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For urbanites without cars and transpo by walking, bike, scooter, bus, or subway, using plastic bag alternatives that do not fold up easily such as crates, boxes, coolers does not work. I for one, worked in the past in the city with poor and expensive parking, stopped to pick up a few bags of groceries at a frequent service train stop on the way home (time saver). Using alternative transportation, plastic bags with handles are more portable AND fit Most easily in a briefcase or a purse with limited space folded up whereas the other options do not. Thoughts that escape politicians who always drive.
For urbanites without cars and transpo by walking, bike, scooter, bus, or subway, using plastic bag alternatives that do not fold up easily such as crates, boxes, coolers does not work. I for one, worked in the past in the city with poor and expensive parking, stopped to pick up a few bags of groceries at a frequent service train stop on the way home (time saver). Using alternative transportation, plastic bags with handles are more portable AND fit Most easily in a briefcase or a purse with limited space folded up whereas the other options do not. Thoughts that escape politicians who always drive.
Having a car definitely increases your options and allows you to buy more in bulk. For walking and biking, I'd use a backpack. It's what I do when traveling to other countries where I don't have a car available.
For urbanites without cars and transpo by walking, bike, scooter, bus, or subway, using plastic bag alternatives that do not fold up easily such as crates, boxes, coolers does not work. I for one, worked in the past in the city with poor and expensive parking, stopped to pick up a few bags of groceries at a frequent service train stop on the way home (time saver). Using alternative transportation, plastic bags with handles are more portable AND fit Most easily in a briefcase or a purse with limited space folded up whereas the other options do not. Thoughts that escape politicians who always drive.
Get a back pack or handles for plastic bags. This is ancient history.
My grandmother had one of the drag along things and she used it to the hilt.
Beats the plastic bags that, when heavy, are very uncomfortable to carry.
I see old and young, women and men joyfully using them. Some have a cooler compartment for frozen stuff.
The bag tax doesn't apply where I live, fortunately, because I reuse all of those plastic bags and if I can't get them with my groceries, I'm going to have to start buying plastic bags. Nothing frugal or environmentally healthy about that.
For me, the re-usable bags are not sanitary. I have dogs in my car and the reusable bags soon get covered with dog hair that floats around me at the grocery store as I carry the bags through the store. They don't stand up well to washing and if we are helping out the environment, shouldn't that also include conserving water?
I don't know if it it true all over the country, but for the past couple of decades Oregon has grocery bags that are made with a content of corn starch and they disintegrate when exposed to sunlight.
At any rate, for a solution to the bag tax, I wouldn't bag my groceries, just put them back into the cart and have some sort of smallish boxes waiting in my car to transfer them into. Which I already do when I shop at Costco because they want to put my groceries into big boxes that are too heavy for me to carry and then I am stuck with disposing of the cardboard.
In my opinion, the bag tax is a feel good bandaid that doesn't help the environment much. Although it does make more sense than banning plastic straws.
If you want to get plastic out of the environment, the only thing that is going to work is to get China and Russia to stop dumping their garbage into the ocean. And good luck with that.
i've never been in a grocery store that cares where your bags come from. Come to think of it, I mostly use the self checkout so there isn't even anyone there to see what bag I'm using.
As for washing cloth bags, I can't remember the last time I did that. I use em til I lose em, or wear them out and throw them away. I prefer bags that stand up on their own so I mostly use cloth but recently have been getting plastic bags to use for the kitty litter. I suspect if I had to pay 5 cents for each bag, I would find a cheaper option for disposables.
The bag tax doesn't apply where I live, fortunately, because I reuse all of those plastic bags and if I can't get them with my groceries, I'm going to have to start buying plastic bags. Nothing frugal or environmentally healthy about that.
For me, the re-usable bags are not sanitary. I have dogs in my car and the reusable bags soon get covered with dog hair that floats around me at the grocery store as I carry the bags through the store. They don't stand up well to washing and if we are helping out the environment, shouldn't that also include conserving water?
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Same here, no bag mandates, we reuse every single one of the plastic grocery bags we get. If we didn't have them, we'd be buying bags for small trash can liners, messy kitchen waste, pet waste, etc.
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