In addition to being counterproductive (as explained by others), there's another issue with these token environmental laws that add highly visible inconveniences with no actual benefit (e.g. bag or straw bans): they annoy people, leading to resentment and rejection of environmentalism as a whole, harming the chances of policies that would actually have a meaningful positive effect being adopted. [1] .
My impression is that these laws are often popular among one group because they annoy another, perceived as being in the wrong - which then leads to the second group pushing laws that will annoy the first, even if they don't make sense.
In Australia, New Zealand in recent years we've moved to reduce plastic bags from supermarkets etc.
I haven't actually heard anyone complain about it or get annoyed at some group of people - this whole concept of being annoyed at some group of e.g. environmentalists actually seems completely strange and alien.
Yes, it takes a bit of getting used to, but now it's simply a habit to take a small folded up reusable bag most places when we head out (just incase we end up shopping), or to think ahead and grab some bags when we know we're going out for a shop.
Those thin plastic bags at checkout were phased out here in South Australia in 2009. I remember some resentment at first ("Now I have to buy bin bags!") but a few years later I don't think anyone cares. Anyone remotely prepared has reusable bags in their home/car, or collapsible bags in a handbag, and deliveries arrive in paper bags (which we then use as a bin under the sink). There are other single-use plastic phase outs in progress and the near-future also.
Previously, plastic bags discarded roadside were a common sight, stuck in fences and trees.
The number of people that I see taking their bags into the supermarket would be <10%. Many people, like me, just pay the 15c/bag tax each time for (heavier plastic) bags that just end up in landfill anyway.
The part that this article completely ignores is that you'd have to re-use a bag 50 times for it to have the same impact on the environment the old plastic bags had. The fabric bags it's about 7000 to 20000 for organic ones.
> it's simply a habit to take a small folded up reusable bag most places when we head out (just incase we end up shopping), or to think ahead and grab some bags when we know we're going out for a shop.
For us ADHD people your simple habit is an insurmountable problem. Even if I have them in the car I'll be halfway done with shopping before I remember the bag. Fortunately they just let me pay for a new reusable bag each time.
I resent it because it feels like token bullshit. Plastic bags were quite thin so there is quite literally 100x+ more plastic in the packaging of the products I'm buying than the bag it goes in. Environmentalists pushed the most inconvenient policy that has the least benefit instead of something that might actually move the needle enough to gain my support.
Also these environmental laws come from a place of non-rigorous fanciful thinking, ie. the paper straw push was pushed by some hollywood celebrity and never took into account that paper straws are loaded with forever chemicals, and are useless with shakes or drinks that take a long time to finish. The gas stove bans are beyond absurd, the claims are that they cause asthma and lung problems but I bought a few air quality meters and ran my gas stove at full blast with no discernible degradation registered on these meters. In addition going full electric leads to a non-redundancy in heating and cooling which pushes a greater strain on the electric grid and if said grid fails(see california) people are completly without heat or cooling. Lastly they push enormous costs onto individuals for miniscule gains.
If you ran a gas stove and couldn't measure anything, I really question your meters or method - it maybe your house is build like a cheese grater.
My meter was off the charts when turning on the gas range or oven. I didn't get a meter until after a trip to the in-laws when my wife noticed that cooking at their house didn't make her sick, but as soon as we were back home it was an issue.
We swapped the gas for induction and love it - especially the part where she isn't getting sick from using it. Our house is built very tight. The air quality meter also got me to put in an air exchanger. It was great to have numbers before and after these changes.
We had gas because I've always liked cooking on it and it works when the power is out. It was hard to give that up. Now we use a camp stove when the power is out.
I think a ban is too strong. It seems like building codes requiring a range hood that actually works could be enough.
The idea behind the gas stove ban, is that it's supposed to be a gas appliance ban. Most of a house's gas consumption is heating and hot water, but people will keep gas because of the stove.
Gas itself has a lot of problems. Ignoring the safety concerns (oof!), the micro-leaks from gas pipelines is a major source of greenhouse gases. But we can't clean up all the pipes if everyone is still using gas stoves.
Comparing gas vs electric seems incorrect. Should be comparing with induction instead. It is way more energy efficient (altho not necessarily more cost efficient). It produces no combustion byproduct like gas (which your air quality meter may or may not be able to detect), and it is way faster and gives you better control. It also is safer without flames or leaks, and less likely to burn you. It is the way to cook in 2024 imo.
> The gas stove bans are beyond absurd, the claims are that they cause asthma and lung problems but I bought a few air quality meters and ran my gas stove at full blast with no discernible degradation registered on these meters.
Have you checked for formaldehyde? I did, and a stove results in a real increase in its content.
