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Boston City Council to consider ban on plastic bags
By adamg on Mon, 11/28/2016 - 11:49pm
The City Council on Wednesday considers a proposal by councilors Matt O'Malley (West Roxbury/Jamaica Plain) and Michelle Wu (at large) to ban most plastic bags in Boston and to let stores charge 5 cents for paper or reusable bags - or plastic bags that can be composted.
O'Malley and Wu say the ban would reduce the scourge of plastic bags that now infest and clog local trees, waterways, vacant lots and storm sewers, reduce the amount of greenhouse gases created by their manufacture - and save the city money because it would no longer have to pay for dispose of an estimated 20 tons of plastic bags a month.
Under their proposed ordinance, stores could be fined up to $100 every time they're found using the thin plastic bags that would be banned. Store owners would be able to apply for a one-year hardship exclusion from the law - for example, if they had a large inventory of the bags when the ordinance goes into effect.
The council's Wednesday hearing begins at noon in its fifth-floor chambers in City Hall.
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Comments
I'd absolutely pay 5¢ or 10¢
I'd absolutely pay 5¢ or 10¢ for a paper bag (which is an easy bag to recycle, full of my recyclables!), especially if it was robust and maybe had handles, a la Trader Joe's-style bags.
Robust is essential.
There are too many cheap paper bags out there that rip if you put anything "heavy" (like groceries) in them.
There are too many cheap
There are too many cheap
paperplastic bags out there that rip if you put anything "heavy" (like groceries) in them.I bike home with plastic bags
I bike home with plastic bags of groceries on the handle bars all the time.
Paper bags, not so much. One bump and the handle rips.
Weather
Rain or snow put the kibosh on paper bags.
For very small $
You can buy far better bags.
Better yet, get a rack and baskets or panniers.
I could buy better bags, but
I could buy better bags, but I don't need to, since plastic grocery bags work just fine.
Baskets or panniers could be helpful. But I'd still need bags inside them -- I'm not putting my beets and chestnuts loose in the basket.
Trader Joes paper bags are not robust
A single bag will tear if somebody nearby farts. They will double bag, but even that is iffy. The best option for people who aren't going out to their car in the parking lot is a paper and plastic.
Freedom isn't free
You still can get plastic bags in North Korea and Cuba.
I hate plastic bags
I do. I have a whole bag of reusable ones I use. I think I started using them well over 10 years ago. I just hate plastic bags because they suck as bags. They rip, break, or whatever. And most of the time stores just double bag them. Waste of resources.
I'm old enough to remember when there wasn't any plastic bags, and when they first appeared in the late 1980s. They used to be just like the ones they wanna charge 5 cents for (heavier plastic). Those were worth keeping and re-using over and over again. I never understood why stores went to the cheaper ones, other than to save money.
However, several communities already have banned them.. it really doesn't stop them. It just means people bring them in from towns that don't have them banned. I constantly get asked by friends on the cape (where many towns have banned them) to BRING plastic bags with me. Why? Cat boxes, doggie poop, and stuff like that. Someone referred to them as "Provincetown Gold" to me at one point since they are entirely banned there (and many neighboring towns).
Not sure how I feel about a ban. I know, personally, I wouldn't really care. I always carry a reusable one with me when i am out shopping. But I just see this as a law they won't be able to enforce very much. Especially if the bags un-marked.. who knows where they came from.
Easy
"But I just see this as a law they won't be able to enforce very much."
Easy peasy. Bag police. Like the nightclub inspectors. Seriously, the ones that will be hurt are the little mom & pop stores. You stop in for three things, no bag...unless you think ahead and bring one or you 'buy' one for a nickel or dime.
My take? I actually use the plastic ones quite a bit. I find them quite useful. The bigger stores also have recycle bins near the front doors of the store for returning used bags.
One issue I don't see raised too often is the problem of transmission of insects in reusable bags. Face it, if you transport food in the bags (food is commonly found in stores), or meat juice or something gets in them, they are bait for bugs.
"very much"
Yeah I agree for the most part, which is why I said "very much" not "enforce 100%". But I'm not sure we should be wasting resources on plastic bags. The nightclub thing I get.. there's alot more going on.. drugs, violence, serving minors.. but to monitor businesses for plastic bags. Waste of resources. I mean, go ahead and ban them, i don't care. But playing 'bag police' is a waste of resources.
Also keep in mind that there's also alot more stores that use plastic bags than are nightclubs/bars/places with liquor licenses. Its a far greater area to cover.
