Excellent! Now, please ban single use plastics in most consumer packaging. We devised solutions to many of these for centuries or longer before most stuff went to plastic unnecessarily. Very little actually requires single-use plastic.
I don’t consider petrochemical wax paper much better and that’s what they were using before for many things like meat. Glass would be good though.
Even just food aside, we use so much plastic for things like LED light bulb packaging, toys, packing materials like bubble wrap and air bags, monobags for clothes, plastic shrink wrap or uncuttable plastics at hardware stores, markets, etc.
Like, outside of sterile single use plastics for keeping needles clean at the doctor, and maybe certain biohazards like raw meat juice, we don’t really need most plastics in consumer applications. Balsa wood, cardboard, metals, glass, rubber, paper, and waxed paper can do much of the heavy lifting.
I remember save the trees campaign years ago. I’m convinced it was all started by the plastic industry.
Yup. Logging industry, at least in the US, is remarkably renewable. I remember reading that we have significantly more trees than we did 100 years ago because we’ve improved logging methods. No more clear cutting for pulp or lumber, proper replanting, and age-tracking for proper harvest.
In other words, saying “don’t use paper, save a tree” is akin to saying “don’t eat fries, save a potato.”
We have more trees, yes, but we have fewer forests.
Forests are where the biodiversity is. Not monoculture straight-row tree farms.
And we’ve gotten rid of a lot of old growth forests before we came into renewable forestry. That’s partly why lumber these days isn’t as good (quality, in general) as it was 50 or 100 years ago.
And we’re still tearing down old forests. This time, it’s to grow soy to feed to cows.
hardly any soy goes to cows at all.
https://ourworldindata.org/images/published/Global-soy-production-to-end-use.png
The cultivation of soybeans, primarily for export and the production of biodiesel and animal feed, has been a significant driver of forest loss in the Amazon.[41]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_of_the_Amazon_rainforest
almost all soy that becomes animal feed is a byproduct of pressing soybeans for oil. about 80% of all soybeans are pressed for oil and the byproduct is what is fed to animals. but cattle, as you can see in the chart I provided, hardly get any of the global soy crop
Are you …defending deforestation of the Amazon? For what, cheaper burgers? Cattle ranching is the number one cause of deforestation by a wide margin. Soy is just one of the causes.
Are you …defending deforestation of the Amazon?
no. I’m pointing out a lie about Amazon soy being fed to cows
While this is true, we should also remember that old growth forest, not tree plantations, are the most efficient at sequestering carbon and filtering/storing water.
Just because the timber industry is has been adopting renewable aspects, doesn’t justify expanding it recklessly. Reducing demand and recycling as much paper as possible is still a key part of keeping our usage sustainable. Even if the trees grow back, there is still energy being lost to harvesting and processing. Tree falls are a major source of carbon sequestration in forests, which enrich the soil. If the trees are being harvested, that piece of the local cycle stops. I try to vary the locations that I collect kindling wood in my back woods so as not to deplete any area.
Trees are the most visible and obvious carbon sink. You can watch a tree grow over a few years by literally sucking carbon out of thin air. I live in a bog where the trees all fall down after a few years. Quite a few come down every windy season. You can see how they shape the landscape, dam waterflow, and turn into soil mounds. The dammed water helps to trap more plant matter and sequester more carbon. Removing the trees from this ecosystem by harvesting would interrupt this process. This process maintains the soil fertility. The trees still grow back for now, but our lack of consideration for soil health and for soil as a carbon sink reminds me of our attitude towards conventional industrial agriculture. If we keep treating the soil like this, will the trees keep growing back in 50 years without requiring artificial fertilizers and water filtration to replace the trees we extract?
Which isn’t the individual single use plastic bags every single item comes in.
It’s just the one final plastic bag, all the other plastic bags are carried in.I don’t have a problem with the move myself. I’m single, with a supermarket just up the street. I use my own hand basket for my groceries. I never even use a cart.
