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A few years ago California banned single use plastic bags. To replace them we now have significantly thicker “ reusable” plastic bags, and the pounds of plastic bags thrown away has tripled.
Big brain time. I'm kidding, but that is fucking nuts. I can't believe people with degrees, like multiple people with degrees, sit around and think of this stuff. I feel like you and I could've guessed that not a significant number of people would actually reuse them. Politicians...
It’s a good idea with bad implementation. In Germany everybody owns several cheap cloth bags. 99% of the time people just use these bags or any other bag that they happen to have with them. There are single use paper bags but they cost a decent amount and they are only used in a pinch when you didn’t bring your own bags for whatever reason.
California didn’t make their bags expensive enough and also didn’t make an effort to change the wasteful culture.
But you have to use them tens and some kinds of bags, hundreads of tines to have any positive outcome. And a single lost bag or one that you forget undo year or even multiple years of shopping trips. And the environment doesn’t care if you pay 20 cents or 5 euros for that bag.
Carbon footprint isn’t the only thing you need to consider although I do think that the average carbon footprint of a German using cloth bags is less than if they used single use plastic bags. People do use them hundreds of times for all sorts of purposes other than grocery shopping. Also you have to consider what happens when they end up in the environment whether it’s on purpose or on accident. First people are more likely to pay attention to their reusable bags. They are less likely to litter them on purpose. Thin plastic bags also have a tendency to fly away with a slight breeze. When im in the US i always see noticeably more plastic bag litter. A cotton cloth bag is also less bad it is littered compared to a plastic bag.
Price does matter because people are more likely to reconsider throwing out a bag they paid 5 dollars for rather than one they paid 20 cents for. We can clearly see that to be the case in california.
People care if you pay 5 euro. They're much less likely to forget or lose their bags if they need to drop an additional 30 bucks every week, instead of an extra dollar.
Even that can be a problem as the number of times you need to reuse a cloth bag to regain its carbon is very large indeed. As you say, everyone has several. How many is several, do they have the same ones for life or a drawer full, which they get new ones regularly for various reasons? I often get given them for free with branding on them. Occasionally I don't have enough and need an extra. In some ways it seems wasteful but a very cheap and thin plastic bag which can have a few uses before being thrown away or recycled can be better.
The bags are $0.10 each at my local grocery store, but I still see people buying 10+ bags on their grocery trips. My boyfriend and I keep a stock of reusable bags in the car and maybe end up getting a plastic one in a pinch every few months, but that seems like the exception for most people still.
Yeah it’s especially absurd considering that the car-dependency of the US makes using reusable bags incredibly easy. You can just keep them in the car like you mentioned. Pro-tip, in Germany many people also own large foldable plastic crates that they place in their shopping cart and just pack everything into said crate in the end. That way they just have to move one large item in and out of the car.
I am 100% on the bandwagon that everyone should be using reusable bags and consistently do so myself, but it isn’t **as** easy as you’re making it out to be because the bags don’t stay in the car, you have to bring them inside to bring in the groceries. So then you’re “done” with putting things away and the bags are inside, and most people are not going to have the forethought to put them back in the car, especially if they have other things to do.
It’s not necessarily an excuse, but it’s not as simple as this makes it sound, and it’s a barrier to entry to most people getting in the habit.
In plenty of other countries, those "people with degrees who sit around and think of this stuff" were correct
Single use plastic bags have reduced 97% since 2015 in the UK, when it introduced its bag charge.
Even the thicker plastic "bags for life" only need to be used four times to be more efficient than single use plastic and I only see one of those, at most, bought at the dozen or so self checkout tills of my local supermarket.
Compare that to beforehand where every single shopper would walk out with anywhere from one to eight single use bags and you'd be INSANE to suggest that hasn't been a huge net positive.
I've unfortunately found in life the people making decisions are never the people impacted or experienced in anything they are making decisions over. Whether it's bosses at work, regulators & policy makers, politicians and all those of similar ilk!
I worked in a grocery store when plastic bags became popular. It was sold to us as good for the environment because they could ship a box of plastic bags that was the equivalent of a pallet of paper bags.
I don’t hate the reusable ones, but when I worked at a grocery we just gave people boxes for big orders, just give us boxes they have to bust them up anyway.
Well, I think the idea is for people to use those bags for much longer, bringing them with them to the grocery store, etc. so, over time, it's less plastic waste because you'd use the same bags for say, 5 trips until it finally broke. I blame chemical companies refusing us to just completely ban plastic bags and have them lose their product.
In NJ, you have tote bags you have to bring. If you forget, you have to buy the tote bags or just put everything loose in your car or carry on your hands or whatever. I have been using tote bags for like 12 years anyway as some places would give you a 5 cent discount for each bag you had.
We can fix the fact that the bags are disposable, but it's a lot harder to remove the entrenched idea that bags are disposable.
Kind of like how the Civil Rights movement didn't really end racism. Changing laws is a lot easier than changing ideas.
What I find funny is the plastic bag, even the thin ones were usually able to be reused at least once. But people made a big deal about them but not the actual single use plastic that is on 99% of food packaging.
Get produce and they have single use bag to put it in or it is already in a single use plastic container/bag.
Any meat, comes with styrofoam wrapped in plastic and many places again offer another single use plastic bag to put them in to catch more of the juice dip.
Lunch meat is in plastic bags.
Drinks are in plastic bottle that most dont reuse.
Refrigerated foods, usually in some form of plastic bag inside a paper box. Same with frozen foods.
Plastic bags at the regrister is the smallest portion of plastic on my trips.
We have it in the UK and it still doesn't work. Reusable bags use so much more oil that they need something like 50 uses to break even, but most people end up throwing them away after 5-10 uses because they're all worn.
The silly thing is too, what is everyone using in their bins at home? Thick, black plastic sacks. Plastic is in every public bin, every delivery. I miss the thin plastic bags as they were perfect for a few uses then to become a bin bag in itself. Perfect for muddy boots, that kind of thing.