"they annoy people, leading to resentment and rejection of environmentalism as a whole"
I hadn't thought about it that way before, but I think you're exactly right. I feel this in myself. I am pro-environment, or at least I want to be. But when I think about the actual effects of all these laws and regulations it just makes me mad and want to ignore or fight ALL environmental laws. I have to use a paper straw now? It just seems to go on and on.
Do people really need straws so much they get annoyed if they are made of a different material? You can just not use a straw. Or if it’s life or death you have one, purchase a collapsible metal straw and bring it with you.
All of that channels your emotions in a negative way. Carrying reusable bags and straws really isn’t that difficult let’s be honest, we carry around other things.
Although this is also my impression based on personal observations over the years, I concur that it seems like a lot of activism in general is just a thin socially-acceptable wrapper around hating on other groups of people.
Take carbon-neutrality for example. There's no shortage of people who will rage against flyers, car users, cruise takers, etc, etc as the cause of all carbon related ills in the world. And of course, the complainer's personal use of polluting energy is always objectively correct and morally just. And there are extreme examples like the "Tyre Extinguishers" group, which is clearly just a group of individuals who want to damage others' property under some thin veil of "doing good for the environment".
I say all this as a person that actually does care about the environment, but have not fallen into the easy trap of thinking that hating on others is a solution.
Meaningful central solutions are the answer. If one cares about carbon neutrality, I'd recommend advocating for across-the-board carbon taxation that is directly and honestly tied to the cost of fully and immediately offsetting a product/service's carbon footprint. And then it wouldn't matter one bit if someone wants to take several cruises a year, or drive an "unnecessarily" large car. But the social justification to hate on those people would evaporate, and that would make some other people sad.
Can you say the same about cigarette smoking bans in restaurants? Just a socially acceptable way for people to hate smokers?
Smoking or emitting carbon, or using plastic imposes negative externalities on other people. Second hand smoke causes lung cancer, carbon in the atmosphere leads to climate change, plastic in our environment can cause developmental and reproductive issues. There are reasons to oppose these things that do not include hating people. Some of the tactics may be ineffective or misguided, but this does not mean that everyone who cares about stopping harmful things hates a particular group of people.
I like your idea of putting a price on carbon emissions. Many economists agree that it would be one of the most effective ways to eliminate emissions while allowing the economy to continue to grow [1]. Solutions are there, and they will be employed when the political will for it is built.
> immediately offsetting a product/service's carbon footprint.
What offsetting do you find acceptable? Most carbon offsets sold are complete bunk, thus costing very little. Stuff we can be sure about (like DAC) are well over 500€/ton right now, implemented now this would be sure to lead to riots, especially since it'll probably affect people with less income the most (relative to their income). A carbon price is a great mechanism, but one this high is (IMHO) unworkable and there needs to be accompanying measures to ensure that the carbon price isn't so low as to be ineffective, not strain citizens to much and not make local industry non-competitive.
If we only implemented it for non-strictly-necessary stuff (like meat, flights, big cars, cars outside rural areas, living and heating a larger dwelling over 18°, ), it would still be very unpopular (and probably lead to riots)
> leading to resentment and rejection of environmentalism as a whole
I think people like this because it explains why the "other side" doesn't just listen to their arguments and follow their prescriptions on how to live exactly.
Meanwhile, these other people live _in_ the environment, and so they're obviously concerned about it at some level.
My read is that "environmentalism" is used as a "bully plank" and people are rather tired of being manipulated for the ends of elites without any accountability for their policy failures and so generally tend to react quite negatively when it is naively brought into any conversation.
They annoy people that already don't really care, and want an excuse to be vocal about it. It takes effectively zero effort to keep a reusable bag around, and you don't even have to use it every time to have a sizable impact.
The reason why these bans are effective is because people like me don't want a bag anyway, and before these bans were in effect, I didn't have a choice. And these things do not end up in the trash, in part, because they are so light weight.
The same thing happened when they banned smoking. Normalizing not using a bag unless you need one will feel normal for the next generation, but never feel normal for us.
When your concerns about environmentalism extend only to "unless it's inconvenient" then you're not actually concerned with environment, you're concern with feeling socially shamed.
Look, I have plenty of concern about faux environmentalism bullshit, like recycling plastic, but plastic bag bans are not one of them, because there are myriad alternatives that exist.
> It takes effectively zero effort to keep a reusable bag around
I’ve found it takes lots of effort. It’s a chore to keep track of and bring it back out to the car. I probably now have 10 reusable bags that I’ve bought because I keep forgetting them at home, or in the car when I wasn’t expecting to go to the store.
