June 9th, 2019 : Bag Bashing

[xoxoxoBruce]

When people believe they re doing the right thing they tend to look down their nose at anyone not in step with them
You know vegans look down on vegetarians, who look down on omnivores, who lord it over cannibals.
Tap water drinkers cast a jaundiced eye at bottled water suckers, reusable grocery baggers give the stink eye to single use bag toters.

While some people may scowl at the sight of a plastic bag, they usually aren’t doing so because of what’s written on it. That’s the not the case with the latest batch of bags being handed out at a Vancouver market on Main Street. In an attempt to discourage people from using single-use plastics, these plastic bags are printed with large embarrassing designs.

Located on Main Street and King Edward Avenue, East West Market is an independent grocery store specializing in gourmet goods and locally-sourced products. They’ve been serving the community since 1996, and hope to encourage customers to bring their reusable bags when they go shopping. “So many people own reusable bags but forget to bring them,” said David Lee Kwen, East West’s owner, “We want to help customers remember their reusable bags in a way that will really stick with them.”

Currently, East West charges customers five cents per embarrassing plastic bag that they take. They plan to continue handing out the specialty bags for the foreseeable future, but note that they’d rather no one take them. Instead, they hope to start a conversation about single-use plastic bags, as well as influence shoppers to bring their own bags – whether they are shopping at East West or somewhere else.

I wish I could get those bags, I love ‘em.

The proliferation of plastic products in the last several decades has been extraordinary. Quite simply, humans are addicted to this nearly indestructible material. We are producing over 300 million tons of plastic every year, 50% of which is for single-use purposes – utilized for just a few moments, but on the planet for at least several hundred years. More than 8 million tons of plastic is dumped into our oceans every year.
Packaging is the largest end-use market segment accounting for just over 40% of total plastic usage.
Annually approximately 500 billion plastic bags are used worldwide. More than one million bags are used every minute. A plastic bag has an average “working life” of 15 minutes.
Over the last ten years we have produced more plastic than during the whole of the last century.
Beverage Bottles Alone
According to the Container Recycling Institute, 100.7 billion plastic beverage bottles were sold in the U.S. in 2014, or 315 bottles per person. 57% of those units were plastic water bottles: 57.3 billion sold in 2014. This is up from 3.8 billion plastic water bottles sold in 1996, the earliest year for available data.
The process of producing bottled water requires around 6 times as much water per bottle as there is in the container.
14% of all litter comes from beverage containers. When caps and labels are considered, the number is higher.

Yada, yada, yada... You’ve heard it all before.
Consider yourself edumacated, chastised, and forgiven for past sins, so go forth and be fruitful.
Doxology.

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[Carruthers]

Anyone would have thought that the sun had refused to rise when Tesco announced that they would start charging 5p (6c) for every plastic carrier bag supplied at the checkout.

The prospect of having to take your own bags was just too much for some.

As a kid I was often sent to the corner shop with a shopping bag and a list with the money wrapped up in it.

I remember one embarrassing incident when, being of an inquiring scientific mind, I decided to demonstrate centrifugal force to myself.

On the way back from the shop I hurled the bag around in a circle at arm's length fully expecting the contents to remain in the bag.

You're ahead of me now, aren't you? Unfortunately I hadn't managed to wind up to the required speed and most of the shopping fell to the ground, including half a dozen eggs.

I found some difficulty explaining that when I returned home.


ETA...

[sexobon]

Seeing as it's important to reuse things:

I'll be ready with one of these green skinned, Orion slave girl (a.k.a. Orion animal women), mudflap girl shopping bags.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Great way to spread Salmonella and it's friends.

[Undertoad]

But the canvas bag is sturdy enough to hold more stuff, like all the plastic water and milk and soda and shampoo and yogurt and peanut butter and mustard and

[xoxoxoBruce]

Then have it dry cleaned... or spread those germs to the rest of your laundry.
Man starves to death awaiting laundry day.

[sexobon]

Nawww, buy an autoclave. Use your pressure cooker if you have to. Spray it with Lysol between sterilizations.

Buy stock in companies that make those things.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Man who starved to death waiting for laundry day worth millions in Autoclave, canvas bag maker, and Lysol, stocks.

[Happy Monkey]

The Orion slaves are from Star Trek, and look human, except for being green. That's a Twi'Lek (with the head tentacles), one of the slaves from Jabba's palace in Return of the Jedi.

[sexobon]

I know, I got the image from here.

But it was close enough for Cellar work and who's to say they're not related.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Could be just green with envy.

[SPUCK]

5 cents!! Cripes! it's been 25 cents here forever.

A pathologist I was listening to said sooner or later there will be a disaster caused by reusable cloth bags. She said they're perfect for spreading pathogens. Hello ZA.

I hate cloth bags because they're so hard to load since they're all loose and sloppy.

We also exclusively use paper bags as our kitchen garbage bags. They aren't plastic, they decompose and don't need to be washed. Now we buy them in bales of 500.

[Glinda]

I the plastic grocery bags. I reuse them daily, primarily to collect the lumps from the kitty litter pans. One day soon, Washington is going to ban them, so I've started a stockpile. They're taking up a lot of room in my pantry, but I'm not giving them up until they pry them from my cold, dead hands.

I don't do the plastic water bottle thing. I call that an even trade-off.

[Gravdigr]

They line all our trash cans, except the kitchen.