I think my point was.. unless there's a bag cop outside, there's no way to know where it came from. So if the argument for the ban is about the environment.. how do you actually stop this. Once a bag is in a tree.. its in a tree. No way to know where it came from unless it has the store's name on it.
I still get plastic bags from time to time.. mostly for cat litter. Every so often I hit up the basket without my bags just for to refill my plastic bag supply. And I will go on record that Market Basket, along with CVS, are horrible about bags.. they give you so many, which is why I switched to reusable ones (one of the reasons).
As far as the reusable ones in bacteria. Sadly I ask to have my meat in a plastic bag. Usually its ONE bag inside a reusable one. The times I forget, and it does leak. I toss the bag. By that point, I've gotten my $1.50 worth out of the bag, so I don't care if I toss it. (I have so many reusable bags anyways)
PS - Some bags you can wash.. if they are durable fibers. I have some heavy Stop & Shop ones I've washed before. (The ones I get at MB cannot be washed due to the plastic insert in the bottom.. they just lose their shape after a wash)
I <3 my Jack Giraffe bags!
Market Basket makes and sells awesome washable bags that are woven and made in Massachusetts. They are thick and strong and comfortable to carry, too.
I have two from a limited run that they made after the walkout was over.
It slows them down
It doesn't stop them -- but it slows them down. They wouldn't be called "Provincetown Gold" if they were just as plentiful post-ban.
I live in a town very near Boston that has limited plastic bags. Fewer in trees, fewer clogging storm drains, and no evidence that the community is suffering for the "loss." There are bag bans/restrictions/fees in NYC, DC, and SF... they're doing okay too.
This is not hard to enforce
Obviously, the larger supermarkets and "pharmacies" like CVS will have to change over, since it would be tough for them to be scofflaws on this. For the smaller stores, enforcement will probably happen the way most ordinances get enforced- citizens snitch (for lack of a better phrase) and ISD or whoever will pay a visit to the shops and write them up.
Remember, the ban is not on bags per se, just on stores giving them away, and giving away flimsy ones at that. You will still be able to get your Glad bags, doggie doo bags, or whatever. That said, as one who lines my trash cans within the house with bags from CVS, Village Market, Roche Brothers, and the rest, I will be bummed if I have to buy bags for the purpose, but since these things often end up flying in the wind, I'm okay with that.
Dollar Tree
sells wastebasket liners for crazy-cheap. Fun colors and scents, too!
Yup
But I think my point is... you gonna have people enforce this? Waste of resources. I'm almost in favor of the ban, but I think "bag police" are a waste of resources.
Some days I never understand Uhubbers.. some days you'll scoff at the what the licensing board does to businesses for the most asinine reasons. Yet you're willing to have the "bag police". You can't have it both ways.
smh
Oh, I don't scoff at the Licensing Board
And I have no problem with the fact that the BPD has a few officers making sure the various laws involving alcoholic beverages are not broken. I will challenge you to find any instance when I've said that the Boston Licensing Board is wasting people's time or money. (Cambridge, of course, is a different story, those nannystaters!)
That said, you are looking at this the wrong way. The better comparison is to unshoveled sidewalks. Yes, the main business areas (read large supermarkets) are going to be looked at, but the small businessman's main problem if they keep on giving away the crappy plastic bags is that some do gooder will keep on putting in complains to 311 about their practices, meaning that ISD (or whoever, though my bet is ISD) will be paying them a visit. No new bureaucracy, no new employees, just new rules.
Crap bags
Why doesn't the City Council ban the plastic dog crap bags? I see more of these around the City than shopping bags.
Newport Ave
I'm doing all my shopping at the Stop and Shop on Newport Ave in Quincy, and will bring all my plastic bags of groceries back to Boston. The City Councilors in Boston are morons.
So your plan is to drive
out of your way and out of town to save $0.25? You sound like the moron.
They would be losing money
They would be losing money after gas. Just so they could use plastic bags, which completely suck at holding things compared to reusable bags.
It's About Protecting Our Freedom To Cause More Pollution
( hoarding lightbulbs in the name of liberty )
This is another tax disguised
This is another tax disguised as environmentalism.
It will fall disproportionately on those which don't own cars and cannot easily carry around reusable bags all day.
Paper bags are worthless in the rain and difficult for the elderly to carry.
This is another instance of ill thought government by 'merit badge' virtue signalling which will only make the lives of residents more inconvenient, uncomfortable, and expensive.
Externality Tax
Yes, that's exactly the point.