It’s not a huge effort, but it’s definitely non-zero.
Obviously, I should be smarter. But I’m not, sadly.
What is your evidence it has caused backlash, or that it hasn't actually had a benefit? The whole article claims the contrary: that it works.
I do agree that some behaviors can be counterproductive, like those pests who blockade busy roads or glue themselves to paintings "for the environment". Not only do these privileged and spoiled punks unjustly impede people from living their lives and destroy culture (they seem to always glue themselves to things that still pass as art, never the banana duct taped to the wall), but they only foment antipathy toward anything environmental, harming legitimate concern, action, and legislation in the process. The social deficits and ineptness of these people is astounding.
This is just not my experience. People don't complain and carrier bags as street rubbish, littering everything from urban trees to the countryside, just disappears. Charging is enough; bans aren't necessary, but sure, add them, no problem.
Maybe I move in the wrong circles, but we banned both plastic shopping bags and plastic straws in New Zealand, and I don’t hear anyone complaining about it. Everyone I know uses paper bags (from the online supermarket deliveries) to line their bins.
It’s not plastic bags and straws that make it to the landfill that are the problem - it’s the ones that don’t make it to the landfill. I haven’t seen a plastic bag stuck in a tree for years!
When they banned single use plastic bags in New Jersey it increased the amount of plastic in use [1].
Starbucks straw less lids use more plastic than the old lid ands straw. With a lot of them ending up in the trash instead of recycling, it may not be a net benefit.
The changes being made aren’t having quite the impact people had hoped.
Given that single use plastic bags are rather difficult to get recycled in so many metro areas (I remember reading a single digit percentage of it is even recyclable) it’s not clear if it going into the trash instead of recycling is not a huge impact. But increased use of single use plastics is certainly not desirable IMO similar to fossil fuels unless they’re compostable or similar types that at least can break down cleanly.
The main goal isn't to reduce the amount of overall plastic created its to reduce the amount of plastic trash that ends up on the streets, beaches, rivers, etc.
In the context of plastic lids vs straws. While you seem to suggest that there is more plastic waste now by weight mass or quantity.
There are other considerations. A lid is likely easier to see and pick up. Also a lid is potentially more likely to be less problematic for fauna whereas straws are known for being problematic (e.g. that one popular video of a straw stuck in turtle nose).
I'm not saying we shouldn't try to do better though. But there are no doubt a lot of complex variables at play
I have to second this. No one I know complained when it was introduced, and I saw no complaints aired in the media of any noticeable degree. We still have too much unnecessary plastic in packaging.
My wife is Irish, and they started the removal of plastic bags over 20 years ago. It was carefully phased in over time. It led to a 90% reduction in plastic bag use [0]. They also weigh your trash (in Dublin, anyway) as a means of cost pressure to reduce waste and encourage recycling. It is stated to have reduced waste by 50% [1].
They weigh country-wide. In Ireland waste collection is done by private companies and they charge by weight. As I recall, they have something like subscription plans [1]. I'm Irish but I live in New Zealand now, and here the rubbish collection is paid for by your Council rates.
I was still living in Ireland when the plastic ban was introduced. There was push-back from some companies that make plastic bags, unsurprisingly, but it worked really well.
There was a bit of push-back here in NZ too, similar to what happened in Ireland. The usual grumbling, about interfering greenies, loss of freedoms, etc.
[1] This is an example of one company's offerings:
"We were the second-worst country for packaging recyclability. Here in clean, green Aotearoa, 57% of the packaging we assessed wasn’t recyclable in practice. That’s not too bad when compared to Brazil (92%), but we have a lot of room for improvement. Especially when our Aussie cousins beat us by a mile with just 14% of packaging not being recyclable."
A big part of the problem is the commercial conflict of interest, which among other things means that robust data isn't available. For example, if we had year-on-year graphs showing domestic plastic production, consumption, sales, in different regions and industries, for different purposes, we could start to build a true big picture. Instead, the populace is reduced to arbitrarily celebrating visible wins, without really knowing whether we're winning or not.
> However we can't allow it to distract from the bigger pictur
I sometimes wonder if that’s the real agenda
Like recycling. Keeping us busy sorting things in to different bins. Without thinking about the absolute torrent of crap people order on a daily or weekly basis. But it’s ok because the cardboard and plastic packaging is going in a magical bin (which often isn’t that magical…)
For sure, having seen the way Germans recycle, NZ has a long way to go still.
The plastic bag ban is a good start, but seeing how Germans reuse glass bottles is an eye opener, and I really don't understand why we have individual cucumbers wrapped in plastic?!
