2009.02.09
Plastic shopping bags will stay
Though the use of plastic bags made headlines last year because of environmental concerns, Virginia lawmakers aren't planning to get rid of these disposable bags available at grocery stores and other retailers. According to this story, legislation aimed at banning plastic shopping bags at state retailers was pulled late last week in the Virginia General Assembly.
Big-box retailers and supermarkets oppose a ban on plastic bags, because it would be too expensive to offer alternative bags. Instead, they're pushing consumers to recycle the plastic bags. There are bins at many local grocers, including Kroger, where you can place these bags for recycling.
Also, a growing number of retailers, from grocers to dollar stores, sell reusable canvas or mesh bags as alternative totes for consumers to carry purchases.
As a weird matter of timing, I actually just hauled off a bunch of these bags to Kroger on my lunch break to recycle them. We use the mesh bags when we do large shopping trips to cut down on the number of bags we get, but for small or impromptu trips we usually wind up with a bag or two. We use some of them for secondary uses in bathroom trash cans and for scooping cat litter, but recycle the ones we don't re-use.
Comment by Other John — February 9, 2009 @ 12:46 pm
that's interesting OJ because I actually do just the oposite. I have a few of the resusable bags (I keep one in my office, one in my car etc.) for when I make a quick trip to the store to pick up just a few items. But, when I go for my big grocery trip I just get the standard plastic bags because there is no way I would ever have that many bags on hand...nor would I want to lug them around (call me lazy but that's what it is).
But like you I use them for small household trash cans and take my load of extras to recycle at the store's bins.
Comment by HCS — February 9, 2009 @ 1:10 pm
I try to keep a bag handy for the small trips, but usually those trips are such that I just don't remember to grab the single bag I have laying around. We plan our large trips pretty well and keep our reusable bags stored on one of the reusable freezer bags and just grab that before we leave the house. We usually wind up with a few too many bags since they hold quite a lot, and we'll often use the self checkout a Kroger to make bagging easier, though the baggers have become more accustomed to using the reusable bags.
Comment by Other John — February 9, 2009 @ 4:01 pm
It would be nice if there was an alternative to plastic bags, but I still try to recycle them. I use them to re-line garbage cans (which I know isn't much better), and I also use them to store items or carry my lunch to work every day.
Comment by Potterfan — February 9, 2009 @ 8:56 pm