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That is such an idiotic loophole there is no way in hell it wasn't bought by lobbyists
The whole scheme is a farce designed to take what was once complimentary and turn it into a highly profitable side business. It's the same the world over.
I refuse to buy into the scam u can now find me balancing my groceries intop of eavhother as i try navugate from my car to my kitchen. Yes i know i could use a reusable bag but i always forget.
What made the difference for me was buying a really nice reusable bag. There's a brand called Flip and Tumble. They'll hold an absurd amount of stuff (something like 35lbs, if I remember correctly) and fold down into something smaller than a tennis ball. I keep two in the bottom of my purse and never need a bag. They are expensive (about $18 US), but I've had mine for almost 15 years.
You & me both. Yes I have a few in the car. No I'm not going back to get it. I'll probably make it without dropping something.
Its just a small, unnecessary moment of tension in my day. And its mine.
You described most CA laws - don't get me started on CARB and how is just pushing us toward bigger, less efficient cars while killing innovation by smaller engineering shops
this isnt just california. they rolled out these thicker bags everywhere so they are no longer 'single use' except to the people that use them.
In CO this doesn’t seem to be much of a thing. Almost everyone is using reusable fabric bags or no bags at all. I can’t recall seeing thicker bags for sale at any of the retailers I frequent. Many don’t have bags at checkouts at all anymore even though you can buy the thin ones for a dime.
Those thicker bags, tear easily and usually don't survive longer than the trip home. It's a stupid loophole. They also can't be washed. So if you do reuse them, it's a great way to buildup bacteria and molds.
In reality they are thicker single used bags.
Interesting, here in NY grocery stores can't have any plastic bags. The only bags they have are paper. Restaurants can have plastic bags though.
"banned..."
They never banned them. They just made people have to pay for them, and forced them to be made differently. The new bags are better than before; but they're still plastic and most people aren't re-using them.
They did this in Chicago too and everyone immediately saw that it wasn't about reducing plastic, but about getting more money to the city. If they actually cared about plastic, they would actually ban it. And you know what, It's not hard at all. Think about what people were using in the 70s before plastic on everything was common. Paper grocery bags, wax paper at the deli counter, cardboard cartons for small fruit like blueberries, lettuce and potatoes laying bare on shelves instead of wrapped up in plastic bundles, beverages in cans and glass bottles. If they could do it, we can do it too.
The idea of reusable bags was great, but they operated the same as the old plastic bags. They're thicker, more durable, but most people don't care enough to bring back their old bags, and will just buy new ones because it's convenient. Speaking from personal experience.
Also, different places have different protocols, sometimes they make you bag your own groceries if you bring your own bags. Again, some people won't bother.
They did this in the UK and it worked. The Cali law just has dumb ass loopholes in it.
That's cause we didn't actually ban them. Neo Liberals thought people would stop using them if they had to pay 10 cents.
Turns out, nobody cared. We need an actual ban.
Not OP, but that's what we did in the UK too... I'm honestly confused reading the post and the comments calling California out on this. I must be misunderstanding something because we did the same thing and it really, really worked. The UK led the charge on the concept of 'nudges' like this and it's been successful and widely praised. We still have thick plastic bags that you buy for 10p, but most people really do keep some on hand for most situations so plastic dumping has been significantly reduced.
Somewhere a Social Anthropologist is lining up their PhD paper.
The 'nudges' thing is contested. It's basically from one book and the studies that used it mostly showed temporary single digit differences. Then there's a lot of celebration that "the rate of change is picking up!" before long term effects fail to emerge. It falls smack dab in the center of the replication crisis.
A lot more direct action is required to make sizeable changes, like outreach campaigns and actually trying to change people's minds/behavior.
I think the gig economy and the pandemic both had a hand in this as well. The pandemic set things up for curbside pickup and increased the number of people using things like Instacart, and a lot of people who switched to that have stayed on them. But both curbside pickup and Instacart-style services need a convenient way for the collector of goods to get that stuff to the purchaser, so they're going to buy bags for their deliveree. And the deliveree is going to end up with stacks and stacks of reusable bags that they're never going to reuse (because they order pickup or delivery). They try to donate them but a lot of places don't take them, so they end up in the trash.
