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.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 07 2019, @01:44PM (2 children)
You shop five times a week? Do you have nothing else in your life to do except shop?
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Wednesday August 07 2019, @03:05PM
In parts of the world where shops are intimately interspersed with residences, it's quite common to walk out in your neighborhood, see what's on offer, chat with other neighbors, and buy whatever seems good to cook in the evening.
Not feasible with vast suburban tracts zoned residential only.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 07 2019, @07:54PM
Well, if the poster is anything like me, the full time job that I did my shopping on the way back from every weekday probably counts as 'something else in your life'.
Self employment has changed this shopping pattern.