[alexchamberlain]

The UK banned single use plastic bags at major supermarkets. We all moaned about it for a few minutes, forgot our reusable bags a couple of times and then got on with it. Even the small plastic bags you put fruit or pastries in are now gone in a few super markets - initially, they replaced them with transparent paper-based windowed bags, but then I think people realised you really don't need to see inside the bag, and brown paper bags are back.

[mcv]

Yeah, I still don't understand why brown paper bags aren't more standard for everything.

I do see some manufacturers reducing plastic, fortunately. For example, my box of tea bags used to come wrapped in plastic, and now it suddenly doesn't, and I'm wondering why it ever needed plastic. But there's still so much stuff that comes wrapped in plastic, and often multiple layers of it.

Just ban it. There are excellent alternatives.

[GuestFAUniverse]

Brown paper, from recycled fibers are often contaminated with mineral oil residue (e.g. from ink on paper) and other unhealthy chemicals, sadly.

There was a report in Germany, years ago, of a range of organic products that failed during testing. They discovered the packaging (recycled paper) was the issue, not the crops and the supply chain before packaging.

So, a _really_ biodegradable cellulose bag is desirable. Even if only to use it I side a brown bag (to stabilise it).

[foobar1962]

I'm old enough to remember when supermarkets only had brown paper bags. They were weak and the handles tear off easily, and anything cold will make the bag wet and it will fall apart usually from the bottom. Supermarkets must have spent a lot of money replacing customer's broken items when bags failed even before leaving the store.

So when doing the calculus for brown paper bags don't forget to include the cost goods wasted when they fail.

[alexchamberlain]

I think banning plastic completely in packaging is a much harder ask, as whether it is needed is rather nuanced (if I understand it correctly). For example, it's perfectly possible to deliver cucumbers to an end customer without them being shrinkwrapped. However, to deliver enough cucumbers to enough customers for a supermarket scale, I understand from several documentaries that plastic is still required in that case. (For those outside the UK, plastic covered cucumber is the social barometer for plastic packaging.) Banning plastic bags was easy and simple, and our laws don't tend to deal with nuance very well...

[SoftTalker]

Brown paper bags were the standard grocery store bag up until sometime in the 1980s. The transition to plastic was pushed by environmentalists with a "save the trees" message focused on how many trees were used to make the paper bags.

[the__alchemist]

I agree getting rid of plastic bags is a net win for the reasons discussed.

But I can't take the brown paper bag thing seriously! They are a UX nightmare in my workflows. Carry one bag per trip in multiple trips (Instead of ~4 I can do with reusable or plastic). Or try the handled ones which tear off end up with groceries all over. Reusable bags are nice though.

[rincebrain]

They break in a lot of use cases.

What you see in a lot of places that have people heavily relying on things like delivery services, is people using the reusable bags like they would use single-use bags - so now you have spent even more resources on a bag that's still being used as single-use. Oops.

[AlecSchueler]

> Yeah, I still don't understand why brown paper bags aren't more standard for everything

Because plastic is cheaper. As I understand it it's often got a negative cost to it, the companies are paid to take it and use it.

[jon_adler]

Unfortunately, all the actual tea bags are usually plastic. The wrapping is probably a small percentage of the plastic in this product.

[elric]

I doubt that's made any kind of environmental/ecological impact at all. The cheap, flimsy plastic carrier bags contain orders of magnitude less material than the reusable kind, and had a second life as a bin liner. Now I need to buy bin liners, which are usually made out of sturdier plastic on top of having to get a reusable bag.

Most of the plastic involved in getting food from farm to home isn't the carrier bag or even the food wrappers. It's the massive amount of plastic that pallets of goods are wrapped in for shipping, which happens several times throughout the supply chain.

We should focus on the latter, instead of the former. Pretty much all we're doing is virtue signalling and maybe hoping that it'll make a tiny difference.

Heck, even a marginal improvement in fuel efficiency of trucks delivering to grocery stores would probably do more than these plastic bag shennanigans.

[oniony]

Where I live there are entire fields of crops grown under plastic sheeting, and I do not mean reusable plastic greenhouses, I mean sheeting pegged to the ground. And then the produce is boxed up in plastic, stuck on a palette, wrapped in plastic and delivered to the supermarkets.