But this policy always strikes me a tackling the smallest, least effective part of the problem. Banning plastic packaging would be FAR more effective. But also much harder. So this is just a way for politicians to seem like they are doing something, when they really aren’t. In other words it’s pandering.Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Like @[email protected] said, this is closing a loophole that was in the original grocery bag reduction law.
I’m saying it shouldn’t be praised as a solution, but recognized as a very small step forward. Afterwhich we ramp up the pressure for real solutions.
No, no, they’ve expended their political capital on this and that’s about all we’ll get from them, but just as long as someone tells you to not let perfect be the enemy of good, you must be satisfied with the outcome even if it achieves little to nothing.
Arguing against it or pointing out flaws means that you’re now arguing against “what’s good” and that’s morally and ethically wrong and shows that you’re an outsider to the in-group.
We can’t afford to think like this. Climate is such an unthinkably massive issue that we need all of it, and then some more, and then some more.
There is no project big enough that we don’t need 50,000 more projects of equivalent scope to get things where they need to be.
Think like what? Think this is just one small pice. Small enough that it almost doesn’t matter, and shouldn’t take any energy or news inches from the larger problem of plastic packaging? Because honestly, it sounds like we’re on the same page there.
Also plastics aren’t much of a climate issue. They’re part of a more broad environmental issue.
Banning these plastics is not about environmentalism. It’s about litter and having visually cleaner cities.
It seems easy to argue liter is part of environmental concerns and policy. Environment is a very flexible term.
good. My balls are already maxed out on microplastics
Microplastic is stored in the balls
Mine are stored in the toenails, Mountain Dew is stored in my balls.
Might need to get that looked at
Can we ban plastics in the fishing industry next?
I know little to nothing about fishing on a commercial scale. What are viable alternatives to plastics in that industry?
Hemp it would be a viable alternative due to its rot resistant properties.
Hemp was used as the primary material for this purpose until the oil industry helped feed the anti-cannabis movement.
Interesting. I was thinking more about lines and lures. It didn’t occur to me that such a large amount of ocean trash would be plastic based rope and nets.
Commercial fishing is terrible not only for the environment but leaves a large amount of trash in the ocean. It creates a ton of micro plastics and fucks up entire biomes.
Commercial fishing is probably the biggest contributor to ocean plastic pollution.
Much like commercial industry is the biggest contributor to atmospheric pollution.
You know, I think I’m beginning to see a trend here.
Fishing industry is evil and sucks big times. They just dump their gear (e.g. nets and longlines) in the open water and it’s a bane for turtles, sharks, whales, sea birds, seals etc. It’s not an accident. The gear seems to be deliberately dumped as the expensive stuff is removed. Read this article if you want to know why they do it. In addition those trawler/fish factory vessels are often part of ghost fleets where 75% of them kill every living being within a miles long radius for weeks on end without any controlling instance.
If you’re now under the assumption that it would be better to buy fish from fish farms. It also sucks tremendously. At least when farmed in open pen sea cages out of multiple reasons:
- Pesticides and Antibiotics are released into the sea
- Viruses and parasites escape into the sea
- Salmons escape and alter natural biodiversity
- Excess food and waste lead to oxygen deprivation in the surrounding waters (dead zones)
https://www.worldwildlife.org/industries/farmed-salmon
In addition (and I don’t know why WWF isn’t calling it out): Whales are essentially hunted because of farmed fish. That’s my own conclusion. They don’t openly admit it but because whales need tons of krill they are a direct competition to the omega-3 supplement market and feed for salmon farms. The culprits are Norway (they are real eco terrorists if you look behind their green facade at home), Ruzzia, Japan & Scottland. Not only whales but also penguins and seals depend on krill. And those animals are already suffering from H5N1 (with animal agriculture being the culprit again).
What the greedy bastards don’t get is, when they kill off the whales, they kill off the krill too. As so often humans disturb eco systems developed over millions of years. In this case it’s the poop loop.
