Hey, nobody likes carrying their groceries home two items at a time
NEW JERSEY - Supermarkets in New Jersey are dealing with an expensive problem since a ban on paper and plastic bags went into effect a few months ago.
Multiple stores say people are walking out with their items in plastic shopping baskets. Many are not even bothering to return them, according to USA Today.
Ah, yet another 'Well we didn't mean for THAT to happen!' result of liberal-think not bothering to take the time to think through cause and effect.
The other one I've read about are the bags used for deliveries...since these areas can't use paper or plastic, they deliver in reusable bags, and now people are ending up with piles of these 'reusable' bags.
cj, you're right, but the "piles" of reusable bags will soon be scattered all over the landscape. The Brits are further down the socialist greeniac craze than you Yanks. In London last year I saw heavy duty reusable bags blowing all around the streets and clogging hedges, fences etc. etc. The grocers first charged 5p for them, the customers complained, the grocers raised their grocery prices a bit and gave the reusable bags away.
Result: same number of bags produced, used and discarded, because they're free dontcha know? So they got a higher cost to everybody, tougher bags even more difficult to dispose of and/or biodegrade. Once again greeniacs managed to make things worse.
And yet the Chinese take-out still comes in a plastic bag with a paper bag inside it, the food in a plastic container inside that. The liquor store puts your purchase in paper bags, or gives you a cardboard box to put those paper bags in if you buy several bottles. Covid-phobic (or just understaffed) restaurants serve your food in a plastic bowl with a plastic fork. Every store is selling reusable shopping bags, most of them made of plastic. It's all confusing and arbitrary.
Funny thing, during the big covid pandemic nobody was allowed to use the reusable bags they'd purchased the year before that to go Green.
There is an odd small parallel between one-use plastic bags and the vinyl LP industry. Both records and bags used to be well made. When records were dying, the pressings became really thin and low quality. Records would warp before you even got them home. About a decade ago the decent thickness bags disappeared. The local bag factory closed down after decades. Bags got thinner and thinner, to the point that, perhaps a year before the ban, the bags from Walmart didn't last from the checkout to your car trunk half the time.
Nobody is stealing the plastic hand baskets in my area of NJ. They aren't let out of the store, never were.
Leftists cannot be bothered to address any of the predictable problems that their ill thought-out policies and mandates create. In most cases it's impossible to even get them to acknowledge that there is a problem, let alone admit that it was a result of anything they did. Blue cities and states are coming apart at the seams while the left pats themselves on the back for their latest boondoggle that claims to address some non-crisis like the scourge of grocery bags or plastic straws or banning fracking in areas where no energy company in their right mind would ever think to go in the first place in order to fight global warming. Tackling an actual crisis with a proven solution is never an option and when the electorate has the nerve to call them out on it, they are immediately shouted down or labeled an extremist.
Got a problem with the latest insane school policy? You're a terrorist. Call out your state legislator for their latest power grab or new tax/fee/surcharge/levee? You're suddenly in handcuffs and your social media accounts are picked apart to find something they can drag you for.
Grocery stores spend a lot of money on plastic and paper bags. So, take that money and make canvas bags. Put your logo on the side and ya got free advertisement. Give them away for free. In six months when the people find the canvas are far superior to plastic or paper and want them, then start selling them. Isn't that called marketing? I've used canvas bags for years. Piss on those plastic pieces of shit especially when taking stuff out of the bag and it keeps collapsing and ya gotta keep opening it. Or paper ripping plus all the wonderful cockroach eggs you bring home. I keep about eight bags in the truck. Every once in a while the wife washes them. So most of these bags I've had for at least five years. Yes, if we need bathroom trash bags we will ask for a couple. I do get the plastic have other uses. Publix does not give away free bags so I do not advertise for them. If a place has them for free I'll scarf a couple and advertise.
They aren't as convenient. I can easily use disposable plastic grocery bags to line my small corner trash cans. When they're full, I tie the handles, and drop them in the 50gal wheelie bin that gets picked up. This is much more convient for me.
Well, if you like your meat or produce leaking into your bag, and then use it that way for the next 6 months or so, I'm sure you're fine, no way will there be any bacteria there. Or insects. I'm sure of it.
Lived in CA when they first started banning paper and plastic bags. Understood the ban on plastic; they're a blight on the landscape if nothing else. The stores pushed the reusable bags; problems with them was remembering to bring them and that they needed to be washed after each use, otherwise they are actually VERY unsanitary, especially if used to carry meats, vegetables, etc.
Didn't like any of the government approved options, so I bought a bundle of high-grade paper bags off Amazon. The kind with paper loop handles that DON'T fall off. Used bags were repurposed for collecting recyclables under the sink which got them recycled, too.
That bundle of bags lasted for years, even after I moved to a city in Texas that also had a bag ban (the idiots in Austin so want to be Californians!). Now I live in a small town in Texas without any of that nonsense, but still keep a few of those bags in my truck just because they're handy to have.