Taxpayers have to pony up to clean up the mess plastic bags produce. This is moving the cost to the front, to the source, while introducing a cost/value relationship will reduce use.
Double whammy to fix the issue of taxpayers picking up a bill they shouldn't.
How much does the city spend
How much does the city spend to clean up plastic bags?
How much less do they predict they'll spend cleaning them up after a ban? Will they assess whether the ban achieved that goal, and reevaluate the ban if it doesn't?
Disguised Tax - Exactly
Disguised Tax... exactly my thoughts and observations as you stated.
I do not carry bags in my pockets all day for those last-minute grocery needs, and as someone on a fixed income, costs of purchasing additional shopping bags is just not budget-worthy.
I'd not mind paper bags if they were resilient but they are not. I've lost far-too-many groceries using paper bags.
My solution is simple. I package and store my plastic bags at home. I then re-use them as necessary. When I get too many, some go into the recycle bin and get picked up with t he recycle pick up each week.
I'm also somewhat short. Most of those buy-for-a-buck shopping bags are made with handles for the average height person. With me they drag on the ground, forcing me to hold the bags higher and expending more energy to carry them.
I think we need to be very careful about how government intrudes into our daily lives. Political correctness can be taken to extremes.
The problem is not the plastic bags but how they are used and how many people fail to employ techniques to re-use or recycle, or properly dispose via a recycling system.
The problem therefore is education on how to handle this type of thing. This is a problem to be solved with education, and this can and will take a generation or more to implement.
Plastic bags should not be placed in the recycling bin
https://www.boston.gov/departments/public-works/recycling-boston
The cost is prohibitive?
REALLY?
Somehow, my relatives on social security as their main income have no such problems.
You must have a cognitive disability.
I don't own a car and never
I don't own a car and never use plastic bags. They suck. It isn't hard to bring a backpack to a store, shove a cloth bag in your purse etc. Why should others have to deal with the mess plastic bag users make?
I also don't own a car and I
I also don't own a car and I've been using re-usable totes for years because it's easier to carry groceries home. And there are more compact bags than the ones the grocery stores sell - they're made out of nylon and fold up to practically nothing - I keep two in my purse all the time. They are getting more use these days since Cambridge and Somerville have enacted bans - I use them for more than just groceries now.
That said, I wish they would allow an exception for raw meat - since the ban in Somerville I've had to wash the bags often.
But why pay if your shopping and they're obviously making profit
Why pay in the city? Retailers are getting some type of profit from consumers. I've noticed the suburbs and even some local city markets provide paper bags for free, I think this might be a burden on needed people
Newspapers and dog owners will suffer ?
Newspapers are dying and this will put another nail in their coffin in the home delivery business. No one wants to read a wet and soggy newspaper.
On the criminal justice side you will be ticketed if you use a plastic bag to pick up their waste or you will be ticketed if you don't use a bag to pick up their waste. Also are police exempt because they use plastic bags to secure evidence and will custodians be able to use clear plastic bags in trash receptacles?
I live in a city which has
I live in a city which has banned plastic bags at retailers, yet my newspaper still comes every morning in a plastic bag. This is focused on retailers, not delivery services (or the police), and newspapers will probably still come the same way they always do.
No one is getting ticketed for "smuggling" in plastic bags.
Paper bags are useless in the rain.
Good thing it never rains in Boston.
Plenty of options
IKEA, for example, sells waterproof bags that pack up into themselves and are no bigger than your fist.
Ok, I'll buy a car and drive
Ok, I'll buy a car and drive to Stoughton to buy a bag before I walk to the grocery store to buy some apples.
No car needed
They have shuttles from MBTA stations.
Does the IKEA shuttle exist?
Does the IKEA shuttle exist? If so, someone should tell
http://www.ikea.com/us/en/store/stoughton , since it says nothing about it.
Even if it does exist, wasting half a day on mass transit plus a shuttle would be an even more ridiculous way to obtain a grocery bag.
It never rains in Ireland, either
They managed to ban them ten years ago, and charge you for any bag.
As it turned out, after I
As it turned out, after I posted my anonymous rants in this thread, I happened to hear from a friend who spontaneously bought some art supplies in Cambridge, and lost them on the way home through a hole in the wet paper bag.
Thanks to this law, people who walk, bike, and use mass transit have to deal with this kind of inconvenience when shopping, all because of a *perception* that other people let their plastic bags fly into trees and rivers.
Spontaneous Art Supplies
( i.e.: things like yarn and spray paint — for guerrilla tagging and graffiti knitting? )
Nope. No intended vandalism
Nope. No intended vandalism in this story.
