Would you care if plastic bags were banned? why not use reusable cotton all the time?

Question

i always use the same 3 cotton bags everytime i go to the grocery store. why have plastic bags anymore? pros and cons of both?

Answer 1

I agree with the concept but grocery bags often have meat drippings on them and other stuff. Somethings are better disposable. Also when I shop 3 would not do - I have a dozen bags or more.

I often get busy and put off laundry only to discover I'm out of clean underwear ot jeans etc. I can imagine not being able to shop until I do laundry! No thanks!

Besides laundering bags used detergent and chemicals that enter our lakes.

I think recycling the plastic bags to make new ones could be the best answer.

Answer 2

It's banned in San Francisco, CA. Yay, us.

Answer 3

I would have no problem with that.  When I go to Sam's Club, they don't have plastic bags and you either carry everything out individually or put it into used cardboard boxes.  Plastic bags are a convenience and if the stores did not have them, I'm sure people would figure out something else.

Answer 4

Personally I don't care one way or the other whether the bag is made of plastic or cloth.  The issue is that they are single use.  

I don't use bags at all for my groceries.  I get cardboard boxes and carry my groceries home in them then put them out with the rest of the cardboard to be recycled.  Think how much it is going to cost you on everything you buy to have it packaged in something other than a plastic bag.  It is ridiculous.

Plus, the alternatives, cloth and Tyvek take up more room in landfill and decay slower than biodegradable "plastic" bags made of corn starch.

In conclusion, if plastic bags were recycled they would be no more a problem than the alternatives.  Cities which are banning plastic bags are downloading costs onto their citizens rather than coming up with a viable waste treatment alternatives.

Answer 5

plastic? without it where would we be? My parents would not have a couch to sit on.

To your added edit: You are being hypocritical, like most politicians. You cannot have it both ways and win an argument. You either are pro plastic or not.

Answer 6

I wouldn't care if plastic bags were banned. The only thing i like about them is that they are convenient.

Answer 7

There's a plastic bag hanging in the tree behind my house.  It has been for about eight years now.  You can't read the label and it is pretty tattered from the wind whipping it into the branches (the tree is a hawthorn), but other than that, you can tell it is a grocery bag.  It looks like one.  It feels like one.  And in wind storms, it sure as heck sounds like one.

So yeah, I'd be glad if they were banned.  I think of all the plastic bags I have used in my lifetime, and then I imagine ALL of them hanging from that tree.  It makes me ill.  They are a waste of space and the energy used to create them.  Their convenience is incredibly temporary for something so long-lasting.

Answer 8

Because plastic bags as well as being reusable are also useful.

Maybe you can somehow fit everything you buy into 3 cotton bags but not everyone can and do you really think having people make multiple trips (by car given the distance and the need to bring a lot of stuff back) to the shop because they forgot to bring their cotton bags is a good thing for the environment.

Answer 9

Hear, hear!!!!!  Works for me!

Answer 10

The stores around me accept bags for recycling.

It would be great to ban both plastic and paper bags. The devil is in the details and the problem is getting it done. How do you get the population, which has always had the convenience of store bags, to start bringing their own when people have not even fully accepted recycling?

Answer 11

it would be great, the store here where i'm from has already banned them, and started using paper bags, since it has littered   the tundra by high winds or storms, and its not good for nature, since it doesn't  perish naturally, from the weather.

Answer 12

I really don't think that there ARE pros to plastic bags any more.  Sure, they're conventient now, but in the long run they're just adding to depletion of resources.  Plastics should not be quite so disposable.  

In response to a previous answer, there are LOTS of different types of plastic, many of which, as we are just discovering, have negative affects on PEOPLE (i.e. estrogens).  Some types aren't so bad, even if the processes used to make them pollute.  What makes them better is that we don't pick a bunch up just to throw it out as soon as we get it home.  Do your parents buy a new couch every week?