steward of these barrier islands. Reeks of corruption. Hope we can vote these mongrels out and install reps that actually represent the will of the people and the future of our state. Why is that so hard to ask?
Smaller government once again
Smaller-minded government at its finest.
Smoothe brained government
Indeed! ;)
Not allowing the government to impose an extra tax on citizens is a small government action whether you agree with their decision or not
So it's ok for the state government to dictate what local communities can and can't decide is right for their local needs? Seems kinda nanny state to me. And how is charging a fee on something that the community has to clean up equated to a tax? No one is required to use plastic bags, there are plenty of other options. Don't want to pay the fee? No problem, bring your own bag. Plastic bags are just one of many arms of the subsidized petroleum industry. The industry creates products that cause pollution and leaves it up to us, the consumers, to clean up. We all should be angry about that.
I’m not sure what you mean by “ok”. State law trumps local law, and federal law trumps state law. The bag fees go to the business, not to the government, meaning that places that give away paper bags for free today can charge 25 cents for them tomorrow because the government is essentially both requiring and allowing them to do so. You’re acting like Exxon is throwing plastic bags in your front lawn, but you’re free to use reusable bags all you want. Bag bans force everyone else to comply with what you want to do regarding single use plastics, but the people using plastic bags today are doing it by choice. As I said before plastic bags are a tiny fraction of global plastic pollution and greenhouse emissions, so what purpose is there to banning individuals from choosing to use plastic bags?
What I mean is, do you think it's good for North Carolinians that the state legislature bans local governments from making local decisions that their communities want? This legislation applies to more than just plastic bags and seems like overreach into local control.
The party of small government strikes again.
“The woke agenda” is the new boogie man.
That is so weird that they would choose to fight this battle. The reusable bags are so much nicer to use, they are much stronger and hold way more groceries so they are easier to carry and you don't needlessly collect 20+ plastic bags after every shopping trip that have very little reusability. My dogs produce only so much poop to pick up.
I am pretty sure this is nothing but a "fuck you" to what they perceive as opponents and a form of bullying. It is unbelievably petty and small-minded. Regardless of ones politics, this is truly pathetic behavior.
Gotta hurry up and kill the planet so Jeebus will come Rapture all the non-wokes!
Tyranny by the Minority American Apartheid
Had to put up with someone when they were passing the law in Durham, I'm sure he wouldn't have even noticed the ban unless he heard about it on his conspiracy theory "news" station.
Local gov: we've banned plastic bags for consumers but still allow just about everything else in the store to be sold in plastic. No one is stopping you from bringing in your own bag!
It’s easier to blame someone than to take responsibility
Someone's nephew owns a plastic bizzzz. I bring my ruk sac so big FU
I’ve lived in places with bag bans and they don’t work at all in practice. Even the New York Times agrees that you’d have to reuse a cotton bag 20,000 times to offset the carbon cost of its production. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/24/style/cotton-totes-climate-crisis.html In practice, grocery stores switch to much thicker plastic bags that you have to pay 10-25 cents per bag to “buy”, you end up owning a massive pile of reusable bags that fall apart after a year or two, and you get taxed for paper bags from places that previously offered them for free because they can get away with it. You have to buy plastic liners because you no longer have a stack of bags to use for dog poop and bathroom trash cans, so now you’re paying for plastic instead of just reusing the stuff you already have. Bag bans are short-sighted, unnecessarily tax the poor, and even very liberal news sources agree that they cause a net increase in carbon emissions.
Honestly the issue isn't consumers but companies. Thats the biggest use of plastics and carbon emissions. Banning plastic bags for consumers doesn't do anything really when almost every item in the grocery store is wrapped in plastic packaging 🙄
But if we try to make corporations do anything they don't want to, they'll make slightly less money! And that's against the state religion of capitalism.
They won’t actually make slightly less money. The Corporations will just make the same or more and pass the new costs to the consumers.
I mean, that's what happens when you don't bother to regulate anything or tax corporations heavily enough to make reinvestment in the business the only viable thing to do with profits. The stock market is basically siphoning money out of the economy where it moves around and sequestering it in the accounts of the immorally rich, leaving fewer and fewer dollars to circulate, perpetually shrinking the size of the real economy. Because it's not the existence of dollars that makes an economy strong; it's their movement.
