Quote:
Originally Posted by someone123
I'm pretty skeptical of this based on my own experience. I have a pile of reusable bags like I've had for years, but sometimes I need a bag at the store for one reason or another so now I get an extra reusable bag I don't need rather than a much smaller disposable bag. It's not practical to carry reusable bags around all the time.
I have a dwindling supply of old plastic bags that were pretty useful. They would all get ~2 uses before. I'll probably be buying/using more plastic bags to cover this once the old supply is gone.
The environmental impact of all of this is minor. I feel like it was a waste of effort and political capital on an issue that has poor cost-benefit and is mostly an example of politicians making noise about easy to understand issues that make them look good.
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The extra reusable bags definitely required extra energy and resources to create, but unless they end up getting tossed away into the environment without ever getting significant productive use then that's the main issue. Plastic waste in the ocean and other waterways is actually getting to be a fairly big problem. I personally have a few of the small fold-up nylon bags and tend to keep one with me either in my pocket or backpack so I don't usually have that problem. It's not practical to carry the bulky reusable bags but the ones I use fold down to the size of maybe a small computer mouse.