Hey, there! Log in / Register
An early report on Boston's bag ban
By adamg on Mon, 12/17/2018 - 10:12am
Gary at Gary's Liquors on VFW Parkway in West Roxbury reports:
- reduced plastic bag use by 100%
- Paper bag use was reduced by 78%
- 99.8% of the people were understanding and only a few were upset.
- I think it will only be a matter of time until everyone gets used to bringing reusable bags when shopping.
- I was truly shocked and encouraged as to how easy people seemed to accept it. Congratulations on this first step to help save the planet.
Neighborhoods:
Topics:
Free tagging:
Ad:
Support Universal Hub
Help keep Universal Hub going. If you like what we're up to and want to help out, please consider a (completely non-deductible) contribution.
Comments
And unconfirmed sources
Report that dog poops left on sidewalks and those soil and grate things around sidewalk-trees are up tenfold.
A modest proposal
Dog tax.
You want a dog? Great - $50/yr.
We'll use that money to pay for more street and park cleaning.
ok that's just dumb
ok that's just dumb
There already is one....
There already is one....
Ok, back to the drawing board but it was worth it
Hold onto your hats, here is my new proposal...
inside dog - covered by the current fees.
Outside dog, the kind that's walking around pooping on the sidewalks and ball fields - an additional $50.
Impossible to enforce, extremely unpopular - I say we give it a try.
Deal
I'd pay $50 to not have to pick up ~700 poops per year.
Financially, that's a no brainer.
Since I'm a decent human being though, I'll continue to pick it up.
Dog License
https://www.cityofboston.gov/animals/licenseapp/
A dog tax
Isn't that why you license your dog?
Ray Flynn for Dog Catcher..
Who knew it would be relevant in 2018!
Great to see Boston being a
Great to see Boston being a leader again!
Only the following climate conscious liberal meccas managed to beat Boston to the punch...
Albania
Austria
Bangladesh
Benin
Botswana
Brussels
Bulgaria
Burkina Faso
California
Cambodia
Cameroon
Chicago
Congo
District of Columbia
Eritrea
Hawaii
...can you tell I was looking at an alphabetical list and got bored?
Maybe one day Boston will catch up to China and California with electric buses?
Puerto Rico also has island
Puerto Rico also has island wide ban on plastic bags
I think the OP got to the
I think the OP got to the letter E and then decided to add Hawaii.
We uhhh... already have
We uhhh... already have electric buses. (But more would be great)
Electric buses in Cambridge
But the T just bought a sh*tload of new buses that run of fossil fuel.
The governor says we're investing $8b in new T infrastructure but we're not upgraing to clean energy tech driven transit.
German commuter rail recently took delivery of hydrogen powered rail.
dw.com:
The Dutch train system is 100% wind-generated electricity powered. It has 0 carbon footprint. It covers an area about twice the size of New Jersey
AMAZING
This is good news. I generally saw good responses to the ban this weekend myself, not too much hemming and hawing. 60 Minutes did a long piece on plastic in the ocean last night, with a few minutes devoted to the fact that most of our plastic in the US is not even recycled. It just gets shipped to other countries where we have no idea what they are doing with it, much of it ending up in landfills, so reduction of use and avoiding purchase of products using plastic packaging when there is an alternative are really some of the best and most direct ways we can help to clean this mess up.
And how many of those
And how many of those customers drove to the store vs. walking or using the MBTA?
I walk
It's about a half mile each way.
Star sells paper bags with handles for a nickel. They're sturdy even with a heavy bag of groceries. I'm guessing I'll spend $15 a year in paper bags. I have no complaint.
We already try and get paper
We already try and get paper bags whenever possible (easier to keep recycling in). A minor surcharge for them is probably the least we can do to make up for years of abusing plastic.
Bring back plastic bags
Banning plastic bags is pointless - nay, harmful - virtue signalling.
http://www.spectrumbags.com/images/Top_7_Myths_About_Plastic_Bags.pdf
http://www.allaboutbags.ca/myths.html
http://industrialprogress.com/in-defense-of-plastic-bags/
GASP
you mean to tell me that industry groups/websites that have vested interests in selling plastic bags have come up with reasons to defend their use? I am SHOCKED.
