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Plastic Bags 3/11/08


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From Heidi!!

What do you think of the ban on plastic grocery bags?

What do you use yours for other then carrying groceries home? Will you miss them when they are gone?

I will! I use them for small waste baskets, when I am peeling potatoes, shelling peanuts, etc etc.

Thank You Heidi for submitting this Question Of The day to me!! Here is a link talking about this:

:)

http://insidecharmcity.com/2008/02/09/rele...rocery-bag-ban/

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Ban? What ban?! I haven't heard of that. Perhaps that is why our local store here in Seeley is pawning off green duffle bags for folks to bring their things home in?!

I did buy two. Each time we go to the market we are going to buy one, but I've not heard of a ban on plastic bags!

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Gina,

They (the government) is saying that they want to ban all non-biodegradable plastic grocery bags by 2010..I think that is the date.

Some grocery stores are already starting this. I have the green bags for one of my grocery stores and you actually get money off for every bag you use..like 2c each. Then you get coupons for free groceries in the mail every month.

What I do not like is that every grocery store has their logo on the bag and you can only use it in THEIR store. I need to find some regular ole ones that I can use anywhere.

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Geeeee and when they also ban paper bags because of the tree issue, will we be going back to daily shopping and carrying baskets over our arms like our great grandmothers did, or growing and raising our own food to make it affordable??????????????????

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I did not know about the ban. We shop mostly at Sam's were bags are not an option. I hate it when cashiers put only two things in a bag. I only have two hands ya know. I have thought about getting a bag to keep in the car for the smaller trips it just hasn't happened yet.

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The town where my mother lives in England are contemplating this. But then a lot of people over there use their own bags anyway and shop more often than we do. Our biggest store (Wegmans) has reusable bags you can buy quite cheaply and they also have bins outside the stores where you can bring back the plastic ones. I think trying to get rid of them from the landfills is a good idea, but when you only shop once every two or three weeks the way some people do I dont see how you'd have enough of your own bags to carry everything. Then if you shop more often with smaller loads you're using gas when 1 trip would save it. Using boxes the way Sam's and BJ's do is fine but not particularly doable with a regular grocery store.

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I remember when the grocery stores used to give you the option of paper or plastic. I always picked paper. Yes, there is the issues with the trees, however, it is at least recyclable and reusable. Now, they just throw everything in plastic. I hate it. I do reuse the bags but mostly for trash so they are ending up in the landfills. There is only one grocery store here that offers a bag for purchase. It costs one dollar. It is the same grocery store that also stocks paper bags. Too bad they offer such small choices in their groceries. I like shopping there but still have to go to another store to get the things they don't stock. They send out nice coupons too. As for the ban, I haven't heard anything in my area, however, it wouldn't surprise me or bother me.

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I've been using cloth bags for years. I leave them in the car all smushed inside one of them so I can't forget them. Although, I've been known to get to the checkout and remember that they are still in the car - :(

Occassionally I get some of the plastic ones to keep on hand to use to wrap up really stinky stuff.

There are a number of craft ideas out there for reusing the bags, like crocheting and knitting with cut up strips, ironing layers of them together creating flat plastic sheets, etc.

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For a while they were making the bags out of biodegradable polymers, but they couldn't stand up to detergent boxes or the dozen cans of soup, I guess. Our Publix stores have recycling bins outside of each door for plastic bags, foam trays & egg cartons & paper. In addition to lining wastepaper baskets and the kitchen garbage can in our Little House on the Highway we use the plastic bags for the clean folded laundry on the road when we have to use laundromats and for shelling and in the kayak for picking up trash out of the water & along the banks.