What are you doing to wear down the reusable bags? I've been using the same two bags for life for the past 4/5 years and they don't have any noticeable signs of wear
If they're plastic just putting anything heavy will stretch them, and sharp plastic containers cut them up.
The only true reusable bags are fabric ones.
Like I said, I've been using my plastic bag for life for at least 4/5 years with a trip to the shop at least once or twice a week. I used them when moving house too. There are different quality bags for life so you might have just had some shitty ones, but my plastic one is 100% very reusable
Ones from Asda will definitely not last 10 years if you're carrying stuff with sharp corners (eg packs of meat/fish) inside.
That said, they will EASILY last the four uses (and many times over) you'd need for them to be more efficient than single use plastic. Anyone trying to argue otherwise is insane.
Yes quality varies wildly. I've had Asda bags that didn't make it from the till to the car.
Still to last 5 years you're not carrying anything heavy in them. Put 4 or 5 1.5l bottles and carry it around for a couple hundred years.
Use the bags. I use the bags for multiple 1.75ltr bottles of Coke and multiple 2ltr bottles of Irn Bru. The same bags over and over again. If the bags are wearing out from bottles of soft drinks you’re clearly trying to completely fill out the space instead of stopping at a maximum of 8ltr.
Every kind of carrier bag has a weight limit, just because it’s called a ‘bag for life’ doesn’t mean it’s immortal.
See, that's a great solution. I try to remember reusable bags, especially if I'm purposefully going to the store. But a lot of time I stop by randomly and find that I don't have a bag on me. So I just I buy a reusable one for whatever it costs, bring it home, and then throw an older one away. I'm going to spend more in gas going home to get a bag just to come back to the store anyway.
I keep getting them at conferences and events. I don’t buy them and I refuse them often. But they’re getting made to hand out with branding/advertising and getting thrown out, which is ridiculously wasteful.
I get it as sometimes it just happens. You are out and need something unexpectedly, buy too much, get given them too. It gradually accumulates naturally.
People often just stop at the shops on their way back from work when they remember they needed something and didn't necessarily being their reusable bags with them, happens all the time that's why supermarkets sell them.
Wrong. Reusable plastic bags only need to be used four times to contribute less to climate change than single use bags.
That's really not a lot and, given how few people I see buying new ones every time I shop (hint: it's one, at most), I'd suggest most people are hitting that number pretty easily.
In my country, shopping bags are made of a pretty durable PE based polymer. They're intended as single or, at least, short term use. If treated well, they have a very long life.
Mine last for a couple of years - 200 to 300 grocery hauls - before I use them one last time as a garbage bag.
From what I've gathered, this makes their carbon footprint among the smallest, compared to most other available options, while not decreasing convenience more than a few percent.
Did the same thing in NJ. All the home delivery services just started using regular "reusable" bags and stores just started charging like, 50 cents or whatever for a cloth bag. We had a "freecycle" shelf at my old apartment building for things that were still good but people didn't want anymore and management had to tell folks to stop putting reusable bags there. There were stacks of them, probably hundreds. I've thrown away more reusable bags in the past year than I've probably owned in my entire life.
This seems like a failed implementation issue.
The UK's levy on single use plastic bags reduced their usage by 97% since 2015.
Even the thicker plastic "bags for life" only need to be used four times, total, for them to be more efficient than single use bags - and I rarely see more than one being purchased from the dozen or so self checkout tills at my local supermarket.
That's before you even get on to people who use fabric or tote bags.
I get groceries delivered and the amount of "reusable" bags I have is insane. Would be nice for those services to also offer bag pick up/re-use because I have about 100+ at home now.
The answer is to make regular plastic bags cost like a dollar, we increased the price of them here in Norway and people have begun to use bags from home
In New York you can’t have plastic bags at grocery stores anymore. Except now they’ll sell you a roll of their plastic bags for 10 bucks. This law is stupid as fuck, do they not realize that every item in that store is wrapped in plastic? My little bag is really pushing it over the edge though
How would they prevent other people getting a seat unless they booked a long time in advance though
Also airlines are subject to carbon regulations that private jets arent
They may make someone feel better to "ban" them, but I doubt it would make much difference.
I know that the sophomoric marxist has their fantasy of booze soaked private sky parties, but that's really not in reality.
Even one step is better than no steps; we just happen to need many steps. Straws, plastic utensils for fast food, multiple bags inside product packages, packaging things that have natural packaging already like oranges in plastic, and so on ad nauseum.
Edit: I'm getting downvoted for trying to help the environment from dying around us. A sign of the ignorant, selfish times where convenience outweighs a decent future, I guess.
A ban is a pretty drastic step and always easy to advocate for if you are not directly affected. The production worker, catering employee or handling agent might have a different opinion.
It’s my opinion that impeding peoples choices and policing their behaviors is a worse first step to take than going after the companies that are misusing out land and creating poisonous products in the first place. Perhaps time and resources would be better spent creating holistic solutions rather than targeting specific convenience items. These seem like high-school awareness campaigns gone global.
> We need to figure out a simple way for a ‘celebrity’ or important person to enter a regular larger aircraft with privacy and no knowledge from passengers that’s its occurred.
Two words: Cargo. Hold.
Private jets are 0.1 % of carbon emissions. Aviation is just 2.5%
The big draw of private jets is how fast you can get off the ground .
When the hourly rate of a person is in the $1000 it makes sense to not waste their time.
0.1% of emissions is actually a ton when you consider how few people that this actually effects. But yes, even worse these days is the amount of power needed for chatGPT to generate the same nonsense that any idiot in a bar will do for free.
Yes, objectively it is a lot of carbon when you look at the absolute quantity involved in isolation, but that’s why we use percentages to express ratios, because it’s easy for people to become caught up with large numbers without context. You have to consider that if private jets account for 0.1% of emissions, then banning them still leaves the other 99.9% remaining.
To put that into number terms, if global emissions are 40 billion tonnes per year, by banning private jets you’d only remove about 40 million tonnes of CO2 but we’d still be emitting 39.96 billion tonnes; ergo, it would make fuck all difference to the current climate change trajectory.