The biggest single problem with any of the heavier 'recyclable' bags is that nobody treats them as a food storage device. If you don't throw it away after one use (especially for meat) it gets contaminated with food bits or meat juices. Do people run the bags through the wash, hot water and bleach? No Do people store the bags in a sealed sanitary container in-between uses? No. CDC reports show that in every area of the country that ban single use the incidence of food poisoning goes up. What the Hell is government doing mandating such petty BS and why are we allowing it?
Here's an idea I take my clothes baskets and put my stuff in that way its easy to carry from place to place. People may look at ya crazy but who cares. Also can someone please please explain to me again why paper bags are not allowed? IDIOTS
I had no problem with shoppers bringing their own bags when it was voluntary. They were the anal folk and odds are took care of things.
Now they forcing everyone to reusable. From the hoarder, to the drug dealer, to person living in squalor with pets or even kids. People have roaches, bedbugs to any other insect. Or the person can be sick with something contagious. Or have a disease such as aids and have cut on their hand which is transferred to the bag. I have dogs and bags were in back where the dogs were. I probably had dog hair on the bags either from the house or car.
Now all that gets slapped down on the conveyor belt for the cashier and packer to handle. Just great. Just pass it along to my purchases.
The other thing that irks me is the heavy plastic bags were not recyclable in my city but reusable. I guess they screwed with the recycle machines like the thin bags. How many thin bags could be made from a thick bag? 50? So throwing one thick bag away is like throwing 50 thin bags. And the stores would recycle thin bags. Just had to remember to bring them in. Then I had to buy thin plastic bags to pickup dog crap on the walks. Thin plastic bags were more convenient to reuse for other things.
I have a few thousand grocery store plastic bags stockpiled, and I've been buying boxes of garbage bags and kitchen bags from Costco every other month, so I'll have a large supply when the Canadian plastic bag ban comes fully into effect, which is soon I think.
The funny thing is EVERYTHING at grocery stores is wrapped in plastic. Plastic container with one or more layers of plastic wrap. Lots of times it's the kind they don't want you to put in the recycle bin, so it goes straight to the landfill. If there's ever a proper plastic ban, I have no idea how grocery chains will deliver anything.
I have a big pile of "reusable" bags too. Grocery stores have been giving them away for years, to "prep" us for the ban. They're all filthy. So much for hygiene in the middle of an alleged pandemic.
Ah, yet another 'Well we didn't mean for THAT to happen!' result of liberal-think not bothering to take the time to think through cause and effect.
ReplyDeleteThe other one I've read about are the bags used for deliveries...since these areas can't use paper or plastic, they deliver in reusable bags, and now people are ending up with piles of these 'reusable' bags.
'liberal-think', an oxymoron.
DeleteLand fill, there is probably still room next to the Amazon boxes.
Deletecj, you're right, but the "piles" of reusable bags will soon be scattered all over the landscape. The Brits are further down the socialist greeniac craze than you Yanks. In London last year I saw heavy duty reusable bags blowing all around the streets and clogging hedges, fences etc. etc. The grocers first charged 5p for them, the customers complained, the grocers raised their grocery prices a bit and gave the reusable bags away.
ReplyDeleteResult: same number of bags produced, used and discarded, because they're free dontcha know? So they got a higher cost to everybody, tougher bags even more difficult to dispose of and/or biodegrade. Once again greeniacs managed to make things worse.
I'm in Canada. We're bonkers up here too.
Here in NJ ...
ReplyDeleteAnd yet the Chinese take-out still comes in a plastic bag with a paper bag inside it, the food in a plastic container inside that. The liquor store puts your purchase in paper bags, or gives you a cardboard box to put those paper bags in if you buy several bottles. Covid-phobic (or just understaffed) restaurants serve your food in a plastic bowl with a plastic fork. Every store is selling reusable shopping bags, most of them made of plastic. It's all confusing and arbitrary.
Funny thing, during the big covid pandemic nobody was allowed to use the reusable bags they'd purchased the year before that to go Green.
There is an odd small parallel between one-use plastic bags and the vinyl LP industry. Both records and bags used to be well made. When records were dying, the pressings became really thin and low quality. Records would warp before you even got them home. About a decade ago the decent thickness bags disappeared. The local bag factory closed down after decades. Bags got thinner and thinner, to the point that, perhaps a year before the ban, the bags from Walmart didn't last from the checkout to your car trunk half the time.
Nobody is stealing the plastic hand baskets in my area of NJ. They aren't let out of the store, never were.
Leftists cannot be bothered to address any of the predictable problems that their ill thought-out policies and mandates create. In most cases it's impossible to even get them to acknowledge that there is a problem, let alone admit that it was a result of anything they did. Blue cities and states are coming apart at the seams while the left pats themselves on the back for their latest boondoggle that claims to address some non-crisis like the scourge of grocery bags or plastic straws or banning fracking in areas where no energy company in their right mind would ever think to go in the first place in order to fight global warming. Tackling an actual crisis with a proven solution is never an option and when the electorate has the nerve to call them out on it, they are immediately shouted down or labeled an extremist.
ReplyDeleteGot a problem with the latest insane school policy? You're a terrorist. Call out your state legislator for their latest power grab or new tax/fee/surcharge/levee? You're suddenly in handcuffs and your social media accounts are picked apart to find something they can drag you for.
