- 4 days
If you forget the bag, go home and fetch it.
This gives you a while to be annoyed and frustrated, which helps you remember next time.
If you just buy a new bag, it’s such a non-issue that you never learn.
I used this technique and it fixed a year of bad habits in two trips.
- 4 days
You gptta just be stubborn as hell. Refuse the bag, take your cart to the car, and chuck it all in
- 4 days
It isn’t the case any more but there was a phase where my trunk was literally full, bottom to top not an inch to spare, of reusable bags, and they’d be forgotten.
It worked out nicely once though when I finally remembered and just grabbed a whole bag full of bags, and there was some Karen going off on the poor self checkout cashier girl about having to pay for her bags, and I was just like “here take whatever I got a trunk full”, and everyone was happy.
And then Albert Einstein clapped.
- 4 days
Gotta remember to put them back in the car after bringing groceries into the house though. Also what about second car?
- 4 days
Just need to have enough bags to support a slow “when you get to it” rotation. Bags stay in trunk (you might need to double the number of bags you have to support a second vehicle), then grab a bag of bags when going shopping, fill bags at store, empty and full ones go in trunk when leaving store, full bags go inside to wherever is most convenient, then when they are empty, place them near the door. Then, on some trip to the car, remember to grab the bags by the door and stick them into the trunk and you’ve completed one cycle for those bags.
If they get dirty, put them near the laundry instead of the door and either mix them in with another load of laundry or do them separately if you’re getting that many bags dirty often enough to justify a load of bags. If they aren’t specifically dirty, they should be fine. They aren’t like clothes where you’re slowly sweating and getting skin oils into them so need to wash them on the regular. Just turn them inside out to make sure the bits of onion skin all get washed out.
4 daysI have these nylon ones that scrunch into these tiny little bundles that I keep in my bag all the time. Can’t leave them behind without also leaving my wallet behind.
This is the Way.
If you don’t carry a purse or anything, you can tuck one in a pocket.
- 4 days
How do we know if these are actually a good thing for the environment? It seems like it’s at least possible the excess waste offsets the benefit.
- 4 days
If you have a reusable bag, it uses more plastic than like 100 individual bags, but it produces less waste that floats in the ocean or decays in a landfill.
- 4 days
Lived in my house for a few years and bought like 3 plastic bags in that time. We also took a few from my partners family when we moved in so we did start with some.
Stats show a vast drop in how many plastic bags are used just by charging a tiny bit of money for them. Plus by having a cost now it makes sense to make them better.
- 4 days
It’s a complex question to answer. But, basically reusable plastic > reusable cotton > plastic > paper
https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/sustainable-shoppingwhich-bag-best/
- 4 days
I know it’s obvious, but shouldn’t it be: reusable plastic > reusable cotton > single-use plastic > paper
- turtlesareneat@piefed.caEnglish4 days
The article briefly mentions this, but having lived in states with plastic bag bans, and states without - well drive through the countryside and count all the plastic bags in ditches, trees, streams. Paper might be more intensive to produce, but the lingering effects of plastic bags are being underestimated I think.
- 4 days
I always feel it’s so dishonest comparing the energy requirement between plastic and paper. Yes, paper takes a lot to produce, planting them, machinery for harvest, processing and so on. But energy is practically infinite with solar power. And while alive the trees are working as carbon capture, and when the bag gets thrown on the ground it puts the carbon back into the soil. I wonder how many paperbags have killed fish and turtles compared to plastic ones.
- 4 days
“energy is practically infinite with solar power” No it isn’t.
On Earth’s surface, sunlight is intermittent. Tall objects such as trees interrupt it, you’ll get to produce a small fraction of the power you expect for a few hours in the morning and evening and full power for about 4 hours in the mid-day. You need to figure out how to use it while you’ve got it, or store it for later. That gets bulky and expensive real quick.
- 4 days
Considering our current energy consumption, we need to capture about an hour of the Sun’s energy being intercepted by Earth.
There’s 8760 hours in a year, so if we can intercept one 8760th part (~0.0114%) of the energy thrown our way. We can power our current demand levels, sure it would require some massive batteries
But it’s not impossible to think the tech being able to develop into energy mining from the surface of the ocean. Which covers 70% of the entire surface and only experiences shade through clouds. Assuming solar could capture 10% of the energy concentrated at their location, we’d basically have energy covered for decades if we plastered 1% of our surface with it. Or 1.43% of the surface of our oceans.
That would allow us to consume 8.7 times more energy than today.
For reference, the silicon cells we use today capture in the ballpark of 15-22% of the sunlight they receive. So getting to an average of 10% is possible.
