Hosting a website on a disposable vape

Just like how places with bag bans often just end up with thicker plastic bags that can be sold for ten cents and claimed as “reusable.

They are reusable, which many people take advantage of. And it has dramatically reduced the number of tumbleweed bags clogging up nature.

They make perfect office/bathroom trash can liners

You've misunderstood the assignment if you don't reuse those, they are perfectly fine for that and will last a long time. Just have one in your bag or car. I've even reused paper bags for more than half a year since the ban.

Reasonable people already reused single-use bags. Trashcan liners, dog walk bags, cat scoop bags, etc.

Having recently been reminded that it used to be common to see eviscerated VHS tapes by roads, I've been reminded that we'll always have people who litter.

The majority of people reuse those bags, they're pretty great actually. Most people I know have slightly more expensive bags made out of fabric though.

They do, but they still don’t make it back to the stores enough, and nobody has 16 wastebaskets to line every week. Also the old ones were just as suitable for wastebasket duty.

The bag laws have done nothing but increase the consumption of plastic, since stores still go through nearly as many, but they’re 5x thicker now.

Not here. Standing in line at stores like target that have them I see maybe 1/20 people checking out in front of me bring in reused disposable sacks, while 15/20 leave with new ones. Certainly not enough reuse to justify the extra thickness.

Why are you buying 16 bags worth of stuff every week? That seems like the bigger problem.

The only time I even get one of those things is if I forget my regular bag or I buy too much stuff to fit. That happens like once a month. Why are you going into the store empty handed and coming out with 16 plastic bags?

I do really enjoy the thickness, and they do displace the cheaper ones in the tube of spares at home, but they’re just bags at the end of the day.

If you have a family and a grocery store in walking distance you can do it easily; I would hit 16 if I forgot my shopping bag - which I do on occasion.

I’m not sure what your point is: because one type of litter is reduced, it doesn’t matter because people still litter in other ways?

In every place where plastic bags are banned, there’s a dramatic and obvious reduction in the amount of them clogging up trees, roads, fields, waterways, etc. If people need them for other purposes, they can buy them, while everyone else who doesn’t need them, doesn’t.

Not everyone is you. 16 is mild hyperbole, but I'm not even speaking normatively on what people should do. I'm speaking about what people do do. I'll stipulate that everyone including me should always keep at least 10 bags in my car so that I can do about 2 typical shopping trips even if I forget to put them back in the car. And we should always remember to carry them in. But that isn't happening with the current hilariously poor incentives in place (50 measly cents to buy 5 bags and no bag deposit either.)

I predict that if you spend 10 minutes observing the checkouts in your supermarket you'll see exactly what I see: At least 75% of people buying new plastic bags for the transaction, and zero people depositing bags into the special bag recycling bin at the store - which in the US is basically the only place this type of plastic is even accepted for recycling.

And again, these bags appear to be 3-5x as thick as the old bags, so the bag law is a huge win for Big Plastic who sells more plastic than they used to, and it mostly goes into the landfill.

The solutions:

• Admit this is a failed policy

• Everyone everywhere stops being imperfect, forgetful and lazy -- 100% of the time.

California is still hoping for the latter to pan out!

Yep, every so often I remember staring out the window on the highway in the car as a kid and seeing single use bags snagged on fences or trees pretty much anywhere inaccessible or not routinely cleaned.

I also catch it on B roll footage in movies or shows from the 90s/2000s a lot. It’s a specific type of visual blight I rarely ever see after those ultra flimsy single use bags that could be carried dozens of miles on a gentle breeze were eliminated.

(This children's book was written basically at the tail end of the era where seeing a bag flying could conjure the imagination)

https://www.amazon.com/Bag-Wind-Ted-Kooser/dp/0763630012#ave...

The bag bans in general are good - and heavy bags aren’t that bad, especially since they don’t blow as far or as easily.

> The current data provided by the main retailers for the reporting year 2024 to 2025 shows a reduction of almost 98% on the annual number of single-use carrier bags sold since the charge was introduced. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/carrier-bag-charg...

5x thicker is still a net win.

And it was less about reducing plastic consumption and more about reducing plastic pollution. 1000 tonnes of plastic in a landfill and incinerators (because the heavier bags are more likely to be reused even just as bin bags) is better than 200 tonnes blowing around and decaying into environmental microplastics.

In terms of total plastic consumption, 8 billion plastic bags (what the UK used before the charge) is maybe between 20000 and 40000 tonnes depending on thickness. Which is pretty minor on the scale of plastic usage considering how much plastic crap and packaging was and still is used.

We get most of our groceries through Drive Up services, where you place an order the day before and they bring the groceries to your car. Through a combination of a new disability, and a new baby in our family, the convenience is well worth the price (free).

But now every week we have more and more reusable bags that we can't find any use for, so we recycle a bunch each quarter. (And even that is questionable, when they are covered in impossible-to-remove stickers.)

Many single use bags come with holes in them or develop them after a single trip hauling boxes with sharp corners home. Making the plastic a little thicker makes it last many times longer.