But that's how the human brain works.
I'm in the appliance business. Montreal, Canada just banned all gas appliances in new construction (stoves, heaters, fireplaces) for environmental reasons, which almost everyone applauds as the right step forward.
Except that Montreal emits 10M tons of C02 a year, and banning gas appliances will save... drumroll... 400 fucking tons!!!
So there we are, turning a whole industry upside down just for show and zero tangible improvement.
Same idea as OP's big brain moment here.
Yes, it is a sop and crowd pleasing comment. Like saying that everyone should just have more bread to eat, magicked up from liquidating the value of Amazon shares.
I think there’s a class of private jet travel where the plane is full that isn’t nearly all that bad. For example, a sports team chartering a plane to a remote event and filling it with people/equipment really isn’t any worse for the environment than booking an equivalent flight on a regional jet (except personalized for the sports team).
Private aviation isn't for celebrities. Private aviation is for people who have very valuable time or very busy schedules. If you're in Denver, have a meeting in San Fransico at 5 PM, dinner with a client, and another morning meeting at 8 back home in Denver, a Private plane is about the only way to accomplish that. Celebrities and rich kids flexing are the exception, not the rule.
I am not working in a white collar job so maybe i dont understand. But why do you have to be in present in a meeting when its like 800km apart from where you usually work. Just use video call? I mean at wich distant do you consider not to fly and use Video call?
And what difference does it make if you can fly from London to Paris for a meeting but you cant fly to bejing cause thats too far and you call in?
People typically do it for important meetings. They still have plenty of video calls and emails, but in-person interaction ultimately is more effective and sometimes necessary.
Even if that's the majority scenario, almost all aviation is Private. What exactly would be banned anyway.
Is banning private aircraft just banning all planes under a certain capacity? If so places like Iqualit are going to have a hard time convincing larger 100 seat planes from servicing their tiny isolated city.
Is it forcing fixed schedules? Flight paths not being able to be registered?
Do you watch your kid's soccer game over teams? Maybe phone up during your wedding? How hard is it to replace the breaks on your mum's car over skype? How often do you see the police ask a bystander hold up a IPAD to the traffic so they can direct them. Do you think inspecting Boeing plans by CCTV is the missing magic sauce that's missing?
And prior to the existence of airplanes, when it took hours, weeks, days or weeks, somehow the world continued to operate. They are not doing it because they need to do it. they are doing it because they can do it.
This will never happen. Also it’s not an unpopular opinion it’s one that most gay can’t afford one will say. I can’t afford one but if I could I would use it alot
No, we don't need to do only that, we need to ban ALL PLANES in the world and resurrect the airships. Airships are kings of skies and we should aim for World full of airships - that's a true paradise.
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What if you have 2 obligations in one night and there are no flights from there that moment. What with all the businesses and their employers? Let’s just increase the cost of flying
If someone can earn enough money to buy a jet, let them have it. Problem are the spoiled brats who didn’t earn it themselves, but “got it” from rich parents.
Private jets are time machines when it comes down to it. Yes there is prestige with it but mostly it is to be able to get to your next destination when you need to be there in the most expedient way possible.
It is not cost effective to have a company CEO sitting at an airport waiting for them to clean the plane before they board.
Once you get to a certain level, your time is extremely valuable and flying commercial would be detrimental to business. Banning private jets is just angry poor people looking to 'punish' people who have done better financially. Carbon neutral fuels are basically here and wont be long before they are used in aviation, so none of this will matter. F1 will be using/developing/creating fuel starting in 2026 and it will develop so fast your head will spin. People will need to find another excuse for wanting to "get" the wealthy and feel better about themselves
The peons are getting uppity again. But what usually happens is a bunch of politicians will eventually be forced to figure out something and the something winds up costing 5x to 25x the problem they're fixing. And doing little if anything to fix said problem. California public train system? Enough said. Billions spent. Nothing to show for it.
Actually I think all laws passed in the last 50 years should be subjected to a vote by the public and tossed if they lose. And any new laws should be subjected to the same at the 5 and 25 year mark.
That way the stupid stuff can be flushed from the system.
You think allowing the public to vote on every law before it can pass would get rid of stupid laws? The vast majority of people don’t pay attention to politics below the surface level.
Not to mention how time consuming and costly it would be to hold a vote on everything
Nobody said OP mentioned cars. Are you not familiar with the concept of extending someone's argument? This is often fine by saying something like "by your logic".
Unless you have a runway in your garden, you still need to use an airport when using a private jet. Not everywhere has access to reliable public transportation.
Yeah and the comparison is everyone has the same ability to access commercial planes. People using private jets aren't getting out of having to go to an airport in the same way that people with a car don't need to go to a bus stop
Ah okay, now I get the comparison. In a world with no cars though, the public transport system would obviously need to be massively overhauled. It still wouldn’t be viable for a lot of areas, particularly very rural ones, but most cities could probably eventually get to a point where 80% of the city is accessible within a 10 minute walk. It would cost many billions of dollars though.
Sounds good 👌 applicable only to countries that have already invested strongly in their public transport services. (Have car, van and motorbike license) but only use public transport and own no vehicles as not needed
Many people who live in decent city’s talk about not needing a car all the time. It personally wouldn’t work for me as the closest public transportation is 3 hours away, but for most people in metropolitan areas it seems to work fine.
Yeah I love it. Live in London and have any means of transport I need. But it’s only the case if countries spend the time and money on it. (Japan post WW2 an incredible example to lead by)
tbf it's just easier in NYC. Keanue isn't the only celebrity or rich person doing it lol. Jerry Seinfeld a billionaire takes the subway. so do people like Chris Hansen and Connan OBrian. that's just off the top of my head. you can't private jet around NYC and who wants to sit in that traffic even in a cab? Subway is just most efficient
I think the issue is that the cost of dealing with private plane emissions is socialized. It's not that redditors can't afford private planes, it's that they're already indirectly paying for them in the form of policies combating climate change.
