We've got to pull the "Reduce" lever harder

Post #439,940 by drook 9/22/21 9:39:11 AM 9/22/21 9:39:11 AM Reply	We've got to pull the "Reduce" lever harder Remember "Reduce, Re-use, Recycle"? We're supposed to do it in that order. That's what I was talking about with the sheer volume of waste my family generates vs. what we produced when I was growing up. We have to use less packaging, and less disposable everything else. Just the food packaging we go through blows my mind, and I know we cook more from scratch than the average American family. -- Drew
Post #439,941 by Another Scott 9/22/21 10:48:01 AM 9/22/21 10:48:01 AM Reply	Bag taxes. Virginia state government has lots of restrictions on what municipalities can do regarding taxes and fees. DC has had a plastic bag tax for ages. Virginia finally passed a law recently that allowed municipalities to impose a $0.05/bag fee. So my area is finally starting to roll that out. Reusable bags were strongly discouraged by many retailers last year. I expect they'll let people start using them again now. Little things like this need to be much more common. Paper containers (instead of everything being in effectively non-recycleable plastic) need to come back as well... Cheers, Scott.
Post #439,942 by drook 9/22/21 11:08:19 AM 9/22/21 11:08:19 AM Reply	I can hear the screams from the supply chain already "But food won't survive a cross-country trip and three weeks on the shelves without the packaging!" Well then don't ship it cross-country. Produce it (more) locally. "But then you won't be able to get strawberries in Cleveland in January!" OK, and ... ? "But we'll have to change what, when and where we sell everything!" Yes, you're getting the picture. -- Drew
Post #439,943 by Andrew Grygus 9/22/21 11:38:12 AM 9/22/21 11:38:12 AM Reply	Ecology & taxes Here in California disposable plastic bags are not allowed at check-out and reusables are $0.10 by law. Single use bags within grocery markets are still allowed - to prevent starting a revolution. I just have everything put back in the cart and bag what needs bagging at the car - which has quite a load of reusable bags. This thing about "paper" always amuses me. I've been involved (peripherally) with the ecology movement for so long that I remember what set off the whole ecology movement in the first place. It was extreme pollution from, you guessed it, Paper Companies.
Post #439,944 by drook 9/22/21 11:45:31 AM 9/22/21 11:45:31 AM Reply	I like how they do it at Costco They take all the cardboard cases the product ships to them in and stack them up by the registers. Grab a couple while you're waiting in line, and when they scan your stuff they'll load right into the boxes you just grabbed. Aldi has them too sometimes, depending on what they got a shipment of that day. -- Drew
Post #439,945 by Another Scott 9/22/21 1:11:30 PM 9/22/21 1:11:30 PM Reply	TJs will do that with wine if you want. Makes sense, but in practice it puts the recycling in the hands of the customer rather than the company. I just have them put them in my cloth grocery bags (without the stupid paper sleeves please!) instead. Yeah, paper production is dirty. I remember Ben Tilly talking about it, back in the day... Still, it's stuff from the biosphere, rather than 100M year old fossil fuel being brought to the surface... There are no easy answers, but some are better than others. Cheers, Scott.
Post #439,963 by Andrew Grygus 9/22/21 9:26:11 PM 9/22/21 9:26:11 PM Reply	When I shopped at TJs . . . . . I knew where the boxes were piled, so I just grabbed one before hitting the checkout line. Haven't been in a Trader Joe's since the COVID hit. Standing a half hour in a line waiting to get in didn't appeal to me. Sunland produce started stocking a mountain of the beer I bought there, and everything else I bought there was easy to replace elsewhere. I was already buying all my wine from Sunland Produce, better wine for lower cost. Boxes, I saw them up with a serrated bread knife and use the cardboard, with used paper napkins under it and a small bit of wood over, to start a small short fire every morning. I'm a Pagan, you see, and we like our little ritual fires, and it keeps us on the good side of the Fire Gods.
Post #439,962 by static 9/22/21 9:05:46 PM 9/22/21 9:05:46 PM Reply	Happens here. Local liquor chain Dan Murphy's does that, as does big-box hardware store Bunnings. Wade
Post #439,976 by scoenye 9/23/21 7:26:45 PM 9/23/21 7:26:45 PM Reply	But then you need to subtract all the FoodSaver repackaging plastic...
Post #439,968 by CRConrad 9/23/21 3:52:50 AM 9/23/21 3:52:50 AM Reply	What's in a name? (A piece of trash, by any other name, will still stink to high heaven...) Here in California disposable plastic bags are not allowed at check-out and reusables are $0.10 by law. How many people throw away their "reusables" after first use, effectively making them disposable? And conversely, what's to stop anyone from re-using their "disposables"? It's just names, not necessarily reality. -- Christian R. Conrad The Man Who Apparently Still Knows Fucking Everything Mail: Same username as at the top left of this post, at iki.fi

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