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posted by martyb on Wednesday August 07 2019, @01:14AM   Printer-friendly
from the unintended-consequences dept.

https://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/article/bans-on-plastic-bags-can-backfire

Governments are increasingly banning the use of plastic products, such as carryout bags, straws, utensils, and microbeads. The goal is to reduce the amount of plastic going into landfills and waterways. And the logic is that banning something should make it less abundant.

However, this logic falls short if people actually reuse those items instead of buying new ones. For example, so-called “single-use” plastic carryout bags can have a multitude of unseen second lives—as trash-bin liners, dog poop bags, and storage receptacles.

A U.K. government study calculated that a shopper would need to reuse a cotton carryout bag 131 times to reduce its global warming potential—its expected total contribution to climate change—below that of plastic carryout bags used once to carry newly purchased goods. To have less impact on the climate than plastic carryout bags also reused as trash bags, consumers would need to use the cotton bag 327 times.


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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 07 2019, @12:04PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 07 2019, @12:04PM (#877021)

    Jealous? Nope. I love my job and I live in a nice home on a lot of land and money in the bank. Since I'm on a well, I only pay for electricity to pump my water. Now I don't get free needles or a pass from the local constabulary to do anything I want. Then again, I don't abuse drugs and I'm not mentally ill. That brings up a point. Do you have to be crazy or on drugs to want to live in SF?

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 07 2019, @04:38PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 07 2019, @04:38PM (#877150)

    A well huh? So you're just one of the many people busy emptying out your local acquifer which will probably have catastrophic effects on the local plant life if a drought hits.

    Don't sit too high and mighty, and may I suggest you try exploring reality instead of your biased "sf is a liberal hell hole" stupidity? It is just as bad as calling you flyover country.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 07 2019, @08:26PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 07 2019, @08:26PM (#877212)

      I'm not worried about "emptying out my local acquifer" [sic]. Here in flyover country we have lots of water. In fact we have so much of it, it falls from the sky all the time. We have no laws against collecting rainwater either. Our local water table has risen over the past two decades instead due to a few companies that no longer pump huge quantities of water for factories. I'm not concerned.

      I also never mentioned SF liberalism. It might have been implied from the free needles and failure to police their own laws. Take my opinion with a grain of salt, but I never needed to step over piles of human shit here in the redneck cities nestled within flyover country.