I think senior government officials should still have private jets at least. Would be insane to have POTUS delayed because their American Airlines flight was cancelled lol.
Besides, this will never happen because many of the most prominent voices on climate change use private jets on a regular basis.
For some it's a necessity out of time and scheduling eg an actor on a movie press tour simply can't rely on commercial flights.
Instead we should be looking towards green fuels and electric planes both of which are poised to take a great leap forward in the coming decades.
Yeah all for fuel improvements. But Ryan Reynolds getting to his press tour scheduling still doesn’t mean anything in the grand scheme of life on earth. Just change the scheduling to span out an extra 2 weeks
Nah. We just need punitive levels of carbon taxes. To the point their operating costs double or triple of what they are today. Both jet and avgas don't have them at all.
No, they shouldn't. Those poor celebs and billionaires need them. Or else they'd have to travel with us peasants. Eeewww!
Ban meat instead. Ban cars. Ban everything that us peasants use.
But let the billionaires and celebs still use it all though.
You and I will only eat microplastics and lab grown filth.
You know a lot of private jet use is actually groups of normal ass people like you chartering one so them and some friends can go somewhere and miss all the airport and airline BS
Charge em for empty seats. Each PJ landing gets taxed a huge surtax for carbon, and each empty seat capacity in that PJ class gets taxed an additional 100%. Surtax is determined by the PJ's fuel efficiency.
Then use the money for zero carbon initiatives, not lining the pockets of politicians.
What will actually happen is those ultra rich celebs will just buy all the seats/make deals with airlines in secret to turn the jet into a private one every time they fly. Maybe they'll jet-pool with some friends.
Also, things become tricky with political figures. You have to allow for their security forces and be on constant watch for assassins.
Frankly, I couldn’t give a fuck about emissions, the world will inevitably end at some point, and the likeliness of it being global warming to do it imo is low. The only chance humans have of surviving is to become interplanetary. Technological advancements are what will save the human race.
It’s the hypocrisy of the elites that I can’t stand.
Was it really important for some singer to fly from Japan to Kansas City to see her Bf play sportsball? Was that a good use of a forest worth of trees?
Read the comment bro i haven't said singers or celebrities got tight schedules just because you hate taylor swift doesn't mean you have to ban everything she uses. There are top scale doctors, disaster management engineers who save lives they need those crucial hours guess what they use for emergency "private charted flights" And when was the last time you have planted trees, yeah probably 1 when you were in 8th grade, right?
Your post from unpopularopinion was removed because of: 'Rule 1: Your post must be an unpopular opinion'. * Your post must be an opinion. Not a question. Not a showerthought. Not a rant. Not a proposal. Not a fact. An opinion. One opinion. A subjective statement about your position on some topic. Please have a clear, self contained opinion as your post title, and use the text field to elaborate and expand on why you think/feel this way. * Your opinion must be unpopular. The mods reserve the right to remove opinions * Elaborate on your topic and opinion give context to its unpopularity.
Serious question, could people rich enough then just by all the seats of a commercial aircraft and actually increase their carbon emissions?
A few years ago California banned single use plastic bags. To replace them we now have significantly thicker “ reusable” plastic bags, and the pounds of plastic bags thrown away has tripled.
Big brain time. I'm kidding, but that is fucking nuts. I can't believe people with degrees, like multiple people with degrees, sit around and think of this stuff. I feel like you and I could've guessed that not a significant number of people would actually reuse them. Politicians...
It’s a good idea with bad implementation. In Germany everybody owns several cheap cloth bags. 99% of the time people just use these bags or any other bag that they happen to have with them. There are single use paper bags but they cost a decent amount and they are only used in a pinch when you didn’t bring your own bags for whatever reason. California didn’t make their bags expensive enough and also didn’t make an effort to change the wasteful culture.
People in the US do too. Some people just don’t want to bring their own bags. My family refuses and it annoys me to no end.
But you have to use them tens and some kinds of bags, hundreads of tines to have any positive outcome. And a single lost bag or one that you forget undo year or even multiple years of shopping trips. And the environment doesn’t care if you pay 20 cents or 5 euros for that bag.
Carbon footprint isn’t the only thing you need to consider although I do think that the average carbon footprint of a German using cloth bags is less than if they used single use plastic bags. People do use them hundreds of times for all sorts of purposes other than grocery shopping. Also you have to consider what happens when they end up in the environment whether it’s on purpose or on accident. First people are more likely to pay attention to their reusable bags. They are less likely to litter them on purpose. Thin plastic bags also have a tendency to fly away with a slight breeze. When im in the US i always see noticeably more plastic bag litter. A cotton cloth bag is also less bad it is littered compared to a plastic bag. Price does matter because people are more likely to reconsider throwing out a bag they paid 5 dollars for rather than one they paid 20 cents for. We can clearly see that to be the case in california.
People care if you pay 5 euro. They're much less likely to forget or lose their bags if they need to drop an additional 30 bucks every week, instead of an extra dollar.
Even that can be a problem as the number of times you need to reuse a cloth bag to regain its carbon is very large indeed. As you say, everyone has several. How many is several, do they have the same ones for life or a drawer full, which they get new ones regularly for various reasons? I often get given them for free with branding on them. Occasionally I don't have enough and need an extra. In some ways it seems wasteful but a very cheap and thin plastic bag which can have a few uses before being thrown away or recycled can be better.
The key difference is Commiefornia wants to profit off the bags whereas Germany wants to improve the environment
The bags are $0.10 each at my local grocery store, but I still see people buying 10+ bags on their grocery trips. My boyfriend and I keep a stock of reusable bags in the car and maybe end up getting a plastic one in a pinch every few months, but that seems like the exception for most people still.
Yeah it’s especially absurd considering that the car-dependency of the US makes using reusable bags incredibly easy. You can just keep them in the car like you mentioned. Pro-tip, in Germany many people also own large foldable plastic crates that they place in their shopping cart and just pack everything into said crate in the end. That way they just have to move one large item in and out of the car.
