Recyclable Plastic Is A Lie!

[GeorgeParker]

I live in a pretty affluent suburb, and entitled twits are all over the place.

If someone tries to do the right civic-minded thing to help the environment and is upset when told she can't do it and is further annoyed by the ridiculous suggestion that she repack her purchases at her car (which defeats the whole purpose of having re-usable bags), I'd call that a normal reasonable response. The twit in this case is not her.

[Tradd]

Are your stores not refusing to pack in reusable bags due to covid? They are here.

[happystuff]

My grocery store still allows you to bring in your reusable grocery bags, however the employees are not allow to pack groceries into those. I have no problem with that as I prefer to pack my own groceries anyway. I know how things fit into my bags.

[catherine]

The whole thing is crazy-making, and the pandemic isn't helping.

DW and I have been getting takeout from local independent restaurants at least once a week to try to keep those folks afloat. The food comes in disposable containers because they can't/don't hand us some ceramic plates and say "bring 'em back, please!" Some of the containers are "recyclable"; some are black plastic, which is verboten here regardless of the plastics number stamped on it but don't it make the food look nice? Some of the containers are "commercial composting only" which tells me that if I put it in our compost bin, I'll fish out most of that container in a year or so. Commercial composting has been discussed in my city for years now; the closest they've come is a few bins at the sites where we can dump our leaves and brush (but where we also can get free compost and mulch).

So our desire to create a low-carbon footprint would have us pass on getting takeout. But that hurts restaurants we'd like to visit in person when the pandemic subsides and particularly hurts people who are much lower on the economic pole than we are and who may not readily find someplace else to work when the restaurant "closed for remodeling". We can try to choose only restaurants that offer truly recyclable packaging (and, while we're at it, local food that doesn't have thousands of road and air miles on it before we even see it), but that adds a few more layers to the logistics and doesn't help the tiny place just trying to get by.

It's just really hard to try to honor so many priorities. Meanwhile, too many people are just dropping their used disposable masks on the street or in the parking lot and filling their trash containers to overflowing. So we get our takeout ... and toss it in our trash if we have to.

You're so right. As much as we want to "do the right thing"--is the right thing saving the landfill from one more plastic container, or supporting your local business? The problem is, at this point in our culture, if we look at our lives, we can say we are, like our no-iron clothes, a polyester blend--the fabric of our lives is half organic, half synthetic. Pulling out the synthetic part would create for us a different life. If I decided to give up plastic, I couldn't even write this post. I couldn't take the call I'm due on in 4 minutes. I would have to turn off most of my lamps, strip my beds, get rid of 3/4 of my clothes, throw out my band-aids, medications in pill bottles, my ball-point pens, my gardening gloves, ... the list goes on and on.

[iris lilies]

Omg Steve, yes! All of the damn packaging for the takeout! Oh dear lord. It’s horrible I can’t stand it.


A little bakery opened up about eight months ago and I try to buy something from them every two weeks. I’ve learned to take my own containers. For dry stuff and bakery stuff yeah you can bring your own containers, but ubiquitous Styrofoam for actual dinners seems to be the norm. However I will say my upscale restaurant around the corner does not do styrofoam Because the owner knows her clientele frown on that. She uses a wax coated cardboard for all her outtake dinners.
And then, there’s all the Amazon boxes and packing materials that are happening here during Covid.


It’s really sickening and I am contributing to it, I admit it.

[iris lilies]

Recycling of many materials appears to be a scam.

https://zerowastechef.com/2019/11/13/recycling-scam/

On the island here, our waste flow is very visible, and an object of community interest. All garbage and recycleable materials have to be removed from the island at some considerable expense, and the organization that does that is pretty transparent about their costs/issues.

I comfort myself in thinking that landfills will some generations from now be wonderful sources of concentrated resources, and mined by whoever survives us. I don't waste any of my precious life energy engaging in hairshirt environmentalism.

I know, but I will bet, bae, if you were producing waste packing materials at the rate I am producing them, you would have some feels about it. Rational or not, practical or not, I feel like a pig.

I mentioned elsewhere that DH has recently “spoke” to me about excessive consumption. He’s concerned about money. But I am paying attention to what he saying because well I’m not concerned about money, I am concerned about bringing too much crap into our house and not liking or taking care of the crap I bringing in.

[GeorgeParker]

Are your stores not refusing to pack in reusable bags due to covid? They are here.

If there is a rule/law that says they can't do it, they need to figure out how to tell people that in a logical undeniable manner that makes the customer feel like the clerk understands and sympathizes with them but unfortunately they can't do what the customer wants them too do.

As soon as the clerk says to just take the regular bags and move everything to the reusable bags when you get to your car, that's an obvious tip off that the clerk is clueless about why you want to use reusable bags, and that's the point at which I would yell for the manager and tell the manager to put everything back on the shelf because I'm not buying anything in this store.

Personally I've never run into that situation because I do self-checkout and use the minimum number of plastic bags, leaving things that are in boxes, etc unbagged.

But the whole idea of not being able to bag your own groceries with reusable bags is silly. The products you buy and the plastic bags the clerk puts them in are just as likely to have Covid on them as your reusable bags are.

So if it's the law you have to go along with it, but if the clerk is just being obtuse for some reason, that a whole other story.

[ApatheticNoMore]

Before covid I had a clerk thank me for washing my resuable bags (uh) as she got mites from reusable bags or so she thought. Yea ok I get it, you don't like reusable bags!!!

Now during covid packing my own bags would require me to stand closer to the checkout clerk etc.. yea nah doubt they really want that, so I just take what bags they have (I ask for paper if I can get them, paper bag shortage is also a covid thing though so sometimes they only have plastic). And yes I then use the paper bags as my garbage bags, so they aren't actually single use at all. Greener than buying plastic trash bags.

[rosarugosa]

We are able to use our reusable bags like in pre-pandemic times. There was a brief period where we could not, but that was awhile ago.

[Teacher Terry]

The grocery stores here can’t pack groceries in reusable bags either because of COVID. Most have signs up.