Plastics and Coronavirus - should bans be reconsidered?

[billlaurie]

I wash the reusable plastic bags too.

 

[AurumPunzel]

You should wash your reusable bags after each use. If not the virus, they could be contaminated from the food you put in them.

The issue is that research found that 97% of people don't bother to do that, and they're already putting their lives - and the lives of store employees - at risk, hence why there's already calls for bag bans to be stopped, and people prohibited from using their own bags. And even when the coronavirus blows over, the risk of carrying pathogens in bags and other reusable items will still be present, so unless sanitation stations are provided, I have serious doubts the reusables culture will carry on, even if more and more people become aware of the issues of disposal of plastics, which makes me think a different approach should be advanced over the current fad of phaseouts and bans.

 

[ArielRae]

Our local grocery store Acme just installed clear guards to separate the customers from the cashiers. They even updated a few of their policies.

 

[cobright]

I will mourn disposable shopping bags when they go. I shred and cast them into blocks to make tooling and fixtures for my machines. It's an incredibly useful recyclable. The grocery store here has a bin you can put your old bags in, they used to let me take them to use at home but the manager stopped me a few months back. Turns out the stores get $0.50 a pound for the stuff, that's more than scrap rate for stainless steel and shred aluminum.

 

[AurumPunzel]

I will mourn disposable shopping bags when they go. I shred and cast them into blocks to make tooling and fixtures for my machines. It's an incredibly useful recyclable. The grocery store here has a bin you can put your old bags in, they used to let me take them to use at home but the manager stopped me a few months back. Turns out the stores get $0.50 a pound for the stuff, that's more than scrap rate for stainless steel and shred aluminum.

That's what a lot of pro-banners are conveniently ignoring. Thinking that the market for recycling plastics is dead because of illicit exports, yet there's already a growing market for plastic tarmac and wood-plastic composites, which are made from recycled carrier bags, yet they keep pushing imported reusable bags which are almost 100% made of virgin crude oil that probably comes from questionable sources, and are far worse lifecycle wise than a conventional plastic carrier bag. Not to mention the risks of infection being borne from a lack of sanitation of reusable bags.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

The problem with reusable anything isn’t the fact that it’s reusable. The problem is a lack of hygiene. Are you part of the crowd that finds this whole hand washing thing to be new? Then you’re part of the problem.

There's a large set of people who aren't even aware they should be cleaning and cleaning properly their resuable bags.

The type of cleaning will vary based on materials your bag is made out of.

Also you should never put meats and other such items in a bag with other things but I see plenty of that.

To connect it with 'oh look you're just now handwashing' is such a cliche. This issue of type of bacteria and other such things has been a point of discussion for at least several years. Long before this virus came about. Don't go blaming and saying "you're part of the problem" Pat yourself on your back that you do a good job of keeping your bags clean and continue to educate your fellow reusable bag shoppers on proper cleaning and product packing in reusable bags

Studies have been done years ago discussing how few people actually wash/clean their reusable bags. The truth is the market out there for reusable bags hardly educates the users of them. You're just told to use them but not told other things about it.

Reusable bags themselves aren't an issue other than different materials enable to transfer and retainment of certain bacteria but totally understandable that stores are concerned about it especially now. Things like ecoli are already present on people's bags but this virus has everyone things about surfaces and points of contact.

 

[cobright]

That's what a lot of pro-banners are conveniently ignoring. Thinking that the market for recycling plastics is dead because of illicit exports, yet there's already a growing market for plastic tarmac and wood-plastic composites, which are made from recycled carrier bags, yet they keep pushing imported reusable bags which are almost 100% made of virgin crude oil that probably comes from questionable sources, ...

Comparing materials. Reusable bags that are cloth are almost certainly some polyester rayon garbage. If it's a fiber reinforced plastic then its ... what, garbage reinforced propylene?

Grocer bags are the gold standard hdpe. A few are low density but grind them up with the bunch and no harm at all. It makes a material I can use and one I can create with normal shop equipment.

Industrial use if the stuff is profound. But it's going to get more expensive as recycle supplies dry up.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

I don't know that bans will go away but I do anticipate, especially in the immediate period afterwards, much more careful attention to things brought from outside in. There was a lot of consideration towards reducing overall waste which isn't a problem in my book but we kinda forgot about cross contamination.

I could see more set up towards self-service as a possibility not exactly sure how it would work for those coffee shops because you're still touching things like the coffee carafe or machine but groceries I could see more of that so as to keep the contact mainly with the customer when they opt to use their own bag. I don't know if that were to occur if that would be just more of a temporary thing in which the restriction is removed after such time as public opinion confidence level is higher in terms of points of contact.

