Wow. Learned something new here. I've never heard this before, but I'm curious to investigate its veracity now. My mind is blown. This is tricky. Food waste is built into the food production system. The end consumer has no control over the production side waste, which is staggering.On top of all this, if plastic bag bans like California's end up causing people to use more paper bags — instead of bringing their reusable ones to the store — it'll certainly end up being worse for the environment. Research shows that making a paper bag consumes about four times more energy than a plastic bag, and produces about four times more waste if it's not recycled.
Encouraging people to cut down on food waste, on the other hand, would actually mean something.
We bring our own bags to the grocery store. What I am often surprised by his how I am asked in convenience stores, or gas stations if I want a plastic bag when buying something like a drink and a pack of gum. Often, they'll just put it in a bag without asking and hand it to you. I'll take the stuff out and hand the bag back. Who can't carry a drink and a pack of gum to their car? This often happens in large pharmaceutical chains, like CVS or Walgreens. It's incumbent upon those companies to train their staff to be less quick to hand out plastic bags.
While reading this I was thinking the entire time "...at least its a step in the right direction." And that was finally brought up here:
I'm hoping the former is true and whether or not this was a stupidly small step in combating waste the issue is in peoples minds (at least for the time being) and can be compounded upon hopefully inciting more change. I'd rather see something happen at a state, city, neighborhood level than nothing at all.The answer depends on whether you view the fight against plastic bags as something that will catalyze more people to care about the environment and take action — or an empty gesture that will allow people to pat themselves on the back, imagine they've done something to save the planet, and move on.
Yeah, but if it really does take four times as much energy to make paper bags instead (and a significant portion of paper bags don't get recycled) then it's not at all a step in the right direction. At least I was slightly vindicated by that graph on my rabid avoidance of plastic water bottles. But still. Really puts a perspective on how much energy our food consumption costs. Just another reason not to eat out.While reading this I was thinking the entire time "...at least its a step in the right direction."