Toward a Reduction in Plastic Bag Blight:

[jsmith]

Plastic grocery bags = cat litter disposal bags. I would like to be as green as possible, but what else am I supposed to put the cat crap in?

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I just do the cat litter when I take out the garbage at night. I scoop it directly into the garbage bag, then out it goes.

[moreace01]

We also have the cat litter issue - have always used plastic grocery bags for this purpose. Recently, I bought biobags for this problem. Really, they are made for dog waste and I had to buy a special sized scoop (i.e. really small) so I could scoop the litter into the bag. Considering contacting the company about making bags with a wider opening... But anyway, it's sort of working and in my mind I feel better since they are supposedly 100% biodegradable.

(as far as scooping only once a day - our female cat would not be tolerant of that and our male cat...well, he's pretty stinky)

[Shel_B]

I found this thread accidentally, while searching for something else.  Thought I'd bump it up as there have been a lot of changes in the landscape since 2008.

 

In our area plastic bags are no longer available at most stores - grocery stores, liquor stores, household goods stores like Bed, Bath, & Beyond, department stores, and so on.  Restaurants are allowed to use plastic bags for carryout orders.  The only bags that are available in grocery stores are, by law, paper made with a minimum percentage of recycled material, and the shopper has to pay for them.  Otherwise, it's bring your own reusable bag or buy one at the store. 

 

We have been using reusable bags for many years, long before it became a requirement, but I have a tendency to shop on the spur of the moment and sometimes don't have a bag with me, and this is especially true when I'm taking the bus or riding a bike.  Otherwise, we keep several bags in the car.

 

I found a very nice bag made of 100% recycled bottles and other materials.  It folds very small, and stores in its own, attached pocket and the whole thing attaches to a belt loop with its own small, carabiner made of recycled aluminum.  I hang that puppy on my door handle, and stick it in my pocket on the way out.  It compacts to a size similar to a pack of cigarettes, so it fits easily into a jacket pocket, or even a pocket in my jeans.

 

A couple of the markets use compostable bags instead of plastic to put your produce, grains, etc., into.  These are great because they serve the same function as plastic bags for carrying out you veggies, but they go into the landfill and compost down.  They are made of some vegetable matter.

 

Our community takes plastic bags at the local recycling center and also picks them up when the recycling truck comes by once a week.  We place our small plastic bags, such as found in packaging or food wrap, in a larger plastic bag, secure I, and of to the recycling it goes.  We no longer put plastic bags in the trash ... never, never, never.  All the plastic bags we end up with get recycled.

[Porthos]

I forget to take my reusable bags into the market about 50% of the time. Since the 2 places I shop at most frequently are bag-your-own I just put everything back into the cart and put the stuff into my bags at the car. If I forget at other places I just tell them "I don't need bags, thank you." When circumstances dictate that I do need a bag both of my primary places offer paper bags.

 

My DW and I not perfectly green on the bag issue but we have made major strides in the last couple of years. The county and city we are in allow plastic bags still. There is a tiny economic incentive to bring your re-usable bags into the store  - something like a $0.06 per bag credit.

[Okanagancook]

We don't have a ban on plastic bags here but more and more shoppers are bringing their own bags. I've been doing that for the past 9 years and it is easy for me because I always shop with the SUV. The problem I have is with still having to use the light weight plastic bags provided by the store to bag vegetables like beets, peppers, etc., etc. Our local vegetable store has nylon mesh bags for sale but they keep going out of stock. I try to use as few bags as possible and after I have transferred the veggies to my green storage bags at home, I put the store plastic bags in the recycle. What do others do about inshore plastic bags? Do the places that outlaw plastic bags provide paper bags for veggies?

[Jaymes]

I'm interested in what all y'all use to line your small trash cans, now that you're not using the free grocery store ones.

 

Do you buy plastic bags?

 

Sometimes I wonder if this is a conspiracy by those nice folks at Hefty and Glad.  I suspect most of us are still lining our trash cans with plastic bags.

 

Only now, we have to pay for them.

[Shel_B]

I'm interested in what all y'all use to line your small trash cans, now that you're not using the free grocery store ones.

 

Do you buy plastic bags?

 

Sometimes I wonder if this is a conspiracy by those nice folks at Hefty and Glad.  I suspect most of us are still lining our trash cans with plastic bags.

 

Only now, we have to pay for them.

 

If between our two houses we fill a 5-gallon bucket with trash, that would be a lot. I don't even have a trash can in my kitchen.  Whatever is going into the trash gets put out almost immediately, and it's rarely food items.  We compost most all of our food scraps, or, rather, the city does.  They pick up the green bucket (30-gallons or so in size, depending on customer's needs) and compost the material.  The compost is used by the city in their projects, and twice a year they have a compost giveaway - just stop by the recycling center with containers, and scoop away with the provided shovels.

 

If there's something that has to be bagged and put in the trash, we generally use the compostable bags provided by the local organic grocery.