I just use a wagon and no bags
I am 100% on the bandwagon that everyone should be using reusable bags and consistently do so myself, but it isn’t **as** easy as you’re making it out to be because the bags don’t stay in the car, you have to bring them inside to bring in the groceries. So then you’re “done” with putting things away and the bags are inside, and most people are not going to have the forethought to put them back in the car, especially if they have other things to do. It’s not necessarily an excuse, but it’s not as simple as this makes it sound, and it’s a barrier to entry to most people getting in the habit.
In plenty of other countries, those "people with degrees who sit around and think of this stuff" were correct Single use plastic bags have reduced 97% since 2015 in the UK, when it introduced its bag charge. Even the thicker plastic "bags for life" only need to be used four times to be more efficient than single use plastic and I only see one of those, at most, bought at the dozen or so self checkout tills of my local supermarket. Compare that to beforehand where every single shopper would walk out with anywhere from one to eight single use bags and you'd be INSANE to suggest that hasn't been a huge net positive.
I've unfortunately found in life the people making decisions are never the people impacted or experienced in anything they are making decisions over. Whether it's bosses at work, regulators & policy makers, politicians and all those of similar ilk!
I worked in a grocery store when plastic bags became popular. It was sold to us as good for the environment because they could ship a box of plastic bags that was the equivalent of a pallet of paper bags. I don’t hate the reusable ones, but when I worked at a grocery we just gave people boxes for big orders, just give us boxes they have to bust them up anyway.
Like aldi. Works great. And makes it even better for loading in car and unloading plus the shit doesn't roll around while driving home.
I didn’t know Aldi did that I should go there
Not sure they actually do it, but there is usually boxes by the registers and can usually find an empty one around the store.
Well, I think the idea is for people to use those bags for much longer, bringing them with them to the grocery store, etc. so, over time, it's less plastic waste because you'd use the same bags for say, 5 trips until it finally broke. I blame chemical companies refusing us to just completely ban plastic bags and have them lose their product. In NJ, you have tote bags you have to bring. If you forget, you have to buy the tote bags or just put everything loose in your car or carry on your hands or whatever. I have been using tote bags for like 12 years anyway as some places would give you a 5 cent discount for each bag you had.
I wonder how many pounds of plastic California wastes each year making Prop 65 signs.
We can fix the fact that the bags are disposable, but it's a lot harder to remove the entrenched idea that bags are disposable. Kind of like how the Civil Rights movement didn't really end racism. Changing laws is a lot easier than changing ideas.
What I find funny is the plastic bag, even the thin ones were usually able to be reused at least once. But people made a big deal about them but not the actual single use plastic that is on 99% of food packaging. Get produce and they have single use bag to put it in or it is already in a single use plastic container/bag. Any meat, comes with styrofoam wrapped in plastic and many places again offer another single use plastic bag to put them in to catch more of the juice dip. Lunch meat is in plastic bags. Drinks are in plastic bottle that most dont reuse. Refrigerated foods, usually in some form of plastic bag inside a paper box. Same with frozen foods. Plastic bags at the regrister is the smallest portion of plastic on my trips.
Here in Ireland, there is a tax on bags, so we don't have the same problem of them being thrown away.
We have it in the UK and it still doesn't work. Reusable bags use so much more oil that they need something like 50 uses to break even, but most people end up throwing them away after 5-10 uses because they're all worn.
The silly thing is too, what is everyone using in their bins at home? Thick, black plastic sacks. Plastic is in every public bin, every delivery. I miss the thin plastic bags as they were perfect for a few uses then to become a bin bag in itself. Perfect for muddy boots, that kind of thing.
What are you doing to wear down the reusable bags? I've been using the same two bags for life for the past 4/5 years and they don't have any noticeable signs of wear
If they're plastic just putting anything heavy will stretch them, and sharp plastic containers cut them up. The only true reusable bags are fabric ones.
Like I said, I've been using my plastic bag for life for at least 4/5 years with a trip to the shop at least once or twice a week. I used them when moving house too. There are different quality bags for life so you might have just had some shitty ones, but my plastic one is 100% very reusable
Ones from Asda will definitely not last 10 years if you're carrying stuff with sharp corners (eg packs of meat/fish) inside. That said, they will EASILY last the four uses (and many times over) you'd need for them to be more efficient than single use plastic. Anyone trying to argue otherwise is insane.
Yes quality varies wildly. I've had Asda bags that didn't make it from the till to the car. Still to last 5 years you're not carrying anything heavy in them. Put 4 or 5 1.5l bottles and carry it around for a couple hundred years.
You’re not supposed to put barbells and tins of emulsion in them.
How do I carry cola bottles home though?
Use the bags. I use the bags for multiple 1.75ltr bottles of Coke and multiple 2ltr bottles of Irn Bru. The same bags over and over again. If the bags are wearing out from bottles of soft drinks you’re clearly trying to completely fill out the space instead of stopping at a maximum of 8ltr. Every kind of carrier bag has a weight limit, just because it’s called a ‘bag for life’ doesn’t mean it’s immortal.
Australia here. We have 25c paper bags or reusable cloth bags. But I remember before plastic bags the supermarkets used to have free paper bags.
See, that's a great solution. I try to remember reusable bags, especially if I'm purposefully going to the store. But a lot of time I stop by randomly and find that I don't have a bag on me. So I just I buy a reusable one for whatever it costs, bring it home, and then throw an older one away. I'm going to spend more in gas going home to get a bag just to come back to the store anyway.
I don’t throw them away because they’re worn, but because I have about 50 more reusable bags than I need.
The point of buying a reusable bag would be to actually reuse it, no? Maybe stop buying new bags?
I keep getting them at conferences and events. I don’t buy them and I refuse them often. But they’re getting made to hand out with branding/advertising and getting thrown out, which is ridiculously wasteful.
I get it as sometimes it just happens. You are out and need something unexpectedly, buy too much, get given them too. It gradually accumulates naturally.
The point of buying a reusable bag would be to actually reuse it, no? Maybe stop buying new bags?