I'm old enough to remember a time before plastic grocery bags...
...and while I hesitate to feed any of the anon trolls above, I would like to remind people that Brookine and Cambridge currently have bans on plastic bags...ultra thin *grocery store* bags, that is.
People still use plastic bags for their trash, for dog poop, for cat litter, for storing leftover food or sandwiches, for collecting and preserving evidence, etc. All of those types of bags are exempt from the ban, in part because they are thicker and less prone to break and be thrown away because they are useless --or doubled or tripled up in anticipation of breakage.
They also cost real actual money to the consumer instead of being absorbed by some large corporation, so people tend to be more careful with them and use them only when they are actually needed.
I was in one of the 7-11s in Cambridge about a month ago, and ended up buying more (junk, really...don't judge me) than I expected...and told the clerk I was willing to pay the ten cent nuisance fee for a bag to carry it all in.
The bag was MUCH thicker and sturdier than the tissue-paper-thin useless things they used to have. I have re-used that thicker bag multiple times since then, and it does not show any signs of use/abuse yet.
Really, there are bigger things in this world to get your panties in a bunch over...
There are bigger
There are bigger environmental issues that are worth an effort to fix.
There are more than two grades of plastic bag. Most free supermarket bags are fine for reuse, even though they're not as thick (and plastic-intensive) as the ones that are still allowed in places like Cambridge. But some convenience stores have really flimsy ones that are indeed useless.
The real question is WHY?
I bet nearly everyone uses a tall kitchen garbage pail lined with a nice Hefty plastic bag. You go through 2 or 3 of them a week. Those bags will sit in the landfill forever or they will be incinerated and turned to energy. But that's OK since we mostly agree that we need a bag for the kitchen can.
Aside from the occasional grocery bag stuck in a tree branch (I do HATE that), what's the big deal with these individual bags? They are not materially adding to our landfill issues. If you visit a place where they are mining an old landfill (visit the dump in Nantucket), what you'll see is an uncountable number of old kitchen bags and full trash bags. If this is SUCH a problem, then we should look at ways to get people to not line their garbage pails with large bags, since it is THOSE that are the majority of the bags going to landfills.
Do you know how to google?
You would get your answer quite quickly. Damage to infrastructure. Damage to wildlife. Litter to pick up. on and on and on.
You took the time to write a long reply detailing your ignorance when you should have used that time to research and get the answers you seek.
I'd call you lazy, but your effort to avoid knowing is more misguided.
Call me a doubter
With the billions of grocery bags issued every year, if it were SUCH a problem they would be all over the place. Know what? They aren't. Riding around, I'm more likely to see trashed water bottles (now THERE is something that should have a nickel deposit) than empty plastic bags. The bags are as much of a menace as Starbucks cups and cigarette butts. Sure, occasionally an animal is harmed by a bag. I maintain it's rare.
It's Good To Know You're Keeping Your Eyes On The Road
You obviously never looked up at the trees or at the ocean or other waterways where plastic bags ultimately wind up.
Seriously, when was the last one you saw?
A) All bags don't "ultimately" end up in the ocean. (Some do. Most are incinerated and thus don't last thousands of years.)
B) Given the valid use of these bags by the majority of people, banning them to avoid the occasional bag in a tree (which I'm on record as hating) is just over-reaching.
A Five-Minute, Informative Talk About Plastic Pollution
( not in your back yard, so you just don't care? )
Recycle!
OK, I watched half.
If we throw our plastic into the sea or along the road, we all agree, that's bad, bad, bad. I recycle all my waste plastic and I bet most people here do too. Plastic is not evil, it's how we dispose of used plastic that can be very evil.
Then You Missed The Part About How Recycling Isn't The Solution
From the second half:
Only about 7% of plastics are actually recycled, or, more accurately "downcycled" rather than recycled/reused.
You're right
https://www.ecnmag.com/blog/2014/10/banning-plastic-bags-may-be-bad-science
Divide and conquer
Did that study also assess the impacts of cleaning up the plastic bags?
This is a classic issue with environmental studies commissioned by corporations: they carefully limit the questions being asked to spin the results. This is not a holistic assessment.
I know this because I used to work for a company that did these "for hire" assessments and we were always strictly limited by corporate agendas, not availability of information or reality.
Well
If people were throwing them in parks, waterways, sewers, and the sewerage treatment plant had to deal with them; someone would be looking to do something about it.