Fwiw I haven't seen a plastic bag stuck in a tree for years either. I live in the UK where they're legal but there's a (mandated) 10p or something fee for them. (Personally I have a few of the slightly more expensive but much less disposable ones that I can reuse indefinitely.)
Weirdly I did see cassette tape stuck in a tree recently though!
Once I went on vacation to a tropical island. I went to a grocery store on the island. I didn't bring a bag because I was a doofus who had not previously lived or traveled to a tropical island.
There were no plastic bags. There were no paper bags. There was no option to pay money to get a reusable grocery bag like we see in the US. If you were a doofus like me who didn't bring some kind of bag, you only had two options. One was to miraculously carry your stuff home without bags. The other was to use the cardboard boxes that used to contain produce, if there were any left over.
We carried our groceries back to the hotel in a cardboard box that previously contained fruit.
It was a minor hassle in the moment, but I also realized that's how it should be everywhere. There are probably already enough bags in the world for all the carrying that humans need to do. Of course bags wear out, so we need to keep producing some amount of bags, but not many. Most stores should simply not have any kind of bag whatsoever. If you don't bring something of your own, you should be mostly SoL.
I think selling fully reusable cloth bags would be the right thing to do, but otherwise I agree that stores shouldn't offer single-use plastic bags any more.
In NZ after the single-use plastic bag ban some people argued against only having high quality reusable bags available by saying "but I keep forgetting my reusable bags, and I so I keep having to buy more! Now I have 15 cloth bags at home - this is far more wasteful than when we had single-use plastic bags."
But those complaints came in the first few weeks after the ban, and they dried up soon enough. Everyone learns eventually that they need to take their bags with them - at least I hope nobody is sitting at home now, five years after the ban, with 1000 reusable cloth bags.
P.S. I've found jute bags the best value for money. They seem to really last forever whereas the thin cloth type start wearing out after a while.
People on tropical islands don't really use cars. I don't think most of the readers on HN understand the level of sacrifice required from everyone to avoid the worst of what's coming. It's going to require a lot more from everyone than using reusable bags while shopping or avoiding straws/using metal ones.
I agree these environmental laws are simply green washing. But if people think these generate too much resentment they're wholly unprepared for what the moment requires. Like not eating meat with every single meal every single day of the week. Not having two cars per family regardless of whether they're ICE or not. Eliminating short-haul flights and restricting international travel.
US consumers are used to overconsuming. Correcting for that will feel like a punishment to most. I don't see an alternative besides telling people to treat it like a world war. "Victory gardens" and all.
I would be fine with this outcome (even as someone who would find it personally annoying), but it's not the reality we live in today. You'd have to actually mandate this by law.
The half measures we currently have are the worst of both worlds. They inconvenience people and increase fossil fuel emissions.
Costco seems to have perfected it by rarely having enough boxes at the cash, so forward-thinking customers do their job for them by grabbing boxes from the product shelves.
My town did this, and I immediately went from picking up 1-2 plastic bags from my yard every week to basically zero in the last 4 years. I have no idea what the net impact on carbon emissions or other factors was, but the reduction in visible trash in my neighborhood was noticeable, immediate and seemingly permanent.
Yes. I feel like people often solely focus on CO2 emissions as the only metric. Especially some detractors of ecological pushes and regulations. Like "it doesn't really decrease CO2 output, so what the point", or "it's such a tiny fraction compared to X industry of Y country, and such an inconvenience so what's the point". I just don't understand how producing less stuff whose sole objective is to end up, in the best case, directly in landfill, is bad
As a regular diver in the Baltic ocean, my experience is aligned with the finding that the ban on plastic bags and utensils did have a real noticeable effect. Before the ban I saw trash every dive. Now it is much less common, closer to 1/10 of how it was before.
Nowadays the most common trash I see are beer cans.
The problem at least where I live in Europe is that people stopped
buying grocery plastic bags, which is good.
But they were frequently re-used as garbage bags.
Now people instead buy plastic garbage bag rolls.
So even if the consumption of plastic shopping bags has decreased,
the consumption of plastic garbage bags has greatly increased.
Might well be easier to recycle the garbage bags.
One could hope.
There’s been some research showing the effect you’re seeing is real.
> We estimate that CGB [carryout grocery bag] regulations lead to an average increase in purchased plastics of 127 pounds per store per month, ranging from 30 to 135 (37–224) pounds for 4-gallon (8-gallon) trash bags.
Littering is the problem solved by charging for or banning free carrier bags, not usage of plastic bags. If your rubbish goes to landfill, don't expect a reduction in rubbish bags as a component. They're very light though.