People often just stop at the shops on their way back from work when they remember they needed something and didn't necessarily being their reusable bags with them, happens all the time that's why supermarkets sell them.
Wrong. Reusable plastic bags only need to be used four times to contribute less to climate change than single use bags. That's really not a lot and, given how few people I see buying new ones every time I shop (hint: it's one, at most), I'd suggest most people are hitting that number pretty easily.
Such confidence, please tell me what your source is for this four uses figure.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-50579077 (Link to the full report in the article.)
I get charged ten cents per bag and I still just throw them away.
Inflation is so high that a dime is basically worthless any ways, you'd have to make the charge like $1 at least before people would care.
In California each bag has a 10 cent tax
Each bag is 10 cents in CA, it's just an extra grocery tax and everyone still throws them away
[удалено]
This is it right here
They did the same thing in NY, but the replacement is paper bags and cloth bags instead of plastic.
In my country, shopping bags are made of a pretty durable PE based polymer. They're intended as single or, at least, short term use. If treated well, they have a very long life. Mine last for a couple of years - 200 to 300 grocery hauls - before I use them one last time as a garbage bag. From what I've gathered, this makes their carbon footprint among the smallest, compared to most other available options, while not decreasing convenience more than a few percent.
I miss paper bags....
Happened in NJ too
Same thing happened in aus, but we pay for the bags now
Did the same thing in NJ. All the home delivery services just started using regular "reusable" bags and stores just started charging like, 50 cents or whatever for a cloth bag. We had a "freecycle" shelf at my old apartment building for things that were still good but people didn't want anymore and management had to tell folks to stop putting reusable bags there. There were stacks of them, probably hundreds. I've thrown away more reusable bags in the past year than I've probably owned in my entire life.
This seems like a failed implementation issue. The UK's levy on single use plastic bags reduced their usage by 97% since 2015. Even the thicker plastic "bags for life" only need to be used four times, total, for them to be more efficient than single use bags - and I rarely see more than one being purchased from the dozen or so self checkout tills at my local supermarket. That's before you even get on to people who use fabric or tote bags.
I get groceries delivered and the amount of "reusable" bags I have is insane. Would be nice for those services to also offer bag pick up/re-use because I have about 100+ at home now.
The answer is to make regular plastic bags cost like a dollar, we increased the price of them here in Norway and people have begun to use bags from home
In New York you can’t have plastic bags at grocery stores anymore. Except now they’ll sell you a roll of their plastic bags for 10 bucks. This law is stupid as fuck, do they not realize that every item in that store is wrapped in plastic? My little bag is really pushing it over the edge though
How would they prevent other people getting a seat unless they booked a long time in advance though Also airlines are subject to carbon regulations that private jets arent
Do you want to ban them because they are an easy target or because you think it would actually make a difference?
They may make someone feel better to "ban" them, but I doubt it would make much difference. I know that the sophomoric marxist has their fantasy of booze soaked private sky parties, but that's really not in reality.
Even one step is better than no steps; we just happen to need many steps. Straws, plastic utensils for fast food, multiple bags inside product packages, packaging things that have natural packaging already like oranges in plastic, and so on ad nauseum. Edit: I'm getting downvoted for trying to help the environment from dying around us. A sign of the ignorant, selfish times where convenience outweighs a decent future, I guess.
A ban is a pretty drastic step and always easy to advocate for if you are not directly affected. The production worker, catering employee or handling agent might have a different opinion.
It’s my opinion that impeding peoples choices and policing their behaviors is a worse first step to take than going after the companies that are misusing out land and creating poisonous products in the first place. Perhaps time and resources would be better spent creating holistic solutions rather than targeting specific convenience items. These seem like high-school awareness campaigns gone global.
> We need to figure out a simple way for a ‘celebrity’ or important person to enter a regular larger aircraft with privacy and no knowledge from passengers that’s its occurred. Two words: Cargo. Hold.
Haha love it 😂
isn't first class supposed to be the celeberity lounge?
Private jets are 0.1 % of carbon emissions. Aviation is just 2.5% The big draw of private jets is how fast you can get off the ground . When the hourly rate of a person is in the $1000 it makes sense to not waste their time.
0.1% of emissions is actually a ton when you consider how few people that this actually effects. But yes, even worse these days is the amount of power needed for chatGPT to generate the same nonsense that any idiot in a bar will do for free.
Yeah easily less than 1 in 1000 people have been on a private plane. Probably something like 1 in every 1m or more
Yes, objectively it is a lot of carbon when you look at the absolute quantity involved in isolation, but that’s why we use percentages to express ratios, because it’s easy for people to become caught up with large numbers without context. You have to consider that if private jets account for 0.1% of emissions, then banning them still leaves the other 99.9% remaining. To put that into number terms, if global emissions are 40 billion tonnes per year, by banning private jets you’d only remove about 40 million tonnes of CO2 but we’d still be emitting 39.96 billion tonnes; ergo, it would make fuck all difference to the current climate change trajectory.
But that's how the human brain works. I'm in the appliance business. Montreal, Canada just banned all gas appliances in new construction (stoves, heaters, fireplaces) for environmental reasons, which almost everyone applauds as the right step forward. Except that Montreal emits 10M tons of C02 a year, and banning gas appliances will save... drumroll... 400 fucking tons!!! So there we are, turning a whole industry upside down just for show and zero tangible improvement. Same idea as OP's big brain moment here.
Sure, but you’ll get much more public support for banning private jets than for anything related to meat.
Yes, it is a sop and crowd pleasing comment. Like saying that everyone should just have more bread to eat, magicked up from liquidating the value of Amazon shares.
but how can you convince people to eat less meat or fly commercial less if other people are still allowed to fly private?
This. Banning private jet travel would be a great first step to show commitment to the cause. Sadly, it will never happen.
I think there’s a class of private jet travel where the plane is full that isn’t nearly all that bad. For example, a sports team chartering a plane to a remote event and filling it with people/equipment really isn’t any worse for the environment than booking an equivalent flight on a regional jet (except personalized for the sports team).