OK, I have to haul out the soapbox and rant! Exactly one week ago we were shelling along the Panama City Beach part of the beach within the St. Andrews State Park and I FILLED a plastic grocerybag with trash & debris either left on the beach or washed in from fishing boats, and while I didn't find any tangles of monofilament fishing line or dead birds with the plastic rings from drink-can 6-packs around their necks THIS time, I did see one poor venerable seagull hopping around on its right foot because it had NO left foot! FL stat parks provide, at every boat ramp, disposal containers for lost leaders and broken/ tangled fishing line, as well as garbage containers; I'm still trying to figure out why boaters & other people are so stupid or lazy that they can't walk the one or two steps out of their way to their vehicle to dispose of this hazardous c**p, instead of just tossing it where some poor critter can injure or kill itself with it. I know I'm preaching to the choir, and I'm just one of those rabid dirt-worshipping tree-huggers, but IMO this isn't rocket-science! I guess the good ol' boys are just too blind drunk to see that that "thang" they just walked into is a litter container...

OK, end of sermon.

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Since I sew I started using up scraps to make my own. I like that I can make them any size and they are washable. I even made a cold pack type bag for ice cream and fridge stuff.

I crocheted a market bag for the farmers market. I've only used it with bigger fruits so we shall see if it stretches during use soon when I use it more often and with varied sizes of goods.

I think that there def needs to be something done about waste that won't go away.

Edited by NotKateHepburn
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I received my Oriental Trading catalog in the mail and they have a set of 12 sturdy handled bags for I think it was $12.99. They came in a range of colors. Maybe something like that would be an option so I can use them at EVERY grocery store.

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I'm still trying to figure out why boaters & other people are so stupid or lazy that they can't walk the one or two steps out of their way to their vehicle to dispose of this hazardous c**p, instead of just tossing it where some poor critter can injure or kill itself with it.

This absolutely irritates me also, glad I'm not the only one! Well said!

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I do stash a couple of plastic bags in my fannypack when we go hiking. Thursday we hiked from the parking lot of the Lines Tract part of the state forest system on a loop trail down to the shore of Lake Talquin & back, which the map brochure states is a 4-mile series of loops, but we pass three different mile-markers twice. About halfway to the lake we began spotting trash and opened one of our bags. By the time we got back to the truck four hours later that bag was FULL! There was no litter can at the site! (picnic shelter & two BBQ grills, but no litter can...) so we hauled it home & dumped everything into the recyclables bag (since it was all bottles, cans & plastic!). We have filled our tandem kayak with trash paddling, too; those plastic grocery bags do come in handy.

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We save our plastic bags and give most of them to the Lighthouse, a resale shop for our local domestic violence program. They'll probably still end up in the landfill, but at least they're used more than once. We also use them to line small wastebaskets throughout the house. Some are used to store light things like small rags for the craft area, empty medicine bottles, etc; they're hanging on nails to save shelf space.

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We belong to the Florida Trail Assocition and the Appalachee Canoe & Kayak Club, and on all our group activities there are a few members who bring bags and we all grab up the litter. One of our pagan members put it VERY well, and I'll paraphrase: The Earth is our Mother and these woods (rivers, streams, lakes, beaches) are Her house; would you like me to come into Your house and throw trash & garbage around?

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I'm going to miss them. I will have to buy plastic bags to line the wastebaskets, so that won't save plastic in the landfills. I take a couple kayaking for trash, cloth won't be very good for that, so I will probably use the plastic ones we line the wastebaskets with, also defeating the purpose. I have some hanging for storing things, I use them in my shop and at shows instead of buying bags, and I use them for all kinds of other things. I never throw them away until they are really in bad shape. Now I will have to buy bags for my shop and shows as well, and so will most of the other venders who recycle their bags. (Almost all of them do).

We travel 40 miles every other week for our groceries, and things get very wet on the way home from condensation and all. Paper would be impossible, and cloth will be messy when wet, especially if meat juice goes all over it and leaks onto our seats. The bags where we shop are mesh and cost $5 each, and can only be used in one store.