Either way it's def. at least on some places minds.

 

[AurumPunzel]

Comparing materials. Reusable bags that are cloth are almost certainly some polyester rayon garbage. If it's a fiber reinforced plastic then its ... what, garbage reinforced propylene?

Grocer bags are the gold standard hdpe. A few are low density but grind them up with the bunch and no harm at all. It makes a material I can use and one I can create with normal shop equipment.

Industrial use if the stuff is profound. But it's going to get more expensive as recycle supplies dry up.

And that's another reason why I'm opposed to bans. Banning plastic bags is only going to dry up the supply further.

 

[marcyleecorgan]

Soon it will be turtles eating a glove and not a straw that people worry about

 

[tzolkin]

The issue is that research found that 97% of people don't bother to do that, and they're already putting their lives - and the lives of store employees - at risk, hence why there's already calls for bag bans to be stopped, and people prohibited from using their own bags. And even when the coronavirus blows over, the risk of carrying pathogens in bags and other reusable items will still be present, so unless sanitation stations are provided, I have serious doubts the reusables culture will carry on, even if more and more people become aware of the issues of disposal of plastics, which makes me think a different approach should be advanced over the current fad of phaseouts and bans.

I don't use reusable bags anywhere except places like Aldi and Lidl that are set up for them. I put the bags on the rack UNDER the shopping cart and then pack them myself over on the counter away from the register or most often (unless it's raining) I just pack the groceries directly into the bags in my trunk. No one else touches them. If the counter is wiped down with disinfectant regularly, I don't see how this would be a great health hazard.

Honestly, people's hands are filthy as well. They touch every single item twice (when getting it off the shelf and then putting it onto the belt at the register) and the cashier still touches all of the items. I would really be interested to see some scientific studies of the bags being more dirty than people's hands, money, and the cc machines.

We travel to Rwanda and have lots of friends who live there. The entire country has had a complete ban on plastic bags since 2008 (so definitely not a new fad). I know sanitation standards are different in Africa, but I really cannot imagine that people are more sick or there are more germs being spread in the last decade plus that they have been using only reusable bags.

 

[SaintsManiac]

Soon it will be turtles eating a glove and not a straw that people worry about

I thought the exact same thing. We might be clearing some air pollution right now, but we are filling up the Earth with disposable waste x 100.

 

[L&Lfan]

I never observed the ban.

 

[AurumPunzel]

We travel to Rwanda and have lots of friends who live there. The entire country has had a complete ban on plastic bags since 2008 (so definitely not a new fad). I know sanitation standards are different in Africa, but I really cannot imagine that people are more sick or there are more germs being spread in the last decade plus that they have been using only reusable bags.

Rwanda is a much poorer country, so sanitation standards are definitely different, and not everyone has access to sanitation, not to mention that waste management is different, and possibly has problems, which could also be the reason for the ban. However, the one thing that irks me about the ban is how Rwanda and environmentalists keep bigging it up as resulting in a cleaner country, yet when you look at Japan - who still freely uses plastic bags - they're still a clean country. Why is that? Because of Japan's culture of cleanliness and excellent waste management.

 

[tzolkin]

Rwanda is a much poorer country, so sanitation standards are definitely different, and not everyone has access to sanitation, not to mention that waste management is different, and possibly has problems, which could also be the reason for the ban. However, the one thing that irks me about the ban is how Rwanda and environmentalists keep bigging it up as resulting in a cleaner country, yet when you look at Japan - who still freely uses plastic bags - they're still a clean country. Why is that? Because of Japan's culture of cleanliness and excellent waste management.

Yes, there are certainly other factors. Rwanda is usually specifically referred to as being the cleanest country in Africa. Not having plastic bags blowing around by the wind certainly makes a difference there (especially in rural areas where they have no way of disposing of the bags in the trash), but their practice of Umaganda (mandatory community service for all citizens) likely has more to do with why the country is so clean than the bag ban.

I was really just questioning the health aspect. I know they do not track health the same way we do in the US, but if there was a huge spike in illness due to the use of reusable bags I feel like that would have been noticed and they would have started an education campaign about washing them.

 

[AurumPunzel]

Yes, there are certainly other factors. Rwanda is usually specifically referred to as being the cleanest country in Africa. Not having plastic bags blowing around by the wind certainly makes a difference there (especially in rural areas where they have no way of disposing of the bags in the trash), but their practice of Umaganda (mandatory community service for all citizens) likely has more to do with why the country is so clean than the bag ban.