It's illegal to just take those and dump them on the side of the road. There's also municipal trash collection, which you can't do for small plastic bags because if how they are used and disposed of by the thoughtless.
I see major differences.
I put out my trash in..
I put out my trash in...plastic grocery bags! If there were a ban, I'd have to start buying Hefty bags. (Unless I could figure out a scheme to use paper grocery bags, without spilling trash or getting in trouble with the city.)
Paper bags are a poor substitute for plastic
Especially in a place where precipitation is the norm. Ever buy stuff, they give you a paper bag, it's raining, snowing, etc.? Obviously, many people use trains, buses and walk in Boston, and plastic bags are far preferable. Some will say carry reusable bag when you buy stuff; ridiculous, since most people spontaneously shop and buy stuff during the day and aren't going carry a reusable bag with them 24/7.
Progressives need to stop banning things. They're getting just as bad as the people they used to laugh at during the old 'Banned in Boston' days. I don't like Puritanism no matter the political ideology behind it.
it never rains and people don't take buses in Ireland
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/31/world/europe/31iht-bags.4.9650382.html
It's not difficult
Stick a couple of the reusable bags that stuff into a wallet-sized pocket into your bag.
Carry a backpack larger than you need for your work stuff.
Install baskets on your bike.
Shove one of those nylon string-type backpacks into your bag or a coat pocket.
Don't buy shit if you don't have any way to get it home. You wouldn't buy a dining room table on foot and then complain that they charge to deliver it. Don't buy groceries if you don't have any way to get them home. Why should the store provide wasteful trash for people who don't plan ahead or think of others?
Bag bans encourage online
Bag bans encourage online shopping and deliveries which hurt local retailers.
...Except...
...Except that at least three local grocery stores in the area (that I know of) offer online shopping and home delivery.
The online sales are credited to the physical location that fulfils the order.
Bagless Price Rite Competes Successfully Against Market Basket
Price Rite charges extra for heavy, re-useable plastic bags and allows customers to bag their own groceries so items don't get crushed or damaged. (the smaller, clear produce bags are still free, and are also made available for use with packaged meat)
By contrast, Market Basket has employees that take away all the groceries from the checkout outflow and throw every little thing in separate, flimsy, plastic bags they give away for free. Sometimes they'll use more than one for an item or items, but sharp or heavy things easily slice through the cheap bags. It's also much harder to transport lots of flimsy bags, than a fewer number of stronger bags.
I wondered if the Northgate Price Rite would survive after the new Market Basket store opened right behind it. If anything, the Price Rite seems busier than ever, perhaps because of the additional traffic. It's much less expensive and more pleasant to shop at Price Rite. Most customers don't mind bringing their own bags once they get accustomed to the practice and discover it can actually make grocery shopping easier.
That's a pretty poor analogy.
That's a pretty poor analogy. Buying food during an unplanned walk or bike ride past a store is convenient. You might buy groceries every few days, and you *need* to do it frequently if you care about your health by eating fresh food. Buying a table is a once-in-a-lifetime large purchase.
Why can't a business that
Why can't a business that sells stuff also provide a means for getting it home, if they want to? If it was such a bad idea, the vast majority of stores wouldn't do it.
Don't buy shit if you......
Are you serious? Stores should not provide bags for people to carry their 'shit' home?
Plastic bags are superior to paper. There's a reason stores traditionally put a plastic bag over a paper bag, because paper bags rip, tear very easily.And most people will tell you, myself included, they reuse plastic bags but not paper.
This whole thing is about CONTROL...micro managing and nagging people, and feeling superior. Wearing people down with endless bullshit requirements and bans. What will be the ban de jour after is passed? Pathetic. Some 'activists' need to GET A LIFE, and out of people's faces.
Why do you have a problem
Why do you have a problem with spontaneous shopping? I think it's a good thing.
Yes, it is
That's why you carry some cheap bags with you - I have one from a famous bookstore that folds up to half the size of an eyeglass case.
I carry some plastic grocery
I carry some plastic grocery bags with me.
Sometimes I end up without them, or want to buy more than they hold.
And I was responding to a post where someone was outraged that someone would buy something without planning in advance what type of bag they would need to get it home.
Extra cost, dog owners and more municipal costs
I use the plastic bags for my dog every day. So they are reused. I also get my groceries delivered. Multiply that by the other folks whose groceries are delivered and you have a gas and road wear and tear savings. Will I then have to pay for each grocery bag used since I can't provide the grocery deliverer with reusable bags before hand?