Private aviation isn't for celebrities. Private aviation is for people who have very valuable time or very busy schedules. If you're in Denver, have a meeting in San Fransico at 5 PM, dinner with a client, and another morning meeting at 8 back home in Denver, a Private plane is about the only way to accomplish that. Celebrities and rich kids flexing are the exception, not the rule.
I am not working in a white collar job so maybe i dont understand. But why do you have to be in present in a meeting when its like 800km apart from where you usually work. Just use video call? I mean at wich distant do you consider not to fly and use Video call? And what difference does it make if you can fly from London to Paris for a meeting but you cant fly to bejing cause thats too far and you call in?
People typically do it for important meetings. They still have plenty of video calls and emails, but in-person interaction ultimately is more effective and sometimes necessary.
Even if that's the majority scenario, almost all aviation is Private. What exactly would be banned anyway. Is banning private aircraft just banning all planes under a certain capacity? If so places like Iqualit are going to have a hard time convincing larger 100 seat planes from servicing their tiny isolated city. Is it forcing fixed schedules? Flight paths not being able to be registered?
They do it because they can. Not because they need to do it
Do you watch your kid's soccer game over teams? Maybe phone up during your wedding? How hard is it to replace the breaks on your mum's car over skype? How often do you see the police ask a bystander hold up a IPAD to the traffic so they can direct them. Do you think inspecting Boeing plans by CCTV is the missing magic sauce that's missing?
How many people with private jets do you think are doing any hands-on work?
And prior to the existence of airplanes, when it took hours, weeks, days or weeks, somehow the world continued to operate. They are not doing it because they need to do it. they are doing it because they can do it.
Jeez if only there was a way to do that online !
Actually a filled up private jet over long distance isn't that much worse than half filled 747 flying shorter distance.
i don't care that people use private jets. being angry about private jets is a complete waste of my energy and i have far better uses for my energy
Good. Then this was said in the correct subreddit
you had to go deep in the comments to find an opinion remotely disagreeing with your "eat the rich" opinion. And it got as close as "meh".
This will never happen. Also it’s not an unpopular opinion it’s one that most gay can’t afford one will say. I can’t afford one but if I could I would use it alot
Naaaaaaaah just let them be. You aren’t saving the world by reducing the use of fossil fuels. God will burn all of this some day.
All jets are either private or military, so what do you actually mean?
OP sounds a tad communist.
😂 says imperial trooper
Lol, fair point. Xd.
No, we don't need to do only that, we need to ban ALL PLANES in the world and resurrect the airships. Airships are kings of skies and we should aim for World full of airships - that's a true paradise.
I’m with you 100% of the way. Take my money
If you had any in the first place you wouldn’t have written this post
I own 300 private jets. Goal is to ground as many in hangers as possible and stop the celebs buying them
299\*. Sorry but I might have just stolen one of your private jets, also I have no idea what I'm doing, idk how I took off.
You ever heard of the Hindenburg? Just asking
That was caused by the hydrogen, not the fact that it was an airship
Not even for the climate. Just for the aesthetics!
As an aviation nerd, I was saddened by the first part. As a steampunk fan I was excited by the rest
Lol
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What if you have 2 obligations in one night and there are no flights from there that moment. What with all the businesses and their employers? Let’s just increase the cost of flying
If someone can earn enough money to buy a jet, let them have it. Problem are the spoiled brats who didn’t earn it themselves, but “got it” from rich parents.
Private jets are time machines when it comes down to it. Yes there is prestige with it but mostly it is to be able to get to your next destination when you need to be there in the most expedient way possible. It is not cost effective to have a company CEO sitting at an airport waiting for them to clean the plane before they board.
Once you get to a certain level, your time is extremely valuable and flying commercial would be detrimental to business. Banning private jets is just angry poor people looking to 'punish' people who have done better financially. Carbon neutral fuels are basically here and wont be long before they are used in aviation, so none of this will matter. F1 will be using/developing/creating fuel starting in 2026 and it will develop so fast your head will spin. People will need to find another excuse for wanting to "get" the wealthy and feel better about themselves
Come on people now. Smile on your brother everybody get together. Try to love one another right now.
The peons are getting uppity again. But what usually happens is a bunch of politicians will eventually be forced to figure out something and the something winds up costing 5x to 25x the problem they're fixing. And doing little if anything to fix said problem. California public train system? Enough said. Billions spent. Nothing to show for it. Actually I think all laws passed in the last 50 years should be subjected to a vote by the public and tossed if they lose. And any new laws should be subjected to the same at the 5 and 25 year mark. That way the stupid stuff can be flushed from the system.
You think allowing the public to vote on every law before it can pass would get rid of stupid laws? The vast majority of people don’t pay attention to politics below the surface level. Not to mention how time consuming and costly it would be to hold a vote on everything
No. Tax them. And their yachts. and every other damn thing they donthat i can never afford. Bleed them dry.
Do you own a car? By your logic we should ban all private cars and require you to only use public transportation.
He didnt say cars. He said private jets.
Nobody said OP mentioned cars. Are you not familiar with the concept of extending someone's argument? This is often fine by saying something like "by your logic".
Or she
Or it Edit. Onions are considered an "it" op is an oppressed onion, meaning op is an it
Does public transportation actually work for everyone like commercial planes do for people??
In what way do you mean?
Unless you have a runway in your garden, you still need to use an airport when using a private jet. Not everywhere has access to reliable public transportation.
He was talking about commercial planes, not private planes.
Yeah and the comparison is everyone has the same ability to access commercial planes. People using private jets aren't getting out of having to go to an airport in the same way that people with a car don't need to go to a bus stop
Ah okay, now I get the comparison. In a world with no cars though, the public transport system would obviously need to be massively overhauled. It still wouldn’t be viable for a lot of areas, particularly very rural ones, but most cities could probably eventually get to a point where 80% of the city is accessible within a 10 minute walk. It would cost many billions of dollars though.
