Grocery Store plastic bags
 

I am amazed that Florida still allows the use of plastic bags in grocery stores. So many other states have banned it. We now have microplastics (very small plastic particles) in our agriculture soil, ocean and just about anywhere you can think of. There are so many studies that verify the dangers of plastics and I cringe every time I go to the grocery store and see 10-20-30 plastic bags per cart. Just one Publics said they can go through thousands of plastic bags in a day. Here is one link that talks about how serious this problem has gotten. It's our new DDT.How microplastics are infiltrating the food you eat . There are now studies beiing done of earthworms ingesting micro-plastics. ScienceDirect

This will be interesting

Are there more microplastics in the food chain or have we gotten better at detecting them and picked this as the next focus for our hysteria?

It’s not just plastic bags it’s all plastics. We have abandoned recycling in The Villages opting to burn plastics trash to energy.

All Villages trash is transported to the Covanta Lake II, Inc. Energy from Waste (EfW) facility in Okahumpka, Florida where it is burned and turned into energy. This plant produces enough electricity to power more than one million homes annually, while reducing the amount of methane, a greenhouse gas that would otherwise be produced by the trash going to landfills and that is more than 28 times as potent as carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere, to zero. The site diverts 21 million tons of waste annually from landfills, while at the same time recycling 1.1 million tons of material, of which 550,000 tons are metals, annually. It does this in an essentially clean manner: Over 99.9 percent of what is discharged into the air is what is typically find in air - water vapor, nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon dioxide. The remaining constituents are well below federal and state standards. (from the Covanta website).

Looks as if our plastics are being put to very good use.

I needed this one. Thank you for posting this topic. The problem is most stores that have adopted paper over plastic, are not giving you the same integrity of paper like when you grew up. Its recycled and has no durability. There are composite 'plastic' bags available also of recycled material that can handle groceries. How many people I see playing 52 pickup in the parking lots of food chains. Ridiculous. And they charge you for the privilege! To me the cost of any bag should be the cost of doing business...borne by the business. Since I feel I'm a responsible person, I look for stores that offer the recycled plastic option....and dont charge. Strictly on principle. And no, I'm all set with bringing my own bags in...

If I don't get my daily plastic fix I go into withdrawal. Just another thing to complain about.

No big deal, just take reusable bags with me into the store.

Commissary’s uses paper to bag their groceries, bags are free, but……..

You TIP the person who bags them.

My guess is those who loathe buying a plastic bag may stiff the person (usually a military teen) who is a volunteer, and tips are their only reward.

We not only have them bag (you will never see a more efficient packed bag in your life) they take groceries to your car load as effectively as their bagging skills.

We tip $10, much more than the .10 everyone is so unhappy to buy.

Then again .10 if I forgot enough bags, or $10 to bag, not a dealbreaker for us

I did not see it as a complaint but more a concern. The Covanta site about trash burning is an interesting read. Apparently, we do not embrace trash burning while Europe does. (According the HuffPost article linked from the Covanta site).

We’ve gotten better at detecting them. Not sure I’d call it hysteria, just clarification on what impact plastic has on us, our environment and future generations.

The oil and gas industry pulled the wool over our eyes by making us believe that plastic was so much better than paper. Here we are 20 years later with all types of particulates floating in our oceans and blood streams. It’s bad for the environment, no matter how you look at it.

Thanks to the OP for posting it. I’ve brought my own bags to the grocery stores for years instead of using plastic ones provided. Europeans have been doing it for decades.

I hope that more people will understand how harmful plastic is to the environment. Future generations will look back upon us and wonder how we could be so stupid.

I hope your not still using Teflon cookware….thats more crap that’s poisoned us….

If they are a volunteer, why would they expect a tip? And why do you feel obligated to offer one? Very generous of you, but seems contrary to the spirit of volunteer work.

Is my 20 year old cast iron skillet ok?

It's probably a legitimate concern, but I agree with your premise that there always seems to be a hysteria du jour. I think the elites like distracting us from their corruption, forever wars and money printing with scary scenarios to concern ourselves with.

Question

Truthfully, I am not concerned about the environment. I use the free plastic bags at Publix and throw them away. But, I am not a snowbird who heats, cools, and maintains two houses year round. I don't have anything against snowbirds, but isn't that worse for the environment than using plastic grocery bags?

I'm amazed that "other states" ban them. And by "other states" I assume it's California (no surprise there). Thank God Florida has some rational lawmakers. The Graduate, 1967, "I want to say one word to you, Benjamin. Just one word.---Plastics"
Or more germane to that post, "Chicken Little, the sky is falling" :1rotfl::1rotfl::1rotfl:

If you don't tip, you can't go on message boards and tell everyone how much you tip!
Actually, you could. Makes one wonder how much virtue signaling is made up.

Like the OP?????

