Maybe you're too young to remember the days of paper bags, hemp shopping bags, shoes and shirts.
"more environmentally friendly"? Most alternatives are more environmentally friendly in a long run than plastic.
Production of paper comes with many asterisks regarding environment friendliness [0]. It sure can be done, but it's not simple and the majority of the industry isn't "clean".
Hemp is only used a low scale so I don't think we have enough data on what would happen if tomorrow we decided to replace all the plastic bags with hemp bags and how we'd produce that. It's not guaranteed to be better until then.
And non-plastic bags last forever. The oldest grocery bag that I can accurately date is from before at least 2008 and I haven't had a single one wear out yet, so no idea how long they'll end up lasting. I don't know about hemp bags though, since I have a mix of cotton and linen bags myself.
It’s not though unless it’s reused a great deal. Making paper is intense and requires a LOT of water and chemicals.
We should really look for more lower hanging common sense solutions.
Let me give you one… the boxes that are used to transport food to a grocery store are all crushed and go back into the recycling system as bundles. Why aren’t we sending boxes that can be used in place of paper and plastic bags? It would immediately offset a lot of purchases that require bags.
Costco does it. Sam’s Club sometimes too. But manufacturers don’t make boxes designed for the purpose of a second use before recycling, and the vast majority of stores don’t offer it.
That would take a waste stream and give it a second use before being recycled.
Simple, common sense solutions like this one are all around us but we keep looking for a “solution” rather than an “improvement.”
No idea about the US, but I've seen European grocery stores heavily use Euro containers [1]. Empty ones are taken away in the same truck that brings new goods, so there's no extra cost in transportation either.
Costco doesn't use special boxes either. Grocery store uses the exact same case boxes as you would get at a costco checkout, they probably just aren't generating so damn many around the clock because the quantities sold are much smaller, leaving you with fewer extra boxes to have customers deal with on their own.
makeitdouble|1 year ago
Hemp is only used a low scale so I don't think we have enough data on what would happen if tomorrow we decided to replace all the plastic bags with hemp bags and how we'd produce that. It's not guaranteed to be better until then.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_effects_of_paper
kjkjadksj|1 year ago
Zanfa|1 year ago
datahack|1 year ago
We should really look for more lower hanging common sense solutions.
Let me give you one… the boxes that are used to transport food to a grocery store are all crushed and go back into the recycling system as bundles. Why aren’t we sending boxes that can be used in place of paper and plastic bags? It would immediately offset a lot of purchases that require bags.
Costco does it. Sam’s Club sometimes too. But manufacturers don’t make boxes designed for the purpose of a second use before recycling, and the vast majority of stores don’t offer it.
That would take a waste stream and give it a second use before being recycled.
Simple, common sense solutions like this one are all around us but we keep looking for a “solution” rather than an “improvement.”
Zanfa|1 year ago
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro_container
kjkjadksj|1 year ago
tacocataco|1 year ago
Red_Leaves_Flyy|1 year ago