The intention of my wall of text is to move the people who have a modicum of interest left to save the oceans to consider to ditch any fish caught in the oceans or bred on salmon farms (btw they are feeding them chicken bones too). Humans need Omega 3 DHA & EPA fatty acids. You can easily get those via algae capsules. That’s where fish get theirs from essentially.
Only we the consumers have the power to break the vicious circle but we’re to uneducated and complacent. As long as there’s a market they’ll ruthlessly plunder the ecosystems till nothing is left. Some say we’re already nearing that moment with parts of the oceans.
if you ever watch a documentary of the great pacific garbage patch it usually shows the most rampant and dangerous items from aquatic life tends to be discarded fishing nets. They all suck though, just nets suck more and get cut off all the time.
One viable alternative is to use nothing and let the fish live their lives.
And then Jesus gave them fish to eat, taught men to lead other men to water and teach them to fish and feed them forever, on fish.
Yes, this is what’s commonly known as a “joke” where Jesus is a stand-in for muix and the audience is the downvoters, and it is an exaggeration made for comedic effect. I’m not basing my actual morality on the God of the Bible – the same entity as Jesus if you’re unitarian or essentially the same entity with some mental gymnastics thrown in if you’re trinitarian – who had a temper tantrum and flooded the entire Earth to wipe all but one human family and two of every species of animal from the face of the planet.
Fishing is catastrophic for the environment, and it results in the needless deaths of literal trillions of fish every year.
What asshole downvoted a legit question of someone asking for more info on something they admit they don’t know much about…?
People do this all the time, and it’s super annoying. I’d love for someone to explain why they downvote an honest question.
Original Associated Press article instead of giving traffic to Voice of America
Edit: and a good LA Times article explaining the glaring flaw with the original 2014 law.
Why not just mandate the green bio ones?
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Grocery Outlet in IB and CV both offer plastic bags to me even as I am putting my backpack, or one of their reusable bags on the counter.
Not sure about north of San Diego, though.
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For anyone wondering why a new law would target reusable bags as well, the phrasing of the old law basically encouraged stores to replace single use plastic bags with reusable plastic bags. Reusable bags use more plastic so they’re sturdier and last longer, but they were treated as single use bags anyways so functionally we were just producing and subsequently wasting more plastic.
I haven’t read this new law but hopefully it encourages or requires actually using paper bags or cardboard boxes or something if you don’t have your own reusable bag. It would be a shame if it just kicks the can down the road again and people buy reusable bags in the checkout aisle that they throw away when they get home instead of keeping in the car.
As long as it also requires them to carry paper bags that’s perfect
In my country (Jamaica) you either have to beg to use their old boxes from inventory or just carry it all out by hand if you forget your bags.
In France they didn’t always have bags available, and if they did they were usually for sale and were reusable. Everyone just brought their own bags.
Canada works pretty well without them. If you forget your bags though you have to buy more.
Another tax on the poor.
Good and the Europeans have been doing this for this decades.
My gf got me into bringing my own grocery bags and after a few times forgetting to bring them in, I got used to it. Now it’s automatic and can’t see doing it any other way.
Nice to see California catching up to Colorado.
Ah, Lemmy with the backhanded compliments - at best
Nah, more of a challenge. California normally leads the way with things that are good. Competition towards good things is good.
They did this in ny. I never remember to bring a bag. I walk to everything and I’m not always planning on going shopping so I end up with a garbage bag filled with reusable bags that I end up thowing away. I get why they’re doing it but I hate it. Groceries cost enough as it is. I don’t see why we should care about the environment. Humans are terrible. The faster we go extinct, the better. 😖
We did it a while back, you will adapt pretty quickly.
In Austin we had a ban. The state overrode it a year later, but the damage was done…everyone realized how much easier it is to carry groceries in large tote bags that you can sling over your shoulder.
Or boxes; we use boxes. Carrying 3 - 4 boxes up stairs is much easier than 10 bags.
I have giant tote bags and can usually fit almost all my groceries in one. Slinging that over my shoulder is easier to carry than boxes
I have 3 hungry boys to feed, I’m not sure I could carry all of our groceries in one trip. , 😁