There are already plenty of direct and indirect costs to consumers and citizens that the city imposes. Property taxes, fees and details are pulling more and more income out of our pockets into fewer pockets of city staff. Is this yet another means to funnel more money into fewer hands? Or if the store gets to keep the nickels and dimes then it winds up a profit center for the stores.
To me this city council is looking for yet another means that costs consumers and citizens with no fair and reasonable return.
For the sake of environmental protection I can agree with banning the plastic bags and as a dog owner am willing to absorb the cost of bags for picking up dog droppings. But adding charge for paper bags? That just shoving a pike up the backside without so much as a "May I?"
Read the article. People who
Read the article. People who don't use plastic bags are already paying tax dollars for the damage they cause.
All public subsidies - such as roads - deserve the same treatmen
People who don't own cars and use public transporation instead are subsidizing the costs of roads and gasoline since the referendum capping the gas tax. Why should a person who doesn't own a car subsidize the maintenance of a storage space for people who enjoy the benefit of owning a car?
It's one thing to share the cost of roads for travel since the roads are needed for police, ambulances, deliveries etc. But if someone wants to store their vehicle for 8 hours on a street then they should pay a fee for storing the vehicle. There is no reason for me to subsidize my neighbors storage fee since I don't benefit from the use of his or her car.
Good. MA is way behind on
Good. MA is way behind on this. California actually just affirmed a bag ban in a statewide referendum, so its a popular position as well.
Its also hilarious how all the "bu bu bu" comments are the same every time.
Probably my last comment
These bans may be "popular" (so are some unpleasant politicians) but that doesn't mean the real damage is true. It makes people feel good to get behind something like this, when in reality the science behind the "damage" being caused is weak to nonexistent.
Really?
Please present your "science".
Don't forget to address all the issues that you chose to ignore last time, too.
My Google results
When I Googled "damage caused by plastic bags":
Result one "at Health Guidance" has a litany of horrible things that plastic causes. Not one citation and it is clearly just someone's opinion, but stated as "fact". Here is the most egregious:
The third Google result (banthebag.com) is seemingly from an industry group that is 100% pro-bag and rattles off statistics on how much "greener" plastic bags are versus the other options.
Do I trust either source? Not one bit. My point? The idea that plastic bags are 100% evil is simply an idea and clearly (to me) not fully grounded in fact.
Where's *your* science? The
Where's *your* science? The people proposing the ban have the burden of proof.
My science is garbage.
Dig through the trash cans on your street. What percentage of the weight is plastic grocery bags?
And spend some time picking up litter in your neighborhood. I do, and hardly any of it is plastic grocery bags.
What about alcohol?
Massachusetts requires alcohol to be carried out of the store in an opaque bag. Will they be charging for those bags?
In other states that have banned bags, you will see people walking down the street holding a bottle of wine by the neck, because they opted to not pay for the bag. This is not legal in MA. Is there a booze exception, or will people be paying 5 cents as per local law to comply with a goofy state law?
Trader Joe's in Cambridge
Why don't you check with them.
Boxes for booze
Trader Joe's in Cambridge will give you a leftover booze box to put your groceries in with your booze.
The Market Basket in Reading
will pack your groceries in leftover boxes if you ask. I have a couple of their 'dime bags" (big reusable - and durable - plastic bags that they charge $0.10 each for) for the meat/perishables/frozen food, but use a large box for the rest.
I'm one of the folks who
I'm one of the folks who saves up a load of plastic bags from when I leave ban-land, usually by scavenging from bag recycle bins, or from friends or family who have a stash. I use them until they rip or get dirty, and then I recycle them.
If there was a regional ban so big I couldn't get outside it, I'm not sure what I'd do. Maybe I'd mail-order plastic bags in bulk.
If I ever end up at a store without my bagstash on a rainy day and need to buy a book or greeting card, I'm not sure what I'd do.
It's stuff like this that encourages people to get a car. (Of course if you have a car, you don't need any bags at all. When I had one, I just put everything loose on the floor.) It's a milder form of food deserts, where city neighborhoods only have overpriced convenience stores selling unhealthy crap, and you have to drive to the suburbs to get to a real supermarket.
Why don't we ban toilet paper
Why don't we ban toilet paper, ketchup packets, and ethernet cables? They're all bad if they end up in waterways. And they didn't use to exist, so people will survive without them.
Edwards Supermarket
Does anyone remember Edwards Supermarket on Morrissey Blvd?
They used to put your groceries in a big sturdy cardboard box with handles. Those things were awesome. They would be reused for so many things like forts for my GI Joes