IMO it's better to incinerate them. That's what Switzerland does. I think it largely works, as long as you have enough routes to take dangerous chemicals (electronics and batteries mostly, heavy metals) out of the the waste pipeline.
grocery bags are made from newly produced plastic (sametimes clean recycled ak highest grade, because food requirements).
Garbage bags, on the other hand, are made from the lowest possible grade recycl, which can't be recycled.
Anecdotally, people in my life used to buy plastic garbage bags and use shopping bags as garbage bags (or dog poop bags) in smaller-sized garbage bins. Also anecdotally, despite the fact that I almost always grocery shop with reusable bags, I still somehow have plenty of plastic bags under my sink at any given time to use in my smaller trash bins. There are plenty of non-grocery places I get plastic bags: CVS, take out meals, Home Depot. These more than fill my need for small plastic garbage bags.
Where we live they don’t give free bags at CVS or other stores. I think restaurants may have an exception for take out, but those bags often get sauce spilled all over the inside, making them unsuitable for saving or reuse (except immediately, as a trash bag).
> Where I live (Silicon Valley), paper and plastic bags were both subject to the same treatment. In Menlo Park you can buy bags when you shop for $.25 each. The plastic bags at Safeway are much thicker (i.e., use more plastic, and are hypothetically reusable more times) than before. The paper bags are the same as before, but now you pay for them (the revenue goes to the store).
I never bought trash bags before these bans went into effect. Now it’s one of our subscribe and saves.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the net effect was that we are using more plastic now than before, even though we use reusable bags most of the time when we go shopping.
They are recyclable. But because of their low weight, high amounts of contamination, and constant ability to get stuck in conveyor belts... Thin plastic bags are more trouble than they are worth.
It's like Aluminum foil. Recycling plants are paid per ton of recycled material, and it takes lots and lots of aluminum foil before a ton of Aluminum is saved up.
Except plastic is way harder to recycle than Aluminum (requires higher purities).
Thin grocery (and garbage) bags are sheet polyethylene, the plastic of which is just as recyclable as milk bottles. They are not accepted in many curbside recycling programs because the separation tech is not designed for them, not because the plastic itself is not recyclable. They are recyclable (and frequently recycled) via dedicated collection points. (Most of our grocery stores have them.)
Sure, banning plastic bags means that there are less plastic bags. But that's a low bar to meet to call the result a success.
For example, did the ban reduce the total amount of plastic produced? Plausibly, no it did not.
From the report:
> Because of the loophole in California’s bag ban allowing the use of thicker plastic bags, the amount of plastic bags discarded per person (by weight) actually increased in the years after the implementation of the ban.
Did the ban on plastic make a meaningful reduction in co2 emissions? Did it make people happier? Did it make a meaningful improvement to the environment?
> Did the ban on plastic make a meaningful reduction in co2 emissions? Did it make people happier? Did it make a meaningful improvement to the environment?
Those are the questions to ask.
Instead, many people focus on behaviour control fantasies & gotchas.
A lot of people pointing out the various studies saying that plastic consumption increases after a bag ban; but isn't that expected in the short term? Everyone has to go buy 3-4 heavy reusable bags for the first time (or few times as they get used to the idea), that's obviously going cause a spike in plastic consumption, above a normal year of disposable bags. But the more meaningful question is if 5 years later, people are still buying excess heavy bags for a few uses or if the behavior actually adapts.
I wonder what level of additional waste is now caused by these reusable bags that we will continue to see forever.
FreshDirect will provide 2 heavy reusable bags each delivery I receive each week. They claimed to offer to pick these up but that has been suspended for years. They now suggest to “donate” the bags. Obviously these end up in the trash.
The strange part of whatever law led them to this idea is that because these bags aren't rigid enough, products tend to be damaged and arrive organized like a trash pile where at least one thing spills all over everything else. Oh, and they still put frozen goods in thin plastic bags.
I recall the best quality delivery for my use-case being products in standard takeout delivery paper bags wrapped in plastic to avoid leakage. I’m certain far less plastic was used in those cases, and the bags themselves could be easily used to store trash for the compactor avoiding the need for the thicker trash bags.
Readit News
My impression is that these laws are often popular among one group because they annoy another, perceived as being in the wrong - which then leads to the second group pushing laws that will annoy the first, even if they don't make sense.
[1] backlash effect - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backlash_(sociology)
I haven't actually heard anyone complain about it or get annoyed at some group of people - this whole concept of being annoyed at some group of e.g. environmentalists actually seems completely strange and alien.
Yes, it takes a bit of getting used to, but now it's simply a habit to take a small folded up reusable bag most places when we head out (just incase we end up shopping), or to think ahead and grab some bags when we know we're going out for a shop.