I was really just questioning the health aspect. I know they do not track health the same way we do in the US, but if there was a huge spike in illness due to the use of reusable bags I feel like that would have been noticed and they would have started an education campaign about washing them.

Well, the cultural aspect does add dimension, but what Rwanda does should never be cited as the raison d'être for spreading the idea of bag bans far and wide, particularly as their economy isn't the same as in First World countries, and also, the cultural aspect you've just mentioned.

The health aspect is based on what pathologists have discovered from when there was an initial craze for reusable bags, and when the first bag bans in the US came into force. The initial research that was conducted in California and Arizona found that around 97% of the reusable bags swabbed were not cleaned. A large percentage of them were found to contain a strain of E.coli, and also, a norovirus case that struck down an Oregon girls' sports team in Seattle years ago was traced to a reusable bag left in a bathroom in the hotel they were staying at. Now with the coronavirus, those fears that were expressed by medical professionals years ago are becoming reality, and it's also leading to questions about whether or not the reusables culture is exacerbating the spread of COVID-19, and the amount of cases in New York is already highlighting the fears that medical researchers and the plastics industry - who support the researchers' concerns - have been expressing for years, and with bag bans now becoming a huge fad (instead of those previous exceptions including Rwanda) - thanks to recent anti-plastic documentaries and Sir David Attenborough - there's now concern that reusables could be putting public health at risk, and is already leading to a Catch-22 on the environment and public health.

But do I care about the environment? Of course I do, but my personal view is that, with the efficacy of bans being in doubt and the aforementioned health concerns, phaseouts and bans should not be forced on people, and if people still insist on reusables (I myself use reusable bags in my local supermarket myself, especially because we no longer have thin vest bags and thicker bags are now going up in price), then they should absolutely make double-sure that they're properly sterilised. But then with the whole coronavirus situation, you cannot afford to make the assumption that people will follow through with reusables hygiene, and that's why, as mentioned before, many places are now discouraging reusables in an effort to control COVID-19.

 

[hmsTigger]

It has made me reconsider. I have used reusable shopping bags for years, and I am in Georgia where there is no ban on plastic bags. I just have always used them to help out the environment and help keep plastic bags out of the landfill.

Since the Coronavirus threat, I haven’t used a reusable shopping bag. I use plastic bags, and don’t even bring those into my house. I unload everything in the garage and use a Clorox wipe to clean everything before bringing it into my house. This has really made me reconsider all the germs that my reusable bags bring into my house on a weekly basis.

I do the same and do not bring anything bought into the house in a bag. I hand carry, and wash everything in hot soapy water, and toss the plastic reusable bags. I also clean my car mats after a shopping trip out and the bottom of my shoes. Taking NO chances!

 

[AurumPunzel]

I do the same and do not bring anything bought into the house in a bag. I hand carry, and wash everything in hot soapy water, and toss the plastic reusable bags. I also clean my car mats after a shopping trip out and the bottom of my shoes. Taking NO chances!

You see, this is why I personally think the whole war on single-use plastics and contentious plastics is becoming futile. As there are far better ways of tackling the issue of plastic pollution than forcing measures or initiatives that are dangerous to public health, the last thing I want is for the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic to become prolonged, even after it recesses to the point we can go back to normality. I miss not having to worry about lugging around potentially germy reusable bags to my local supermarket (and I did reuse those thin vest bags for rubbish), and worrying that I may have to pay through the nose just to have a bag big enough to accommodate some Animators' dolls or a typical spree from the Disney Store, thanks to this virtue-signalling crusade. Again, I hope once the outbreak is over, this should urge a huge rethink into how we deal with plastic waste, and how sacrificing convenience and public health for conspicuous conservation is becoming a futile hill many environmentalists want to die on.

 

[VandVsmama]

They absolutely should bring back all of the plastic. And burn all of those dumb paper straws that disintegrate when you get them wet. They're horrible and change the taste of everything you drink through them.

 

[AurumPunzel]

They absolutely should bring back all of the plastic. And burn all of those dumb paper straws that disintegrate when you get them wet. They're horrible and change the taste of everything you drink through them.

The whole move to paper straws was absolutely dumb. The raison d'être? Guesswork from a child and emotional guilt-tripping stemming from a video of a veterinarian extracting straws from a sea turtle's nostrils. But how did the straws get there? Litterers. Just toughen the enforcement and make recycling of the plastic straws easier. And stop cutting down trees as well!