[Summit] Plastic Bags

Thu Mar 29 14:35:32 UTC 2018

My feeling on the spinner baggers is that they are designed to reduce jobs. Stop and Shop had already reduced the number of people who do bagging. This is the next step.

At the same time, I have seen an increase in the number of people who use self check out, so there is no one person to blame.

I have managed to put the old S&S reusable bags on the spinner hooks. Some cashiers have done this too so it can be done.

Peace,

Linda

________________________________
From: Summit <summit-bounces at sna.providence.ri.us> on behalf of Kim Clark <ktcxyz at cox.net>
Sent: Thursday, March 29, 2018 10:05 AM
To: Paul G Smith
Cc: summit at sna.providence.ri.us; Mikaila Mariel Lemonik Arthur
Subject: Re: [Summit] Plastic Bags

again, gratitude to Mikaila for the time she put into her response — always illuminating.

and Paul, YES, really good point. I hate those bag spinners, i always try to speed up the line by bagging my own groceries and i loathe when they put two items in a bag hence using 3 times the bags as necessary, so i pack my bags really full and use less of them. i have the luxury of merely toting them to my car and unloading right in front of my house, so i don’t mind if the overflow spills in my trunk, i just carry the stuff in.

so yeah, those new spinners, slow down the line and use MORE bags than before.

at the same time, plastic bags are terrible. i think they should only be given out sparingly, for meat/fish, and when people specifically ask.

But SO MANY taxes and fees in our society are currently regressive. charging for bags is just another thing that the folks treading water don’t need.

just my 2cents.

Kim on Dex

<http://www.rhodycraft.com>

On Mar 29, 2018, at 9:37 AM, Paul G Smith <paul.slvrwngs at gmail.com<mailto:paul.slvrwngs at gmail.com>> wrote:

Hi Mikaila,

Thank you for this thorough and thoughtful point of view. Our society makes many decisions that seem simple on the surface and are done for very good reasons. However, the underlying problems that have been created over time are complex and many-sided, and no one-size fits all solution can ever cover the multitude of effects. There are obviously people for whom a plastic bag ban will create a burden that is not shared by everyone.
An interesting sidelight to all of this is the mysterious rotary baggers now found at every cashier line at Stop and Shop. They have taken away the space that I previously use to bag groceries using our reusable cloth bags, making it difficult to bag your own groceries at all. None of the cashiers like them either, as they make their job harder, and using the plastic bags the only option. Some corporate person who has never bagged groceries as a cashier or a customer must have thought up this concept and had these monstrosities installed in all their stores. What a waste of resources!
There are no easy solutions. I imagine that the people who advocated for the new ordinance on plastic bags put a lot of thought into creating the ordinance, and I commend their efforts. Unfortunately, I think the problem they are trying to solve does not go away, with or without the ordinance, and the unanticipated consequences may or may not make things worse or better for many people. Ultimately all of our collective decisions need to add up to respecting and keeping clean our earth, the only home we have.
Regards,
- Paul

Paul G Smith
54 Summit Ave, Providence, RI  02906
Cell: 802-343-0978
E-mail: paul.slvrwngs at gmail.com<mailto:paul.slvrwngs at gmail.com>
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"The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens"
                        - Baha'u'llah             http://www.bahai.org<http://www.bahai.org/>
"Nothing is too much trouble when one loves, and there is always time."
                        - Abdu'l-Baha

-----Original Message-----
From: Summit [mailto:summit-bounces at sna.providence.ri.us] On Behalf Of Mikaila Mariel Lemonik Arthur
Sent: Thursday, March 29, 2018 8:10 AM
To: summit at sna.providence.ri.us<mailto:summit at sna.providence.ri.us>
Subject: [Summit] Plastic Bags

 From reading the discussion here on plastic bags, it seems to me that very few participants actually have a personal experience living as part of the population most impacted by this ban. And humans, it seems, are not very good at understanding experiences quite different from their own. So I thought I'd share, because I actually spent six years living as a low-income apartment resident reliant on walking and public transit for all my shopping and commuting needs. In my typical daily schedule, I left the house in the morning with everything I needed for a whole day of work, school, and other obligations, and did not come home until evening after completing all my errands. Give the books, papers, tech devices, umbrellas, lunch, and other items I had to carry to get through my day, I really did not have room for more than maybe one reusable bag in my piles. This meant that even though I did own a few reusable bags that I had been gifted or obtained for free, I could not use them for my regular shopping. I would use them when I made a special trip to the store directly from home, but that was not how the bulk of my shopping happened. I'd also point out that, in the small apartment I lived in at the time, I would not have even had space to store the quantity of reusable bags I routinely use now.
I was not in absolute poverty, so I assume I could have handled the 10 cent fee without going bankrupt, but it would have cut into other things eventually. But there are other cost factors you may not be thinking of.
First of all, I reused every plastic bag I got, except the ones with giant holes. Most frequently, I reused them in my kitchen garbage can to collect and dispose of my trash. Buying trash bags can easily cost more than 10 cents a bag, especially for those who have transit, space, or income limitations preventing the purchase of large quantities. If you are using even one bag a day, which I would think is pretty typical (those caring for kids, elderly people, or the disabled who use diapers and other similar products may go through many, many more), that's going to cost you about $40 a year, maybe more. You may not think that is very much, but for people living in poverty, a $40 increase in costs could affect their ability to survive.
Second of all, the hygiene issue does mean that reusable bags need to be laundered frequently, especially for people who buy meat and seafood.
When you live in an apartment and are dependent on pay laundry with small machines, extra laundry can be another really significant expense.
It can be well over $3 per load of laundry, plus more for the dryer (if your bags are even the type that can go in the dryer--and having to hang dry things you wash in a laundromat is extremely difficult to manage).
If you actually followed the recommendation to wash bags after each use, that might add several more dollars in cost every week. It's also worth pointing out that grocery delivery services, which are the only way I could manage to obtain bulk or heavy items when I did not have a car, often package items in plastic bags (and are unlikely to stop due to hygiene reasons--the proposed ordinance did not, as someone pointed out, cover produce bags, or for that matter any bags other than those used at checkout).
Continuing to permit free paper bags with handles would reduce some of the problems with the ban. Paper bags do eventually biodegrade, as I've seen while raking up the winter's leaf piles in my own yard this March.
They can be made of recycled paper and easily recycled themselves, and can easily be carried. However, they are not a complete solution. First of all, they cannot be reused as trash bags, at least in normal kitchen garbage cans or in any circumstance where you need to tie your trash closed. Second of all, they fall apart in the rain quite quickly, and people do still need to shop in the rain. Finally, as someone who grocery shops by bicycle pointed out to me, you can't hang them from your handlebars (or tie them to your child's stroller). It seems to me in an age of forks and cups made from corn or sugar cane that you can throw in the compost, we ought to be able to produce an alternative to plastic bags that still fills people's needs.
If your response to this is that I just don't understand and need some education and skill building, then you need to learn some empathy. As I said, I owned reusable bags when did not have a car, and used them when I could manage. What changed for me? Well, now I own a house, with enough room for an entire hamper to store my bags. And I have a laundry machine in the same room as that closet. And I shop via car. I bet I contributed a whole lot less to the destruction of the earth when I shopped on foot and got plastic bags which I reused in my trash than I do now burning gas stuck in traffic in a city which does not provide convenient point-to-point public transit.
--
Mikaila Mariel Lemonik Arthur
mmlarthur at gmail.com<mailto:mmlarthur at gmail.com> <mailto:mmlarthur at gmail.com>
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