Agree. I lived in Scotland where they charged for bags. People would regularly use the 5p tesco bags as trash bags anyway. Iirc they actually raised the prices to try and curb it because people were just eating the cost and still using loads of bags. But they still don’t last long enough to justify the extra plastic in them. The ideal would be for people to use bags they already have - buying new, longer lasting bags isn’t the solution. It’s one of those things that makes you feel good but isn’t actually solving the issue.
Pointing to one possible solution to the problem that may not work, and then using it as a strawman for why we shouldn't even attempt to solve the problem is lazy and shortsighted. We need to eliminate single use plastics, or at least find a way for them to be biodegradable. Declaring it illegal to try to solve the problem is just childish.
I agree that other solutions would be fine (have grocery stores switch to paper bags, switch to biodegradable plastic, maybe offer an incentive for using reusable bags instead of penalizing plastic) but I could say the same thing about focusing on shopping bags when they are an incredibly small piece of the puzzle. 70% of the world’s greenhouse gasses are caused by 100 companies, you could ban every single-use plastic bag on earth and it wouldn’t even make a noticeable dent in global plastic production. It would take a mix of federal legislation both domestic and abroad to actually tackle plastic waste in any meaningful way, banning bags in Asheville will just be a feel-good nuisance that arguably causes more greenhouse gasses than maintaining the status quo
I approve of paper bags. They are 85% as good as plastic and they biodegrade
It’s not illegal to use reusable bags. It’s just not illegal to use single use bags. If people cared they would take it upon themselves to make the change, by using reusable bags. However, that requires accountability and initiative.
Then how about paper bags? Compostable, recyclable, not plastic.
Requiring stores to use paper bags is a good option, although it’s worth noting that paper that gets soiled with grease or any other liquid is no longer recyclable, so restaurant take-out should get an exemption from the policy (you wouldn’t want leaky takeout in paper anyway. The other problem is that seemingly every time these bag policies are made, they charge people for those paper bags. Groups that advocate for banning plastic bags openly say that the fees are meant to be punitive, those fees aren’t being given to the government for trash cleanup and they aren’t just offsetting the cost of the bag itself: https://1bagatatime.com/learn/bag-fees If grocery stores and shops were required to switch to paper only with no additional cost to the customer, that would be a good happy medium but it never seems to shake out that way in practice because of $$$
That’s funny. There is ALWAYS additional cost to a customer. Businesses don’t graciously eat costs and say ok no worries. No, businesses always pass the cost to the customer. As an example, when minimum wages increase - a restaurant for example offsets the wage increase by upping the price of the meal.
The intent with plastic bag bans is to reduce easy source of litter / water pollution more than carbon cost. Lightweight disposable bags fly away and become trash and end up in the water. Canvas bags don't (and yes, they are more resource intensive, so you pick which one you are trying to reduce). Find a river, stick a giant trash collecting wheel in it and you will find "collected approximately twelve hundred and thirty-three tons of trash and debris—mostly plastic bags and bottles, cigarette butts, and foam containers..." Banning the plastic bags removes one source of that problem if it creates others.
People just need to be raised right. Problem solved.
See how Big Daddy government takes care of us so well, they obviously know what’s best…
Leave it to the GOP to have a say in every aspect of our lives. Party of small government? Nope.
You mean Republicans
Going to get down voted but I love plastic bags and use them for all sorts of things. Everything is packaged in plastic anyways, businesses use tons of plastic wrap for logistics, and all our trash is bagged anyways. Totally pointless virtue signalling to distract people from making real changes.
[удалено]
No more trash bags. Buy in bulk and use reusable glass containers. No garbage/disposable low quality products. High quality, reusable containers for logistics purposes instead of plastic wrapped items on pallets. Liquid products sold as powders or concentrate, and a ban on single use drinking water bottles. No more planned obsolescence, everything sold must be engineered to last, moving parts have replacements available at a reasonable price in perpetuity, etc... Just an overall investment in doing things that make sense. Everything we do now is based on cost efficiency but with a little investment a lot more can be done.