All those scientists just want to destroy BIG PLASTIC and take people's jobs in plastic bag factories away, not to mention force you to wait longer in the checkout line. THOSE BASTARDS!
Are we sure that’s not satire?
Actual headline:
Are we sure this isn’t The Onion?
The Danish government studied
The Danish government studied this actually:
https://www2.mst.dk/Udgiv/publications/2018/02/978-87-93614-73-4.pdf
Plastic bags are actually more environmentally friendly than most other bags. Or at least that's what that horribly backward shithole of a country run by unsophisticated uncultured uncivilized jack booted thugs* concluded.
*said no one ever about the Danes
I think actually the main
I think actually the main problem with them is that they are ugly and annoying, not that they are somehow contributors to climate change or the extinction of sea turtles or anything.
satire right?
Posting links to industry funded thinktank sites and PR efforts is really gonna show the libtards the errors of their ways. I've been browsing industrialprogress.com for a while now and I'm gobbsmacked to learn how awesome coal is and how solar and wind energy are just "Green Lies"
Found the guy
Who works for the plastics industry.
All I know is that the amount of plastic going into the trash
from my household has been exactly flat since the various bag bans started to be enacted around here.
I used to get mostly paper bags and the plastic bags I did get once in a while I used to line my trash cans with and transport wet swim trunks and towels home from the swimming pool. Now I purchase plastic garbage bags to line my trash cans. And my wet swim stuff no longer goes into a flimsy little plastic bag that lasts a few months and now goes into a big heavy duty plastic bag that has more than three times the plastic, but probably doesn't last three times as long.
Why don't you just buy a proper gym bag?
Why don't you just buy a proper gym bag? One with a compartment for wet stuff?
Because I'm being green
and using the company branded gym bag I won at a Christmas raffle at work instead of buying a new one made from dirty evil petrochemicals and shipped over from some third world hell hole on a dirty polluting container ship.
Myths? or out right lies?
Myth 3: Recycling plastic bags is difficult and extremely costly.
Wrong again. Plastic bags are actually very easy to recycle. The difficulty comes from the fact that
not every area has access to recycling facilities. However, recycling programmes are growing all
the time - for example, many on-line grocery delivery vans will now collect any spare plastic bags
from the previous delivery for recycling. Plastic recycling is a simple, cost-effective and energy efficient process.
Myth 4: There is no market for recycled plastic.
The main product made from recycled checkout bags currently is composite lumber, which can be
used for items such as outdoor decking and railing. There is a convincing and growing market for
this type of material. Cleaner plastic bags and industrial film can also be recycled into raw material
for new bags
Reality #1
Plastic bags are a massive local nuisance to open spaces, water ways, storm drains and sewers ...
I'm not a fan of bag bans,
I'm not a fan of bag bans, but I pick up and (properly) recycle plastic bags I come across outside. Do you?
I haven't seen a drop in bags since Cambridge imposed a ban. I expect it will be no different in Boston.
Carrying a case of beer
And a weeks worth of groceries is a lot different. Go down and see how smoothly it went at Tropical Food Market on Blue Hill Ave.
Just imagine the horror
of how people went to neighborhood grocery stores before plastic bags. I may need a fainting couch.
And people went to the
And people went to the bathroom before toilet paper was invented. That doesn't mean we should ban it.
Using a cloth tote bag
For your groceries is not the same as wiping shit from your ass with your fingers, but I don’t know what kind of lifestyle you lead.
Wait, wait!
I know this one, because I'm old enough to remember! Back in the day, grocery stores bagged your groceries in paper bags. They moved to plastic mostly because the single-use plastic bags are cheaper.
If the goal was to eliminate plastic bag pollution, it's not clear to me why allowing stores to offer paper bags without charge (at their discretion) wasn't an option.
I'm surprised this needs to
I'm surprised this needs to be said, but you should still put your groceries in a bag, just don't put them in a disposable plastic bag. Definitely don't try to carry all your groceries out in your arms.
