People who are opposed to plastic bags claim two different problems:
1. They fill up landfills.
2. They litter the streets.
Both these alleged problems baffle me, because I cannot fathom how they could possibly happen in any appreciable quantities.
1. Everyone I know uses their plastic shopping bags as garbage bags, or to clean up after their pets. If they didn't use plastic shopping bags for this purpose, they'd have to purchase garbage bags for the same purpose, and the total amount of plastic that ends up in the landfill would be the same. (Some people have stopped getting plastic shopping bags since they introduced the five cent fee, but they buy plastic garbage bags instead so the total landfill plastic they are generating is still the same.)
But since people keep complaining about plastic bags in landfills, that would suggest that a significant number of people are bringing their purchases home in plastic bags, throwing the bags straight into the garbage, and presumably buying separate garbage bags for garbage and to clean up after their pets.
Who are these people? Why do they do it this way? Why do they not find plastic shopping bags suitable for their garbage and pet clean-up needs?
2. When you have a plastic shopping bag, it's because you've just purchased something and need a bag in which to carry it home. You need your plastic shopping bag the entire time you are outdoors, because it is being used to carry your purchase. Your need for the plastic bag doesn't stop until you get home. So how on earth does a plastic bag turn into litter?
I understand how litter happens - you cease to need one of the things you are carrying for whatever reason, it's more trouble than it's worth to carry a specific thing around until you encounter an appropriate receptacle. But I cannot picture any situation in which this might happen with a plastic bag. I cannot envision how you might cease to need the plastic bag that contains your shopping. Throwing a plastic bag on the ground makes as much sense as emptying your purse of its contents and throwing the purse on the ground. That just...doesn't happen.
But enough people to reach my ears are complaining about plastic bags being litter. So who are these people littering with plastic bags, and what kind of situations are they in that they're carrying a plastic bag but don't need it? Or does this mean our landfills don't work?
I'd really like to see some actual answers from the people who do these things, because I just cannot picture how they happen. It would also be interesting to know what percentage of the population does these things.
9 comments:
I think people accumulate many more plastic bags than they can re-use. Before I started using fabric bags, I used plastic bags for garbage, and still had dozens of unused bags every week. (We use the small produce bags for dog poop pickup, so that doesn't apply.)
Now that I buy kitchen garbage bags, we use a maximum of one of those per week, sometimes less. But we would have gotten 10 or 12 plastic bags at the grocery store that week. The net bag use isn't the same.
That's based on two people. If someone shops for a family of four or five and uses plastic bags, every week he or she gets way more bags than she can possibly re-use. This is assuming they are recycling, so not a lot goes in the garbage bag each week.
To me it seems pretty clear that these bags end up as litter, as I frequently see them flying around on windy days and stuck in trees and on fences.
A lot of the time the plastic bags you get for groceries have a hole in them, which makes them useless for compost, cat litter or any kind of wet/drippy garbage. They just go straight into the trash (or recycling, but apparently they're not as recyclable as one might hope).
And, yes, they're obviously litter -- you see them all over the place. And eventually some of them end up in the ocean.
But the question about the litter is how do they become litter? Under what circumstances are people outdoors and carrying an unwanted plastic bag?
You get the plastic bag from the store, full of your purchases. You need to take your purchases home or to whatever your other destination is, so you need the bag for your entire trip. Once you cease to need the bag, you're indoors. At no point in the process is it remotely convenient to ditch the bag, because then you'd have to carry your purchases in your hands (or juggle, like Mitch Hedberg and his nine apples). And if carrying your purchases in your hands was an acceptable solution, you wouldn't have taken the bag.
So what are the circumstances leading people to ditch plastic bags outdoors? What were they carrying in these bags that they needed to carry (and needed to carry in a bag) when they left their departure point, but ceased to need partway to their destination?
I cannot imagine any circumstances under which this might happen. Literally every time I've taken a plastic bag outdoors, I've needed to take it all the way to my destination. Literally every time I've ceased to need a plastic bag, I've been indoors.
Or is the problem somewhere in the waste management process? Did the bags escape from a dumpster or a garbage truck or a delivery truck or something?
There must be some kind of gap in some process that is either creating circumstances where it's convenient to ditch a plastic bag while outdoors, or is causing plastic bags to escape from the place where they're supposed to be. And someone really needs to investigate and figure out why and how this is happening so we can fix the actual root problem rather than just contenting ourselves with "they're litter", as though that's the final answer.
They become litter when people accumulate a large number of them, and they no longer want 100s of bags taking up room in their closet or under the sink, so they take a whole bunch of them and stuff them in the trash.
A certain amount of trash will always end up as litter, especially lightweight trash like plastic bags - when it's windy, or the sanitation workers drop some, or the person doesn't put their trash out neatly enough, or any combination of things.
Also, there are times when people use a bag one way but not both ways. Perhaps they're taking clothes to the drycleaner. The bag is filled with clothes, then the clothes go to the drycleaners. What happens to the empty bag? Maybe the person tosses it into a public trash can, and it blows away. Maybe the drycleaner tosses it careelssly. If someone in that exchange is distracted or uncaring or careless, that bag is likely to end up as litter.
I'm sure we could think of many similar scenarios.
So the real problem is not the plastic bag, but our waste disposal infrastructure.
I think the bag is the problem, being so lightweight and easily ripped, therefore easily becoming useless. You don't see fabric bags or the heavier bags you get at a shoe store flying or stuck in trees.
I like the 5 cents charge more than the ban, but I really like living as if the bags already have been banned in Mississauga.
(If this posts in duplicate, will you please delete the extras? Thanks.)
No, if the bags are escaping from waste receptacles or the waste management system, then the waste receptacles or the waste management system are the problem. Their whole job is to contain the waste properly. It's like if you have a toilet that can't handle flushing feces. The problem isn't the feces, it's the toilet, because it's whole job is to properly dispose of human waste.
Hmm. I don't know about that. Some things are difficult to dispose of and should be made differently. For example, I was floored when I learned that clear plastic isn't recyclable - containers that berries or tomatoes or salad comes in. That's not a fault of recycling programs, it's the fault of the how the plastics are made and which plastics companies use.
I don't understand why we don't use brown paper bags like we did when I was a kid (or like Whole Foods still does). They go right back into the organic waste stream. The proliferation of plastic bags was completely unnecessary in the first place. Maybe that's why to me the bag itself is to blame, because I remember there is another way.
How is paper anywhere near remotely sanitary? It would leak if you have any wet in it, it wouldn't contain the smells, it would probably make your garbage far more attractive to bugs...to say that using paper for garbage bags is acceptable because that's what people used to do is like saying using outhouses is acceptable because that's what people used to do.
Also, I question whether recyclability is a yes/no proposition. When I was a kid, plastic wasn't recyclable at all (at least not within my sphere of awareness). Now, some plastics are recyclable. Are those plastics definitely not recyclable at all ever under any circumstances? Or are they not recyclable because science hasn't figure out how yet? Or are they not recyclable because the recycling companies look at the money and say "Meh, not worth the effort."? I don't know the answer to this question.
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