Really not a big deal.
Previously, plastic bags discarded roadside were a common sight, stuck in fences and trees.
From a Dannish study
For us ADHD people your simple habit is an insurmountable problem. Even if I have them in the car I'll be halfway done with shopping before I remember the bag. Fortunately they just let me pay for a new reusable bag each time.
I resent it because it feels like token bullshit. Plastic bags were quite thin so there is quite literally 100x+ more plastic in the packaging of the products I'm buying than the bag it goes in. Environmentalists pushed the most inconvenient policy that has the least benefit instead of something that might actually move the needle enough to gain my support.
My meter was off the charts when turning on the gas range or oven. I didn't get a meter until after a trip to the in-laws when my wife noticed that cooking at their house didn't make her sick, but as soon as we were back home it was an issue.
We swapped the gas for induction and love it - especially the part where she isn't getting sick from using it. Our house is built very tight. The air quality meter also got me to put in an air exchanger. It was great to have numbers before and after these changes.
We had gas because I've always liked cooking on it and it works when the power is out. It was hard to give that up. Now we use a camp stove when the power is out.
I think a ban is too strong. It seems like building codes requiring a range hood that actually works could be enough.
Gas itself has a lot of problems. Ignoring the safety concerns (oof!), the micro-leaks from gas pipelines is a major source of greenhouse gases. But we can't clean up all the pipes if everyone is still using gas stoves.
Have you checked for formaldehyde? I did, and a stove results in a real increase in its content.
What else than electricity if used for cooling? Genuine question.
I wonder how the ancients drank liquids, before the invention of the straw.
I hadn't thought about it that way before, but I think you're exactly right. I feel this in myself. I am pro-environment, or at least I want to be. But when I think about the actual effects of all these laws and regulations it just makes me mad and want to ignore or fight ALL environmental laws. I have to use a paper straw now? It just seems to go on and on.
Oh come on. How do you even make that jump?
Take carbon-neutrality for example. There's no shortage of people who will rage against flyers, car users, cruise takers, etc, etc as the cause of all carbon related ills in the world. And of course, the complainer's personal use of polluting energy is always objectively correct and morally just. And there are extreme examples like the "Tyre Extinguishers" group, which is clearly just a group of individuals who want to damage others' property under some thin veil of "doing good for the environment".
I say all this as a person that actually does care about the environment, but have not fallen into the easy trap of thinking that hating on others is a solution.
Meaningful central solutions are the answer. If one cares about carbon neutrality, I'd recommend advocating for across-the-board carbon taxation that is directly and honestly tied to the cost of fully and immediately offsetting a product/service's carbon footprint. And then it wouldn't matter one bit if someone wants to take several cruises a year, or drive an "unnecessarily" large car. But the social justification to hate on those people would evaporate, and that would make some other people sad.
Smoking or emitting carbon, or using plastic imposes negative externalities on other people. Second hand smoke causes lung cancer, carbon in the atmosphere leads to climate change, plastic in our environment can cause developmental and reproductive issues. There are reasons to oppose these things that do not include hating people. Some of the tactics may be ineffective or misguided, but this does not mean that everyone who cares about stopping harmful things hates a particular group of people.
I like your idea of putting a price on carbon emissions. Many economists agree that it would be one of the most effective ways to eliminate emissions while allowing the economy to continue to grow [1]. Solutions are there, and they will be employed when the political will for it is built.
[1] https://clcouncil.org/economists-statement/
Please tell me where it's possible to live in modern society right now without any use of polluting energy. Seems to me like https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/we-should-improve-society-som...
> immediately offsetting a product/service's carbon footprint.
What offsetting do you find acceptable? Most carbon offsets sold are complete bunk, thus costing very little. Stuff we can be sure about (like DAC) are well over 500€/ton right now, implemented now this would be sure to lead to riots, especially since it'll probably affect people with less income the most (relative to their income). A carbon price is a great mechanism, but one this high is (IMHO) unworkable and there needs to be accompanying measures to ensure that the carbon price isn't so low as to be ineffective, not strain citizens to much and not make local industry non-competitive.
If we only implemented it for non-strictly-necessary stuff (like meat, flights, big cars, cars outside rural areas, living and heating a larger dwelling over 18°, ), it would still be very unpopular (and probably lead to riots)
I think people like this because it explains why the "other side" doesn't just listen to their arguments and follow their prescriptions on how to live exactly.
Meanwhile, these other people live _in_ the environment, and so they're obviously concerned about it at some level.