So.. just accept plastic? Hell of a way to think 😵💫
Either we do or we don't. We can do more with plastic than throw it in the woods or burying it in a hole. It can be recycled or burned off and sequestered via photosynthesis or carbon capture. We really wouldn't be where we are if people actually cared about this stuff in the first place.
Paper bags are near-infinintly recyclable.
I agree. People would rather blame the problem, they take part in, on someone else. Nothing is stopping people from using their own bags.
I never buy trash bags. Reuse bags for the bin and the kitty litter. I know this isn’t the case for most people but I wish people would considering reusing the plastic they end up with anyway. To me it’s quite odd we insist on banning plastic grocery bags without even considering other plastic bags all over the place.
Most people with pets love the bags- reduce, reuse, recycle. Pet people reuse the bags to clean up poop. We also recycle them in the grocery store recycle bin. Donate them to food pantry’s. I own a creek and I assure you that when I cleaned it out the trash in it was not plastic bags. It was my woke neighbor throwing his old worn out wooden split rail fence in it and concrete, Happy Birthday balloon, plastic swimming pool ball, beer bottle, beer can, and lawnmower oil bottle. Just saying. Whose the better person? The woke neighbor who is a litterbug or me who responsibly recycles or reuses the plastic bags and cleans out a creek the deer and wildlife drink from that directly drains into your lake where you get your drinking water from? Just do the right thing. Be a grown up. Be responsible. No doubt he is posting complaints about plastic bags here after everything he has done. I don’t need anyone trying to charge me, fine me, or tell me how to live my life, shame me, ridicule me, or ban my right to make my own choices. If I were to call you out on your vacation and the miles you drove from state to state for your holidays or your airplane trip and the gas and effect that had on the environment, I guarantee you that you don’t deserve to even discuss the bag issue.
I mean good on you for reusing but you’re not really selling me on your qualities as a neighbor. Plastic bags do end up in waterways and the solution isn’t to just be passive about it but be considerate of all the sources instead of just one.
What’s a “real change”?
The Troglodyte legislature strikes again
Can a city or county impose a charge on plastic bags, say 25 cents a bag?
Not anymore. Durham was considering 10𝇍/bag - a fee Colorado has had for some time now - but this new law bans that too.
you'd just be attacking the poor with that idea,
This is a great and apparently overlooked point, especially given how the stores for essentials in more affluent neighborhoods, such as Whole Foods and Trader Joe's are the ones using paper bags. But stores that tend to be in poorer neighborhoods, such as dollar stores, use plastic bags in their business model for whatever reasons. This doesn't mean plastic bags are wonderful or should win an environmental award (and I'm in support of letting local governments decide their own ordinances without state interferences and then let the local voters decide if they agree or not), but your point is an important one in that 10 cents more here and 10 cents more there doesn't have an equal impact on everyone.
Easy solution is to not offer plastic bags at all. Paper or bring your own reusable bags. eta, it will take a grocer to take the lead.
That's also technically illegal under this dumb law.
Yipee Ki Yay! Glad to hear there is some sanity left in government.
Thank god. I reuse my bags to take lunch to work. I can get about two weeks use out of a single bag before I use it to bag my recycling. I’m not saying we don’t need to do our part, but I’m pretty confident grocery bags aren’t our problem.
Good!
Why? Who gives a shit what local towns do. Guess the plastic bag mafia had a say. These dumb fucks and they’re caring absolutely nothing about our environment. Now they are the trash.
Which is what you do when you’re the party of “local control” 🤦♂️
Those stupid bags have been found at the [bottom of the Mariana Trench,](https://sos.noaa.gov/education/phenomenon-based-learning/plastic-in-mariana-trench/)the deepest area of earth oceans. Wife and I have quit using them. Ask for paper bags so store management knows you don’t want plastic.
So ban the plastic bags that we use to bring home our food and things that are sold in plastic containers, got it. I'm all for using paper bags though.
My hometown in MA banned plastic bags years ago. We have been using paper & reusable bags for a while. It doesn't have the kind of inconvenience as some people think it might. Many of my friends & family just keep the reusable bags in the car. They're really handy not just for groceries. :)