Posted on 09/01/2022 7:23:04 AM PDT by grundle
Nicole Kramaritsch of Roxbury, New Jersey, has 46 bags just sitting in her garage. Brian Otto has 101 of them, so many that he’s considering sewing them into blackout curtains for his baby’s bedroom. (So far, that idea has gone nowhere.) Lili Mannuzza in Whippany has 74.
“I don’t know what to do with all these bags,” she said.
The mountains of bags are an unintended consequence of New Jersey’s strict new bag ban in supermarkets. It went into effect in May and prohibits not only plastic bags but paper bags as well. The well-intentioned law seeks to cut down on waste and single-use plastics, but for many people who rely on grocery delivery and curbside pickup services their orders now come in heavy-duty reusable shopping bags — lots and lots of them, week after week.
While nearly a dozen states nationwide have implemented restrictions on single-use plastic bags, New Jersey is the only one to ban paper bags because of their environmental impact. The law also bans polystyrene foam food containers and cups, and restricts restaurants from handing out plastic straws unless they’re requested.
Compared to single-use plastics, the more durable reusable bags are better for the environment only if they are actually reused. According to Shelie Miller, a professor at the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability, a typical reusable bag, manufactured from polypropylene, must be used at least 10 times to account for the additional energy and material required to make it. For cotton totes, that number is much higher.
(Excerpt) Read more at yahoo.com ...
And brown bags of paper can be sterilized in an oven, using low temp (250 degree) setting for thirty minutes.
"Reusable" shopping bags are disgusting, filthy and completely unsanitary. You have no idea where those bags have been and if the costumer cleaned them. The filth has been documented for more than a decade. From 2010:
https://news.arizona.edu/story/reusable-grocery-bags-contaminated-with-e-coli-other-bacteria
Customers put their filthy reusable bags right on the counter and I witness cashiers handle the customers' filthy bags in order to help bag the items.
Make up a bucket of 10 to 1 water to bleach and dunk the cotton bags until thoroughly wet, wring them out, then set them out in the sun to dry. That is a sterilizing method for cotton ‘things’.
We have to pay 5 cents a bag for paper.
I collect them, I use them as woodstove starters.
Why would I bother? What am I accomplishing? I don’t need the **** bags in the first place. We have a lunatic dictator in charge of NJ and I’m supposed to “sterilize” dozens of bags I have no use for & didn’t need in the first place because muh non existent global warming. How am I supposed to bend the knee next week?
But people in PA have it all on the ball? They have the dirty corrupt Government they deserve?
Stop attacking the people who live in a place. It’s a poor strategy & ignores the truths that underpin our lives. Corrupt elections greed & graft in Government pandering for votes happens everywhere and is a real uphill battle, one that PA is fighting a sometimes losing battle against just like NJ.
I reuse bags, I don’t sterilize them. I don’t sterilize my kitchen either, just keep it clean.
The stores still give disposable bags for produce, you can take them for meat.
Will Goodwill or Habitat take the bags?
I presently have 3 bags full of bags in my trunk and another two bags of bags in my kitchen. Thanks Murph.
Another reason why people are leaving Joisey by the thousands!
We have a ton since most of our shopping is curbside pickup or shop from home. I am going to sew a zeppelin out of mine LOL.
While visiting mom, I forgot about ban when going food shopping for her. She had “reusable bags” at home. Afterwards, she had four more.
I’m old enough to remember women walking to and from the market pulling grocery carts behind them. I also remember reusable plastic or string mesh bags with handles they used. Those were a thing in Europe much longer, perhaps even now.
I use a ton of brown paper bags at harvest time. They breathe better than plastic, and they can stand up on their own.
I refuse to assume the burden of disposing of those bags. There are literally millions of bags being generated because the Governor wanted to virtue signal. It’s his problem not mine. What would GW do with millions of bags. I have over 50 in just a few months. I don’t drive. We get groceries delivered. Now I am trying to cut down on groceries and make do because I resent the bag “thing”.
I knit my reuseable bags in to humorous cumberbunds for a local right wing extremist party.
It’s so pathetic, so sickening, and so discouraging that our population is so dumbed down.
They think it’s great to devote millions of acres of farmland to growing food they can burn in their car. But the idea of raising trees which remove a lot of CO2 from the air by the way to make bags that are 100% biodegradable is repulsive to them
Thousands of tons of non-biodegradable petroleum based bags, which is what the non-woven polypropylene is, are going into landfills when they could be biodegradable paper. The greenies are not only destroying the economy they are destroying the environment
When I’m asked paper or plastic? I say, it doesn’t matter, it’s all going to landfill anyway.
Wow, we did delivery shopping for a while and those large, heavy-duty bags were great for heavy-duty trash. Saved a lot of trash bags.
My favorite was many years ago when the thin bags became illegal was *transparent* heavy-duty plastic bags—i used them for knitting projects and the like.
Where I shop, they don’t ask - you get plastic unless you speak up & request paper. I bring my own bags, but if I forget, I prefer paper - sturdier & don’t collapse/spill contents all over the car like plastic. Plus, I reuse the paper bags ... wrap stuff, use it as a liner & also in the garden under mulch to keep weeds down, etc. I generally carry a few along with my reusable bags in the event I need more bags.
I work for someone in a similar situation to yours with the bags piling up. I figure I’ll take them to Habitat in a while. The lawmakers did no think this through all the way. At one point they were talking about banning all plastic bags, and the newspapers had to lobby for an exception.
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