My read is that "environmentalism" is used as a "bully plank" and people are rather tired of being manipulated for the ends of elites without any accountability for their policy failures and so generally tend to react quite negatively when it is naively brought into any conversation.
The reason why these bans are effective is because people like me don't want a bag anyway, and before these bans were in effect, I didn't have a choice. And these things do not end up in the trash, in part, because they are so light weight.
The same thing happened when they banned smoking. Normalizing not using a bag unless you need one will feel normal for the next generation, but never feel normal for us.
When your concerns about environmentalism extend only to "unless it's inconvenient" then you're not actually concerned with environment, you're concern with feeling socially shamed.
Look, I have plenty of concern about faux environmentalism bullshit, like recycling plastic, but plastic bag bans are not one of them, because there are myriad alternatives that exist.
I’ve found it takes lots of effort. It’s a chore to keep track of and bring it back out to the car. I probably now have 10 reusable bags that I’ve bought because I keep forgetting them at home, or in the car when I wasn’t expecting to go to the store.
It’s not a huge effort, but it’s definitely non-zero.
Obviously, I should be smarter. But I’m not, sadly.
I do agree that some behaviors can be counterproductive, like those pests who blockade busy roads or glue themselves to paintings "for the environment". Not only do these privileged and spoiled punks unjustly impede people from living their lives and destroy culture (they seem to always glue themselves to things that still pass as art, never the banana duct taped to the wall), but they only foment antipathy toward anything environmental, harming legitimate concern, action, and legislation in the process. The social deficits and ineptness of these people is astounding.
Like quitting smoking, the benefit is not immediately obvious or universally effective (eg quitting at 70), but the benefit is still there.
Can you provide a source for plastic bag bans having "no actual benefit"? The article is saying the opposite.
Sustainable lifestyles will be much more annoying than quitting plastic bags and straws. If this is the bar we can't overcome we're utterly fucked
1. That has to be compared against the pollution involved in making plastic bags, not against nothing at all.
2. Paper bags can use recycled paper, so it’s not really (directly) from trees.
It’s not plastic bags and straws that make it to the landfill that are the problem - it’s the ones that don’t make it to the landfill. I haven’t seen a plastic bag stuck in a tree for years!
Starbucks straw less lids use more plastic than the old lid ands straw. With a lot of them ending up in the trash instead of recycling, it may not be a net benefit.
The changes being made aren’t having quite the impact people had hoped.
[1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/01/25/new-je...
I'm not saying we shouldn't try to do better though. But there are no doubt a lot of complex variables at play
My wife is Irish, and they started the removal of plastic bags over 20 years ago. It was carefully phased in over time. It led to a 90% reduction in plastic bag use [0]. They also weigh your trash (in Dublin, anyway) as a means of cost pressure to reduce waste and encourage recycling. It is stated to have reduced waste by 50% [1].
[0] https://www.irishenvironment.com/iepedia/plastic-bag-levy/ [1] https://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/why-it-pays-to-c...
They weigh country-wide. In Ireland waste collection is done by private companies and they charge by weight. As I recall, they have something like subscription plans [1]. I'm Irish but I live in New Zealand now, and here the rubbish collection is paid for by your Council rates.
I was still living in Ireland when the plastic ban was introduced. There was push-back from some companies that make plastic bags, unsurprisingly, but it worked really well.
There was a bit of push-back here in NZ too, similar to what happened in Ireland. The usual grumbling, about interfering greenies, loss of freedoms, etc.
[1] This is an example of one company's offerings:
https://cportal.barnarecycling.com/signup/signup_page2.php?S...
https://www.consumer.org.nz/articles/how-does-new-zealand-pa...
"We were the second-worst country for packaging recyclability. Here in clean, green Aotearoa, 57% of the packaging we assessed wasn’t recyclable in practice. That’s not too bad when compared to Brazil (92%), but we have a lot of room for improvement. Especially when our Aussie cousins beat us by a mile with just 14% of packaging not being recyclable."
A big part of the problem is the commercial conflict of interest, which among other things means that robust data isn't available. For example, if we had year-on-year graphs showing domestic plastic production, consumption, sales, in different regions and industries, for different purposes, we could start to build a true big picture. Instead, the populace is reduced to arbitrarily celebrating visible wins, without really knowing whether we're winning or not.
I sometimes wonder if that’s the real agenda
Like recycling. Keeping us busy sorting things in to different bins. Without thinking about the absolute torrent of crap people order on a daily or weekly basis. But it’s ok because the cardboard and plastic packaging is going in a magical bin (which often isn’t that magical…)
The plastic bag ban is a good start, but seeing how Germans reuse glass bottles is an eye opener, and I really don't understand why we have individual cucumbers wrapped in plastic?!