We're doomed.
Grocery stores spend a lot of money on plastic and paper bags. So, take that money and make canvas bags. Put your logo on the side and ya got free advertisement. Give them away for free. In six months when the people find the canvas are far superior to plastic or paper and want them, then start selling them. Isn't that called marketing? I've used canvas bags for years. Piss on those plastic pieces of shit especially when taking stuff out of the bag and it keeps collapsing and ya gotta keep opening it. Or paper ripping plus all the wonderful cockroach eggs you bring home. I keep about eight bags in the truck. Every once in a while the wife washes them. So most of these bags I've had for at least five years. Yes, if we need bathroom trash bags we will ask for a couple. I do get the plastic have other uses. Publix does not give away free bags so I do not advertise for them. If a place has them for free I'll scarf a couple and advertise.
ReplyDeleteThey aren't as convenient. I can easily use disposable plastic grocery bags to line my small corner trash cans. When they're full, I tie the handles, and drop them in the 50gal wheelie bin that gets picked up. This is much more convient for me.
DeleteWell, if you like your meat or produce leaking into your bag, and then use it that way for the next 6 months or so, I'm sure you're fine, no way will there be any bacteria there. Or insects. I'm sure of it.
DeleteLived in CA when they first started banning paper and plastic bags. Understood the ban on plastic; they're a blight on the landscape if nothing else. The stores pushed the reusable bags; problems with them was remembering to bring them and that they needed to be washed after each use, otherwise they are actually VERY unsanitary, especially if used to carry meats, vegetables, etc.
ReplyDeleteDidn't like any of the government approved options, so I bought a bundle of high-grade paper bags off Amazon. The kind with paper loop handles that DON'T fall off. Used bags were repurposed for collecting recyclables under the sink which got them recycled, too.
That bundle of bags lasted for years, even after I moved to a city in Texas that also had a bag ban (the idiots in Austin so want to be Californians!). Now I live in a small town in Texas without any of that nonsense, but still keep a few of those bags in my truck just because they're handy to have.
I was just thinkin'. Y' can always have the groceries delivered - à la "Death Wish"
ReplyDeleteNo problem. The cost will be deductible as a business expense.
ReplyDeleteNo bags allowed at grocery stores.
ReplyDeleteFilm at 11.
This house sho gone crazy...
https://youtu.be/zK9QUlJLNTA
Will this bag ban affect the Smash & Grab "shoppers"?
ReplyDeleteThe biggest single problem with any of the heavier 'recyclable' bags is that nobody treats them as a food storage device. If you don't throw it away after one use (especially for meat) it gets contaminated with food bits or meat juices.
ReplyDeleteDo people run the bags through the wash, hot water and bleach? No
Do people store the bags in a sealed sanitary container in-between uses? No.
CDC reports show that in every area of the country that ban single use the incidence of food poisoning goes up.
What the Hell is government doing mandating such petty BS and why are we allowing it?
Here's an idea I take my clothes baskets and put my stuff in that way its easy to carry from place to place. People may look at ya crazy but who cares. Also can someone please please explain to me again why paper bags are not allowed? IDIOTS
ReplyDeleteI had no problem with shoppers bringing their own bags when it was voluntary. They were the anal folk and odds are took care of things.
ReplyDeleteNow they forcing everyone to reusable. From the hoarder, to the drug dealer, to person living in squalor with pets or even kids. People have roaches, bedbugs to any other insect. Or the person can be sick with something contagious. Or have a disease such as aids and have cut on their hand which is transferred to the bag. I have dogs and bags were in back where the dogs were. I probably had dog hair on the bags either from the house or car.
Now all that gets slapped down on the conveyor belt for the cashier and packer to handle. Just great. Just pass it along to my purchases.
The other thing that irks me is the heavy plastic bags were not recyclable in my city but reusable. I guess they screwed with the recycle machines like the thin bags. How many thin bags could be made from a thick bag? 50? So throwing one thick bag away is like throwing 50 thin bags. And the stores would recycle thin bags. Just had to remember to bring them in. Then I had to buy thin plastic bags to pickup dog crap on the walks. Thin plastic bags were more convenient to reuse for other things.
If it’s heavy or sharp edges...it’s a two (2) or more plastic bagger.....
ReplyDeleteNever been given a canvas bag.......would take it...
Not gonna buy it.
Ed357
I have a few thousand grocery store plastic bags stockpiled, and I've been buying boxes of garbage bags and kitchen bags from Costco every other month, so I'll have a large supply when the Canadian plastic bag ban comes fully into effect, which is soon I think.
ReplyDeleteThe funny thing is EVERYTHING at grocery stores is wrapped in plastic. Plastic container with one or more layers of plastic wrap. Lots of times it's the kind they don't want you to put in the recycle bin, so it goes straight to the landfill. If there's ever a proper plastic ban, I have no idea how grocery chains will deliver anything.
I have a big pile of "reusable" bags too. Grocery stores have been giving them away for years, to "prep" us for the ban. They're all filthy. So much for hygiene in the middle of an alleged pandemic.
Governor Murphy....who the hell votes for some dumbass Mick?
ReplyDelete