Safeway claims to recycle plastic bags, so we take ours there, but who knows. I always ask for a paper bag if they have them. Safeway paper bags don’t even have handles. Drug stores of course don’t even have paper bags on hand. I need to carry a larger purse or something so I don’t need a bag at all when making a small purchase. And I try to bring my canvas bags to the supermarket when I can.
In Ireland, shops are now charging a fifteen cent tax per plastic carrier bag. This has resulted in a trend toward using canvas bags and a 90% reduction in plastic bag usage. There is talk of doing the same here, but you can imagine the bitching and whining that will engender. It’s so easy and if everyone would do it, well, those plastic bag companies might just blow away. I have no problem with that.
But then what happens to the employees of the plastic bag company? Do they replace the workers at the canvas bag company because they’re cheap labor?
I can live with layoffs in an industry that makes a trillion disposable and unneccessary plastic bags every year, using over twelve million barrels of oil to do so, polluting the world’s waterways, killing countless wild birds and sealife. Yes, I am fine with that.
Maybe when we close the plastic bag company we offer the employees the option of working for an environmental cleanup agency.
John Kerry would have done this. Bush, on the other hand, says “fuck you, good luck getting a new job, you bum. hahaha!”
I’m all for repurposing evil corporations so the good people who work there (because they have to put food on their table somehow) don’t get totally fucked. What makes the fucking even worse is when the evil corporation is the economic keystone of the community. Example: Flint, Michigan and the GM Plant.
If Dow Chemical ever closed it’s doors, Midland would be in rough shape…
All but the super-posh stores in Taiwan charged for bags.
Aldi (discount grocery) charges for bags, but I think they are a European company.
Plastic bags are actually illegal in Bangladesh now. Apparently they were the culprit in massive monsoon flooding (blocking the drainage).
people bitched and moaned in ireland about this but now everybody is used to it and it has done wonders for the amount of litter everywhere. now everybody has canvas bags or “bags-for-life” (very strong plastic bags) that they re-use.
very proud of ireland, we used to be so very backwards but within the last three years we have a smoking ban and plastic bag tax.