1. People can bring their own bags to the store.
2. They can also stop nosing around with what other people are doing.


Virtue signaling & living a happier life. :pepper2::pepper2::pepper2:

But how can we pick up dog and cat poop without plastic bags!!

Good point.

Also without plastic bags, how would we carry all the food that is packaged in plastic?
The plastic bag weighs about 6 grams, but can hold 1000x its own weight. You can eliminate a few grams of plastic by bringing a reusable bag, but I don't think anyone wants to be buying their groceries in a reused (not recycled, reused) package

You should be using the bags that the Daily Sun comes in every day for the dogs. That's good for at least 1 poop every day!

I do re-use those plastic grocery bags to clean the little box for my cat. And I use an unscented clay-based litter, which makes the litter itself biodegradable and non-toxic to the environment (the cat's waste is - toxic. But the litter is not).

If I didn't have a cat, I'd always use re-usable bags I bring from home (I have several and do use the thermal one often).

Also, Publix has bins where you can toss your unwanted plastic bags, and they recycle them. Their green plastic hand-baskets are made out of recycled plastic too.

Your cat's waste is toxic???? I suppose it is if he has Toxoplasma gondii. Otherwise, I doubt it amounts to much compared to many thousands of lions and tigers and bears (oh my, oh my:1rotfl::1rotfl::1rotfl:)

OP you are talking about the “dark ages”. I prefer plastic bags, especially if they are burnt in the garbage and reduce our energy bill. True recycling. Not only are plastic bags hygienic and convenient but I use them for all kinds of things at home that I can’t use paper bags for. I think we’ve got it right, here. The Villages is again ahead of everybody.

What’s the point of getting rid of plastic bags when so many of the products we put in those bags are in plastic containers? If it makes you feel better putting all those plastic containers in a paper bag go for it.

We have towns in MA that don’t allow plastic bags. So they put my laundry detergent (plastic jug), produce (plastic bags), vegetable oil (plastic container) and everything else packaged in plastic into a weak paper bag that’s hard to carry and tears open.

Not to mention, our eyeglasses are plastic, our shoes, our clothes, desks, cars have tons of plastic, computers are plastic, k-cups are plastic, aluminum cans are lined with plastic, windows, siding, picture frames, plugs. It's in everything.

I think plastic is a big problem. I just don’t see supermarket bags doing much at all.

But.......isn't burning trash to energy still recycling? The trash is recycled into energy. Isn't that STILL recycling the trash?

Not everybody studied science…

You took the words right out of my mouth. That is clean recycling. I still don't understand why people make comments that The Villages does not recycle anymore.

I think of that line from "The Graduate" every single time anyone brings up the subject of how damaging plastics are to our universe. It makes me chuckle.

Most likely a bit of both.

I never requested paper bags for groceries. The folds in the bags are where insects lay their eggs. Or so I have thought for many years of hearing that. I never want any paper bags in our home.

That is not the common definition of recycling. The common definition is recovering the material from an item so that it can be used again as that same material - re-cycling. Aluminum from cans can be reused as aluminum; glass from bottles can be reused as glass; plastics can be reused as plastics.

Our trash isn't recycled into energy, it is destroyed (burned) to extract energy. Except for some metals, the original material no longer exists to be reused.

I suppose if you insist on calling trash-to-energy a form of recycling then every engine that burns a petroleum product is also a recycling system that recycles oil into energy.

Yes, I think so. And it is particularly nice to have clean process as well. Energy has far more potential use than plastic. I guess “recycling” is a limited term indicating reuse. But the term has had a sort of an unwarranted halo attached to it. I do understand concern when plastics are not burnt but thrown into landfills and oceans. People can do better, and in our case, we do.

On the other hand, recycling plastics has always been iffy or problematic.

New report unveils what plastic makers knew about recycling : NPR

Generally, municpalities, ship the plastics collected in recycling bins (eventually) to third world countries, many of whom dump them in the oceans.

https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/wp-co...rToxic_ENG.pdf

Both these may be true; I didn't claim that recycling was better than burning. I only responded that "trash-to-energy" is not the common definition of the word "recycle."

Burning leaves various kinds of altered materials behind. Like wood fire in a fireplace leaves ashes and smoke and various gases, burnt trash leaves stuff, too. What kinds of stuff depends on what the trash consists of. So, the questions I have are, what does the waste from burning consist of (metals, glass, plastic gunk, ash)? Is any of the waste toxic or harmful to the environment in any way.? How is the residue or waste from burning disposed of. What happens to it?
Burning oil, coal, natural gas, to create energy produces some pretty nasty by products. What about trash? Just how clean ( or unclean) is it?

& I was responding to "plastics can be reused at plastics'.

you took the words right out of my mouth!!:1rotfl:

why, YES, it is!!! :bowdown: