Are you really giving up those plastic grocery bags?

Question

I take less and less grocery bags when I go to the store. While I have seen more folks to this!! The city of Seattle is going to charge a 20 cent tax on grocery bags. Down here in Florida they have small cloth bags that you can purchase for .99 cents and its like using 4 plastic bags. Why are we so attached to these plastic bags, that blow around outside, on our streets, lawns, grass, fields, etc. What is you city doing?

Answer 1

yes i am consciously trying to cut down on these horrible plastic bags i have been for years.all supermarkets should charge now for plastic bags.they are a menace to the environment and are just too convenient for the average man in the street.

Answer 2

Our city has those bags you can buy & use over and over again. Also the plastic bags cost more than the cloth bags...

Answer 3

I actually reuse my plastic grocery bags for a number of things.  If my state gets rid of plastic grocery bags, I will then have to BUY plastic bags to replace the bags I would have normally gotten at the store for free...

Hmmmm.

Answer 4

I find the reusable tote bags hold more and are easy to carry all my groceries in. I have enough to separate types of groceries. I still have lots of plastic bags left over to reuse, but I'm not getting any more of them. The first R is reduce.

Answer 5

I can't speak for my city, but I'm making a point to just use the cloth bags as often as I can, or if I'm just buying a couple things- no bag at all. I reuse the plastic bags I do get or I collect them and take them to the recycling can at the stores...

Answer 6

I don't know about other people, but I reuse mine.

After taking my groceries and other bought items home, my bags pull double duty as trash can liners. storing aluminum cans to be taken to a recycling plant, carrying my gym clothes to and from my gym locker, and other things.

I don't know why people make such a fuss about plastic bags; reuse is one of the three R's.

Answer 7

I have bought 5 of the cloth bags and use them to carry my groceries.  I find that they hold a lot more and are so much easier to carry.  I was told that the plastic bags have been completely done away with in parts of Europe and that everyone has to use cloth bags. Don't know if that's 100% true, but I like the idea!

Answer 8

No, absolutely not.  I use them to carry my groceries home, then I use them again to take yukky garbage out to the trash can.  Nothing else works as well.

Answer 9

I will continue to use the plastic bags as long as they are available. I use the do-it-yourself registers and therefor do all the packaging. I place all the cold and frozen purchases together, canned good, in another bag and so on. When I get home I have about 6 bags of groceries and can carry 3 or 4 at a time. Try that with paper bags and open the door at the same time. I live just outside Austin Texas where they have been trying to eliminate the plastic but I don't shop in Austin.

I never see any bags flying around and caught in the trees, maybe that is the beauty of living out in the country.

Answer 10

Nothing. Unfortunately paper bags are very hard to find, even if they're more environment friendly than plastic as far as degrading quickly. Just what does Seattle do to merit a 20cent bounty on every plastic bag? I suppose government is a thief as Lysander Spooner has said. Depending on what you bought and put into those bags, the government might make more money off the bags than the store did from your purchases.

I usually shop at box stores and I put my purchases into a used cardboard box they provide, which I then re-use until it falls apart in most cases. They could either make the bags thicker and stronger so they'd be re-used or make them bio-degradable. Having the government impose a tax is a very bad solution to any problem. Currently they make more money from a gallon of gas than any oil company or gasoline vendor in the world, for no effort at all and they don't even put that money into investing in alternative energy research.

Answer 11

your cloth bags are plastic? mine were from recycled paper, cotton and other stuff. anyway, reuse those cloth bags they have in florida.

Answer 12

I make the employees pack as much as they can into my plastic bags.  I think it's ridiculous when they put one or two items into one bag.  I also re-use the bags that I do bring home.

I may end up buying a couple of the cloth bags.