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The bags where we shop are mesh and cost $5 each, and can only be used in one store.
Gee, Kathi, if I were the cynical type I'd say that the retail grocery lobby was trying to pull one over with the legislature (would they do that?). I remember one of the stores in Jacksonville trying that back in the '80s, offering ridiculously priced cloth bags to use in their store. I broke down and bought one and it didn't hold much and was the devil to unpack. I also made myself a macrame shopping bag that was too successful, the string I used must have had infinite stretch!

When the stores first began offering "paper or plastic" I asked them to put the wet & cold things in plastic and then to put the plastic bags into a paper bag, instead of double-bagging in the plastic, and to put the dry stuff in paper, and they looked at me like I'd just grown a second head and taken off all my clothes! Obviously if they're going to outlaw plastic shopping bags from the stores they'll have to outlaw garbage bags, food-storage bags, etc. for the same reason. And what about all those "disposable" diapers (including the adult versions)? Same song, different chorus, but I've heard it before.

Kathi, where do you paddle? If you ever come to FL bring your boat! We have lakes, rivers, creeks, ponds, inlets, bays, bayous and the Gulf, and a paddling trail is being developed that circumnavigates the entire state!

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Yes you are right Heidi. Our local store says you can use only their bags in their store. However, Doug has ordered 6 canvas grocery bags online and they should be here this coming week. They have zodiac pictures on them, and are canvas rather than plastic - which I found out the green ones are. Ours say "Western Family" on them, as our store is mostly Western Family products. So we will keep all the bags in the car and when we go to Missoula to shop we will take our canvas bags and when we go local, we will use the green ones....dang!

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Kathi, where do you paddle? If you ever come to FL bring your boat! We have lakes, rivers, creeks, ponds, inlets, bays, bayous and the Gulf, and a paddling trail is being developed that circumnavigates the entire state!

Hi Holly, we have a Pamlico Excel (Wildnerness Systems), and we are very lucky about paddling in Maine. Up on the logging roads, there are hundreds of lakes which are so remote that we are frequently the only ones on them. If there is anyone else, there are so few people that you don't see whoever else is on the lake. The water on many of them is so clear it looks like drinking water, and there is absolute, perfect silence, except the sound of water lapping, frogs and birds.

You see all sorts of wildlife. I only wish my husband wasn't afraid of bears so we could spend the night at some of them.

The people from out of state who are in our legislature want to turn it into a national park. I sure hope they don't, because then it will be just like Acadia, where you can't even move for all the people.

It sounds like fun paddling in Florida, especially since you can do it all year. This time of year here, we get so excited, and just keep watching all the ponds hoping to see the ice melting. We usually start sometime in May and paddle into October if we get any half-way warm days. On cooler days, we usually pick shallow swampy areas which are protected. It's fun to watch the wildlife in those places, but if it's hot and sunny, I want to go where I can go swimming!

(This sure was off-topic for a paper or plastic thread)!!!

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I reuse the plastic grocery bags for lots of things. For the little garbage cans in my house, for emptying out the cat litter and for doggy poop and scoop. I refuse to buy a cloth bag for use in only one store. The plastic bags come in handy and can be reused many different things. I also use them as diaper bags because you can pack a lot more stuff in a plastic grocery bag then in a regular diaper bag. If they ban them I don't know what I'll do because I use the plastic grocery bags for everything.

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I went shopping today and the bagger started putting only two or three little things in each bag. I stopped him and asked him to please pack the bags as full as possible because I didn't want to carry alot of bags. I don't care if things are mixed together, I just want less bags. So what does the bagger do, he double bags everything, So now instead of 6 plastic bags I got 8! When DH goes shopping with me he does the bagging. I saw some large canvas totes at the craft store that I'm going to buy and start taking them with me.

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If they ban them I don't know what I'll do because I use the plastic grocery bags for everything.

Start stockpiling. If you stretch them out and twist them, then tie them in to a knot to get the air out, they don't take up much space. A whole lot of them can be crammed into another bag.

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