Reusable bags are SO MUCH
Reusable bags are SO MUCH easier to carry home from the grocery store, though. You can get, like, 3x as much stuff in one bag and it can go over your shoulder. Much less risk of it bottoming out halfway home, too.
workout
Plus you get the satisfaction of feeling like you're Gordon Liu in 36 Chambers of Shaolin.
https://martialartsactionmovies.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Gordon-Li...
One day I will figure out how to embed an image....
I went there this weekend
Same as usual - most people were already using the sturdy cloth bags and little rolling baskets to transport their groceries.
You don't seem to understand how people in urban areas get groceries. How is suburbia going for you?
Not seeing it implemented in the wild yet
I deliver food. I've made about sixty deliveries since the law went into effect, the overwhelming majority in handled bags provided by the restaurant as before. So far nobody, not my customers nor me, have been charged for any bags.
Big restaurant?
So far, the ban only applies to "Retailers 20,000 square feet and larger." That's a big restaurant. Also, they're allowed to use up existing inventory of plastic bags.
Tote Life
Been using them for groceries for years.
After watching last night's
After watching last night's 60 Minutes I was disgusted at the raw evidence of what discarded plastic is doing to wildlife and both at sea and on land. Guam is one big floating cancerous dying plastic dumping ground.
Except
Banning single-use plastic bags in the City of Boston does nothing to solve the dumping of trash in the ocean from large ships which is the key source of all that discarded plastic in the ocean.
I've always preferred paper bags for drinking in the park
and for putting on each liquor bottle so they don't break when together in a bigger bag.
So, of course there is little impact on liquor stores.
Been using reusable for years
So much easier than the flimsy plastic bags. And I still have a lot of the plastic ones for scooping the litter box.
My favorite bags are the Market Basket woven herringbone cloth bags, made in Lowell for MB. They are durable, sturdy, have a good capacity, and washable too.
Of those, the best of all is the Jack Giraffe bag, which sold for a limited time after they all stuck their necks out. The workers seem to appreciate that bag, with the "5 yrs" employees showing it to the younger ones before filling it with our groceries.
Had my first encounter tonight with the bag ban at my
local supermarket. Had forgotten my five-year-old $1 tote bag in the car. Paid a nickel for a new, thicker plastic bag that didn't break open from some sharp-cornered box and should be able to be reused many times. Easy to stuff a few of those in my pocket for planned trips. Otherwise, going to have to suck up that nickel-a-bag tariff.
Helluva hardship. How dare they take away my freedom? Goddamned tree-huggers.
(First search on Amazon has 1000 poop bags for 16 smackers. There's your annual per-dog tax. I don't have a dog at the moment, so my big additional outlay will be for 2-gallon bags to line my bathroom trash can instead of using the free ones. That's going to set me back maybe $3/year.)
Unnecessary Fee
I'm all for the ban, but a forced $0.05+ fee on bags? Why is this necessary? Other bag bans that I know of don't have this stipulation. Companies like Whole Foods who already gave paper now are required to charge a fee, and the fee can apply to compostable bags? This doesn't sound like it's for the bag ban anymore...why not let stores choose to implement a fee if they deem necessary? This fee is retained by the retailer, fyi.
costs me .15 cents to get a
costs me .15 cents to get a compostable bag Id love to know where thee city thinks you can get a paper bag or any bag thats legal for under 5 cents if you just a mom and pop and not a stop n shop
I'm fine with it
I am fine with the plastic bag ban. But how does a ban on PLASTIC bags turn into a charge for paper, recyclable bags?
I second that.
Paper bags were free before. Banning plastic has its own merits and I am onboard with reusable, have been for years due to upbringing in another country.
But the logic and the math escapes me why those same paper bags were free last week?
I am not sure those heavy paper bags are much more landfill friendly, but this seems poorly presented and comes across as a money grab.
Ban all store provided bags--if that's the goal say what you mean. And (ha) pass on the savings to the customers...
Newton
I guess I expected and would have preferred something like Newton's ordinance: a ban on plastic shopping bags but stores still provide free paper bags.
Good. Been the case for 3
Good. Been the case for 3 years now in Britain and it's such a successful policy that it's unremarkable. Reduced plastic bag waste by something like 85% and nobody complains. In a country where people love to complain.