Weirdly I did see cassette tape stuck in a tree recently though!
Dead Comment
There were no plastic bags. There were no paper bags. There was no option to pay money to get a reusable grocery bag like we see in the US. If you were a doofus like me who didn't bring some kind of bag, you only had two options. One was to miraculously carry your stuff home without bags. The other was to use the cardboard boxes that used to contain produce, if there were any left over.
We carried our groceries back to the hotel in a cardboard box that previously contained fruit.
It was a minor hassle in the moment, but I also realized that's how it should be everywhere. There are probably already enough bags in the world for all the carrying that humans need to do. Of course bags wear out, so we need to keep producing some amount of bags, but not many. Most stores should simply not have any kind of bag whatsoever. If you don't bring something of your own, you should be mostly SoL.
But those complaints came in the first few weeks after the ban, and they dried up soon enough. Everyone learns eventually that they need to take their bags with them - at least I hope nobody is sitting at home now, five years after the ban, with 1000 reusable cloth bags.
P.S. I've found jute bags the best value for money. They seem to really last forever whereas the thin cloth type start wearing out after a while.
Yeah, because driving back to your house to get a bag and then driving back is so much better for the environment than a using a few 0.1mm thin bags.
I agree these environmental laws are simply green washing. But if people think these generate too much resentment they're wholly unprepared for what the moment requires. Like not eating meat with every single meal every single day of the week. Not having two cars per family regardless of whether they're ICE or not. Eliminating short-haul flights and restricting international travel.
US consumers are used to overconsuming. Correcting for that will feel like a punishment to most. I don't see an alternative besides telling people to treat it like a world war. "Victory gardens" and all.
The half measures we currently have are the worst of both worlds. They inconvenience people and increase fossil fuel emissions.
Nowadays the most common trash I see are beer cans.
Now people instead buy plastic garbage bag rolls.
So even if the consumption of plastic shopping bags has decreased, the consumption of plastic garbage bags has greatly increased.
Might well be easier to recycle the garbage bags. One could hope.
> We estimate that CGB [carryout grocery bag] regulations lead to an average increase in purchased plastics of 127 pounds per store per month, ranging from 30 to 135 (37–224) pounds for 4-gallon (8-gallon) trash bags.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10640-022-00646-5
IMO it's better to incinerate them. That's what Switzerland does. I think it largely works, as long as you have enough routes to take dangerous chemicals (electronics and batteries mostly, heavy metals) out of the the waste pipeline.
I too use plastic bags as rubbish bags.
I can say that despite the ban on plastic shopping bags there is never any shortage of plastic bags.
Admittedly I use small plastic bags but it's virtually impossible to buy food that doesn't use plastic bags - I use them.
> Where I live (Silicon Valley), paper and plastic bags were both subject to the same treatment. In Menlo Park you can buy bags when you shop for $.25 each. The plastic bags at Safeway are much thicker (i.e., use more plastic, and are hypothetically reusable more times) than before. The paper bags are the same as before, but now you pay for them (the revenue goes to the store).
I wouldn’t be surprised if the net effect was that we are using more plastic now than before, even though we use reusable bags most of the time when we go shopping.
They are recyclable. But because of their low weight, high amounts of contamination, and constant ability to get stuck in conveyor belts... Thin plastic bags are more trouble than they are worth.
It's like Aluminum foil. Recycling plants are paid per ton of recycled material, and it takes lots and lots of aluminum foil before a ton of Aluminum is saved up.
Except plastic is way harder to recycle than Aluminum (requires higher purities).
For example, did the ban reduce the total amount of plastic produced? Plausibly, no it did not.
From the report: > Because of the loophole in California’s bag ban allowing the use of thicker plastic bags, the amount of plastic bags discarded per person (by weight) actually increased in the years after the implementation of the ban.
Did the ban on plastic make a meaningful reduction in co2 emissions? Did it make people happier? Did it make a meaningful improvement to the environment?
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-06-07/most-plastic-bags-gon...
It's not completely clear from this article if the measurement includes the thicker bags, but my guess is yes.
Those are the questions to ask.
Instead, many people focus on behaviour control fantasies & gotchas.
The strange part of whatever law led them to this idea is that because these bags aren't rigid enough, products tend to be damaged and arrive organized like a trash pile where at least one thing spills all over everything else. Oh, and they still put frozen goods in thin plastic bags.
I recall the best quality delivery for my use-case being products in standard takeout delivery paper bags wrapped in plastic to avoid leakage. I’m certain far less plastic was used in those cases, and the bags themselves could be easily used to store trash for the compactor avoiding the need for the thicker trash bags.