Or one just buys them in bulk and brings their own plastic bags to the store. Cheaper than $.10, still legal.
Plastic grocery bags take up so little space and are so versatile for so many things that would otherwise take thicker more expensive trashbag-like material, or paper or cloth that can't handle wet.
Replacing them at the store didn't replace them at the litterbox, at the quick trip to the friend's house to bring some snacks, at the carpet stain cleanup, at the garage project cleanup, at side of the road car repair, for emergency gloves in a pinch, at stopping liquid leaks in your car's trunk because some container broke, at the small bathroom trash can at home, and so many other places where those bags can and do get reused a bunch of times. Paper and cloth bags both leak. Cloth bags waste drinking water to clean. Regular trash bags not only cost more, but like this article mentions, are also thicker plastic resulting in more plastic ending up in a landfill.
Not trying to sound pro-plastic grocery bag, just pointing out that they are infinitely useful for so many small tasks, and the replacements can't hold up to the task, or are worse in several ways. It's difficult to remove something from peoples' processes when there aren't any reasonable substitutes.
Paper probably has the best bet of going back to prevalence since it can be a carbon sink cycle, but it will take time.
now plastic bags are no longer free - but honestly $0.15/bag is basically free so most folks still toss them out.
Ireland has a plastic bag levy of 22c per bag. Most supermarkets don't even bother selling single use bags any more. If you want to buy a bag, then your choice is a thicker reusable bag or a "bag for life" that most supermarkets will charge you 70c or more for.
I suppose some people might throw them away but more likely they hang onto them because they cost so much to begin with.
In some supermarkets like LIDL and Aldi it's also quite common for someone to grab an empty cardboard box that (the stores usually toss them in a big mesh bin) and use that to carry stuff away. These can be put into recycling.
There is also a drive to ban single use plastics like cutlery, straws, cups etc. Ireland also just imposed a refundable tax on plastic bottles and cans - supermarkets have machines that ingest returned containers and print out a credit slip.
Damn, some others countries successfully banned single-use plastic bags years ago, replacing them by re-usable thicker bags that you can buy, people are now accustomed to bring bags to go shopping.
Seems like californians have too much money or are very generous.
We have these cheap fabric bags that groceries stores give out here in Canada. They cost something like 25 cents each and could theoretically be used disposably but most people don't seem to. I have a stupid amount of them stuffed into my car's trunk that I bring into stores.
Does California only sell those big plastic re-useable bags? I don't even really see those here in Canada much anymore
Or the bags are too cheap.
People are gonna be pissed when they find out about plastic water bottles.
Those are recyclable allegedly.
... in practice they really arent though but they do make us feel responsible when we toss those in the blue bin
Plastics aren't as recyclable as they make it sound. But at the same time, nobody ever remembers the other 2 fucking R's:
Reduce your consumption of these materials and
Reuse things that aren't damaged.
Recycling is meant to be the last stop; not the only stop.
There is no reason you can't just keep using the same grocery bags every week until they actually are non functional. But most people just bin them as soon as they are done.
Those are made of PET which is one of the most recycled types of plastic ever.
If only the bags were significantly more expensive people would actually start to care and reuse the bags. Where in from the bags cost the equivalent to 2-3 dollars. A lot of people started using fabric bags and reuse the thicker plastic bags many times. I can easily use the thick plastic grocery bags we have 20 times and the fabric ones I mainly use are over 5 years now and counting.
Plastic bags need to be banned totally.
I just carry some of the thick ones in my car in the trunk and just bag there at the car. I fold them up and bring them to the car and leave them there next time I go out anywhere. A habit that is less common for me to forget to do now but I did forget all the time initially and would pay at the counter. I have an excess of them now though so even when I do forget to bring some down I have spares in the car. Less chance of forgetting twice anyway. Easy thing to change to.
My city banned plastic bags and it costs 10 cents for paper bags so you definitely see a lot more cloth bags being brought in. Just at grocery stores, you still get take out in plastic bags every so often but most places just switched to all paper
Yup. They just created more waste. We need to make the jump to no plastic bags. It's time, we can do it.