The federal government is calling for input from grocers, food and beverage producers, provincial governments and the general population.
The federal government is calling for input from grocers, food and beverage producers, provincial governments and the general population.
Nearly every food item on the shelf has plastic. Aluminum cans are lined with plastic on the inside, glass bottles have a plastic freshness seal/cap. Even pasta boxes, one of the few cardboard packaged goods that don’t have an inner plastic liner often have a little plastic window so you can see what the pasta looks like.
And yet we’re being told that plastic bags are the problem. Literally the only plastic thing you get from the grocery store that isn’t single use. Instead we have paper bags which are bulkier and have a higher carbon footprint, and we still end up with a bunch of actually single use plastic bags because we no longer have anything to use as small garbage bags.
The carbon foot print is debatable, but plastic in the environment is basically there forever, where a paper bag breaks down relatively quickly and natural processes can deal with cellulose.
I’d moved into a house and noticed a plastic bag stuck on a branch high up on a tree. When I moved 11 years later, the bag was still there, showing essentially no signs of deterioration, even after 11+ years of exposure to sunlight and seasons that vary from -35C to +35C.
Paper bags can be used as garbage bags as long as the garbage isn’t soup. Mum did it back in the 1960s and 1970s until plastic bags replaced the traditional paper bag. We’re both back to using paper bags for garbage.
The last plastic bags that my grocery store used were so thin that they almost always had holes in them and leaked, so there weren’t appreciably better in that respect than paper.
No one gives a shit about the carbon footprint of bags. It’s negligible.
What matters is the amount of waste produced, and a sizable chunk of that IS made up of bags.
@nathris @Ondergetekende Until it closed a few months ago we had a Zero-Waste bulk food store in town and it was where I got a majority of my non produce items: pasta, dried beans, lentils, nooch, bulk spices. (and they were the only place in town with vean meat alts in bulk like Byond and Impossible).
As a fall-back we go to the regular Bulk Barn type place it has a wider selection and thankfully have started allowing tared u-bring containers again.
Its bit of an art being zero-waste.
The Bulk Barn’s near me have “Sustainable Sundays”, and you get 15% off on products you get in your own containers.
@Grimpen Thata excellent, gotta see if my locals have that!