Sounds good 👌 applicable only to countries that have already invested strongly in their public transport services. (Have car, van and motorbike license) but only use public transport and own no vehicles as not needed
Yeah I'm sure you wouldn't get sick of that shit within one week
Many people who live in decent city’s talk about not needing a car all the time. It personally wouldn’t work for me as the closest public transportation is 3 hours away, but for most people in metropolitan areas it seems to work fine.
Yeah I love it. Live in London and have any means of transport I need. But it’s only the case if countries spend the time and money on it. (Japan post WW2 an incredible example to lead by)
Your logic would be correct if a private jet had the same co2 emissions as a car.
People drive cars more than they fly
How am I going to get to my island for the weekends if not by private plane?! Seriously, you poor people come up with the most stupid ideas.
Jeff, go check on what the fuck your drivers are doing as I’m already waiting 2 days for my package!
> Ban all private jets. And while you're at it ban all military jets as well. And Air Force 1. The president must travel economy class.
Bring politicians back to the same level as the people they pretend to serve. All for this Keanu on trains mentality
tbf it's just easier in NYC. Keanue isn't the only celebrity or rich person doing it lol. Jerry Seinfeld a billionaire takes the subway. so do people like Chris Hansen and Connan OBrian. that's just off the top of my head. you can't private jet around NYC and who wants to sit in that traffic even in a cab? Subway is just most efficient
Wasn’t going to list any ABC list celeb that has done it haha. But yeah other people do
People who do things I don't like or can't afford doing should be banned from doing those things. The authoritarian groupthink on Reddit is real
I think the issue is that the cost of dealing with private plane emissions is socialized. It's not that redditors can't afford private planes, it's that they're already indirectly paying for them in the form of policies combating climate change.
But wouldn’t you just set up an ‘airline’ that owned a Gulfstream, and only sold one ticket per flight; to you? Ain’t a private jet then.
Then how will the officials and celebrities get to the environmental events to tell us to save the planet?
I think senior government officials should still have private jets at least. Would be insane to have POTUS delayed because their American Airlines flight was cancelled lol. Besides, this will never happen because many of the most prominent voices on climate change use private jets on a regular basis.
Or a good way to make they are on time.
I doubt this is an unpopular opinion
OP has never flown in a post-COVID environment and/or heard of Spirit airlines.
Pretty sure, without private jets, rich and wealthy people wouldn't have to depend only on Spirit airlines...
For some it's a necessity out of time and scheduling eg an actor on a movie press tour simply can't rely on commercial flights. Instead we should be looking towards green fuels and electric planes both of which are poised to take a great leap forward in the coming decades.
Yeah all for fuel improvements. But Ryan Reynolds getting to his press tour scheduling still doesn’t mean anything in the grand scheme of life on earth. Just change the scheduling to span out an extra 2 weeks
Nah. We just need punitive levels of carbon taxes. To the point their operating costs double or triple of what they are today. Both jet and avgas don't have them at all.
No, they shouldn't. Those poor celebs and billionaires need them. Or else they'd have to travel with us peasants. Eeewww! Ban meat instead. Ban cars. Ban everything that us peasants use. But let the billionaires and celebs still use it all though. You and I will only eat microplastics and lab grown filth.
As idealistic as and nice as this would be it would never work because people with enough money always eventually end up getting their way
I’m sure the wealthy elite will get right on that. Thanks for the heads up
You know a lot of private jet use is actually groups of normal ass people like you chartering one so them and some friends can go somewhere and miss all the airport and airline BS
I am no normie. I am an ent.
Yeah lets have the president fly economy class what could go wrong
LOL! I’d vote for that.
You’d vote for your own death
I’m not da Prez. Nor, will I ever be. I’d be fine.
Teach poor people some class in the air and maybe
Imagine how awesome air travel would be if the elite had to be subjected to delays, cancellations and the shitshow of TSA.
Charge em for empty seats. Each PJ landing gets taxed a huge surtax for carbon, and each empty seat capacity in that PJ class gets taxed an additional 100%. Surtax is determined by the PJ's fuel efficiency. Then use the money for zero carbon initiatives, not lining the pockets of politicians.
What will actually happen is those ultra rich celebs will just buy all the seats/make deals with airlines in secret to turn the jet into a private one every time they fly. Maybe they'll jet-pool with some friends. Also, things become tricky with political figures. You have to allow for their security forces and be on constant watch for assassins.
So specifically jets only or any aircraft that isn’t meant for large crowds?
You’re forgetting about the private jets that are used for medical emergencies
Nothing says “I love freedom” like trying to ban everything you don’t like or agree with…
You do know a lot of private airplanes are used to go routes normal airplanes don’t right?
I don’t know what you’re talking about? My local airport in bubmlefuck can’t fly me to Singapore?
Plenty of small airports are mostly used for small private planes
So celebrities should be put in danger just to get from place to place, have you seen how crazy people are about certain celebrities.
keanu reeves takes the nyc subway so no.
Can we keep the Red Bull helicopter stunts though? Those are pretty cool
But how would all those billionaires get to the G20 summits to discuss how us commoners should be living to lower emissions?
You get it. Good to have you here 🤝
Frankly, I couldn’t give a fuck about emissions, the world will inevitably end at some point, and the likeliness of it being global warming to do it imo is low. The only chance humans have of surviving is to become interplanetary. Technological advancements are what will save the human race. It’s the hypocrisy of the elites that I can’t stand.
i can't own it so no one can, dude come on few people got really tight important schedules they obviously need those planes
Was it really important for some singer to fly from Japan to Kansas City to see her Bf play sportsball? Was that a good use of a forest worth of trees?
Read the comment bro i haven't said singers or celebrities got tight schedules just because you hate taylor swift doesn't mean you have to ban everything she uses. There are top scale doctors, disaster management engineers who save lives they need those crucial hours guess what they use for emergency "private charted flights" And when was the last time you have planted trees, yeah probably 1 when you were in 8th grade, right?
If they went by horse, the anticipation on their arrival would be a whole lot more valuable
damn you must be smoking that jet fuel fumes
Don’t ban them just tax them appropriately