Stop US dependance on oil, lower Gas prices

Well, either self-righteous or an aggressive recycling program which has to address the high ratio of people to available land issue.

I'd imagine that engineering a waste program for a city that large would be quite a nightmare.

you know, between this and the other thread, youre starting to sound a little smug yourself.

the gov't/recyclers claim that anything above a 2 is not cost efficient to recycle. but we need a government initiative or something to find cost effective uses for these recycled plastics, and get companies to start using them.

ive looked into shipping my class 5 plastics somewhere else (there are ads on the net for multi colored post consumer use class 5 plastics or what not but theyre all in Wisconsin it seems) but at this point, they pay something like 61 cents per pound, and some only take in units of 100o lbs or more.

any other alternatives would be welcomed in this thread.

Cost-effectiveness has never been cited as the reason for implementing recycling in California. It has never been a criterion that the City of San Francisco would make money, or break even, or lose only a certain amount of money, on its recycling program. The purpose of the recycling program is to meet legally-mandated as well as public policy goals, regardless of the expense or inconvenience.

The rule has been passed by a bunch of smug, pandering nimcompoops (no one has ever disputed that the SF Board of Supervisors is more about patronage, infighting, and graft than effective and efficient government) who won't let their maids line trash bins with plastic Safeway bags, and who haven't had a handle come off a Whole Foods or TJ's paper bag because they haven't bought their own groceries in years.

If they wanted to make a positive difference, these idiotfucks would spend some time persuading MUNI to install bike racks on light rail, or for that matter, try to get a train or bus that has a 10 minute schedule reliably run more than once every half hour.

Whatever.

But in response, and I guess as a reaction to reprobate as well, this could involve consideration of a lot of variables. Obviously, just using paper bags has costs - they've been alluded to, including the chemicals used in the process of making them, shipping costs, and deforestation. But obviously, that needs to be weighed against stuff like the method of making plastic bags, the relative size of paper bags (maybe bigger paper bags = fewer bags used), the renewability of the resource we're talking about, relative biodegradability, and so on. It's not just as simple as saying that "since paper bags also have costs, they're just the same/as worse as plastic."

Effectively - this is an empirical question right, based off utility (though, then, th real debate is about how we'd define that)? Albeit a pretty complicated one.

I would still rather our government make attempts at solutions to improve our waste system and our oil consumption than to do nothing at all.

dkmfc, if you read the link provided in the original post, you would read that the current plastic bags used are not recyclable.

According to the story, this new program would reduce 1,400 tons of waste and save 140k barrels of oil a year. I know many people scoff at those numbers, but small improvements are better than no improvements.

Government doing something silly?


Shocking.

Unless the general public starts to care enough about this sort of thing that it is worth money to companies that deal with this sort of thing, I don't really see the private sector really dealing with an issue like this at all. And most people really don't care about this kind of thing. Hell, think of the amount of waste created by paper coffee cups. Yet people still use them when using your own reusable cup is normally about 50 or 75 cents cheaper than using the stores disposable cup, and keeps your coffee hot longer. Even the most expensive cup I have seen would pay for itself in a month or two at just one cup of coffee per day. If people are willing to throw that much money away just to save them the 15 seconds a day it takes to clean out a cup, I don't see them doing anything about shopping bags.

I was thinking more along the lines of grocery stores, paper companies, and companies that make plastic bags.

OK, I don't know how things work where you live - but I have NEVER seen anyone at a grocery store bringing in the last store-issued plastic bags and using them for a second time.

I do not believe that the majority (nor the minority) of people will do much towards recycling unless it's mandatory.

As of right now I save some of the plastic bags that we get from grocery shopping but they get used instead of buying the small trash bags. I will be completely honest....I wouldn't bother bringing those bags back to the grocery store to shop with again unless it was required.

We're a lazy country in general and we do not and will not do things unless we have to.

Be honest - when was the last time you re-used your plastic grocery bags at the store?

Sure.

Meaning "it's complicated", as opposed to "ban on bags = good."

So then why are you opposed to a program which makes the "lesser of two evils" even less evil?

It's almost like you want to oppose this program just for the sake of opposing it.

That was the point I seem to have failed to make. If consumers cared enough that it would cost those companies money, they would start to develop better alternatives. But your average consumer cares more about convenience than anything else, even price in a lot of cases.

How can using a bag made with either a corn or potato base waste more fuel and energy overall over the current plastic bags being used? You made that claim towards paper bags - not the new bags proposed by this ban.

This isn't about using paper bags over plastic bags.

Plastics here are marked if they are recyclable. That way they can be sorted and you get clean feedstock for the next use.

Well we could have tree farms. Growing trees for the purpose of becoming products just like nurseries grow plants for sale.

in germany the plastic bags at all the big chains are 25 cents. they are for the most part thick sturdy plastic bags with handles. people bring them back to the store until they are seriously falling apart. i think the charge makes people use them over and over again.

you also pack your own groceries so you don't have to struggle with the person bagging them. and every time i go to the grocery store there are people with bags from different stores.

somehow the whole thing works.

It's about time local governments decided to do something and stop just heaping all the responsibility on the federal government.

Federal government is too fucking big and has too much fucking control as it is, why are hippies always begging to give it more?

This happens in the UK. It's been a bad idea here, ecologically. OTOH, it might have saved some genuinely wild forest somewhere, for a few years.

I suppose if companies were to actually use biodegradable plastic bags this wouldn't be so bad. But plastic bags are often much more viable for me to use as a pedestrian/user of public transit. A wide variety of paper bags are made without handles or with handles that are too narrow, such that the entire weight of the bag digs into your hand along one very skinny point of pressure, which hurts like hell. I can't use Target's paper bags for the latter reason. When they do have handles that are broad enough, they tend to be attached after production of the main bag in a way that not infrequently tears right off in transit. And if there's any precipitation, paper bags get wet and soggy and if there's anything very heavy inside they tend to lose structural cohesion and dump their contents all over. Furthermore, paper bags have a much more defined shape that makes it awkward to carry more than two of them at a time. My grocery shopping tends to run to three or four bags, something that necessitates at least one plastic bag at the best of times.