Then, when I'm in town I see building projects where the entire building is wrapped in plastic sheeting: eight story buildings wrapped like a parcel in plastic. Even the ground-level hoarding that used to plywood boards is now typically covered in plastic sheeting printed with branding.

And the roadworks: what used to be reusable metal signs and barriers have recently switched to plastic signs and plastic barriers. I get these get battered and broken quickly but at least the steel ones would typically get melted down and reused at their end-of-life. I imagine the plastic ones just end up in landfill or incinerated.

It does kinda make my home recycling efforts seems futile when commercial enterprises are moving in the opposite direction towards more plastic.

[eptcyka]

There are significantly less palettes being delivered and handled by significantly less people, thus it is far easier to ensure that the plastic used in the delivery process is disposed of properly. Whereas with the abundance of cheap plastic bags that are available on tap to the masses, disposal turns into a mess. I generally agree with you that we should focus on the whole chain and there's lots of easy wins to be had, but decreasing the amount of plastic that gets stuck in trees or otherwise lost in the *environment* is still a good thing.

[yesfitz]

I'd like to address your last point because there's another thread about the larger amounts of plastic being easier to police:

Not all pollution is fungible.

Greenhouse gas emissions and the microplastic epidemic are two related, but separate issues.

There is no amount of fuel efficiency that would stop a plastic bag from blowing into a stream or tree and shedding microplastics as it breaks down.

[darkwater]

We bring tupperwares when buying groceries for the meat, ham, cheese, fish etc and even if the cynic might say it's just a "feel good" action, well, I still put a lot of plastics in our recycle bin but we halved it since we started doing that (and some other trick). Yes, it definitely feels good.

[shellfishgene]

I don't think containers that come from the customer are allowed behind the counter here for food safety reasons.

[upcoming-sesame]

doesn't it add significant weight to the price ?

[gspr]

> The UK banned single use plastic bags at major supermarkets. We all moaned about it for a few minutes, forgot our reusable bags a couple of times and then got on with it.

I hope you're right. Here in Norway, the sensible people did what you describe. A large minority has, on the other hand, turned the lack of plastic bags (and straws, which I'm sure they barely even used once in a blue moon before) into a battlefield of the culture wars. And far right politicans of course cater to them. They manage to capture discourse talking about "environmentalism gone wild" and "EU overreach". It's terribly annoying and they manage to waste everyone's time and derail important debates with this nonsense.

[varjag]

Funnily you can still buy packs of plastic straws, just that they are sold as "resuable" with a cleaning brush (which noone likely ever uses). They are simply not the default option now and that's enough to make some people rage.

[samrus]

These days, you never hear about reduce, reuse, recycle, and how its supposed to be in that priority order. When i was a kid thats what we were taught. Now its just recycle, recycle, recycle

My conspiracy theory is corporate propaganda changed it because reduce and reuse decreases demand, while recycle potentially only lowers production cost

[fiatpandas]

I highly recommend the documentary Plastic Wars (Frontline). It’s about how the plastics industry made a major marketing push for recycling starting in the 80s, in order to avoid plastic bans and ensure production continued to increase. It shifted the burden of plastic waste from producers to consumers, and we are essentially still in that conceptual space (at least in the US).

[adastra22]

For sure. Plastic packaging keeps the product fresh and hermetically sealed from the clean factory / production depot to your store and eventual home. Get rid of plastic and there will be a LOT more spoilage.

Maybe that's an acceptable tradeoff, but most people don't even realize there is a tradeoff being made...

[timeon]

The goal of green-washing is to keep 'unlimited' growth.

[sircastor]

Since all our local markets have introduced handheld scanners, I don't even bring my bags in. I put everything in the cart barcode up, get to the checkout, scan everything, pay, and go.

When I get to the car I unload into the bags. I'm sure it's not a thing for everyone, but I feel like I'm cutting out a fair bit of shuffling.

[2III7]

Why not have the bags in the cart and put the scanned products straight into the bags?

[throwawayffffas]

Plastic bags are making a comeback.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/plastic-bags...

[upcoming-sesame]

For fruits and vegetables - Why is a bag needed at all ?

I just put my fruits and vegetables directly on the conveyor belt.

[mschild]

For most you don't. But if you buy loose cherry tomatoes, having 30 of them rolling around everywhere isn't exactly practical.

Thats easily solved though by simple buying some reusable fruit/veggie net. Essentially the same as what you would use for socks or underwear in the laundry.