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Remember Paper Grocery Bags?


Razors Edge

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Just now, Kirby said:

the bags with handles are better than bags without handles, but you can still carry a lot more with the plastic bags.

I don't think that is true.   A lot, however depends on the items being purchased and how they are packed.  I can hold two Trader Joe's paper bags per hand or about four or five per hand/arm of plastic.  But those plastic bags will dig into my arm pretty fast and furious!

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1 minute ago, Square Wheels said:

I never use the handles, I don't trust them.  Plus, I almost always bring my own bags.

Yeah - I use the reusable when I am actually thinking ahead.  But I like the paper bags as our "recycling" bags for newspaper/paper and for cans & plastic, so if I forget the reusable, the paper bags do a good job later as recycling bags.. 

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4 minutes ago, Square Wheels said:

We have a single, large barrel for all recycling, I love it.  Recycling every two weeks, trash every week.  We don't bother taking out just trash, we usually have very little.  Our recycling is always full.

Single stream recycling doesn't really work all that well if your intention is to recycle the material.

 

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11 minutes ago, Square Wheels said:

We have a single, large barrel for all recycling, I love it.  Recycling every two weeks, trash every week.  We don't bother taking out just trash, we usually have very little.  Our recycling is always full.

You keep a large barrel in your kitchen?

Or you make lots of trips to the garage?

Or you have a reusable tote for between the kitchen and garage?

IOW, how does recycling material get from the place of use - kitchen, living room, whatever - to the large barrel?

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I actually had a young high school aged bagger recommend to me that I should use plastic bags instead of paper because paper bags required that a tree be cut down.

I wonder who taught her that?  I was going to explain that trees grow and plastic doesn't but I realized that it would be a waste of time.

Yes I use my own cloth bags most of the time.  I do however like to get some paper for things that need to be put in bags for recycling.

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I used to be a grocery carry out in high school. It was all paper then and about 5 or 6 bag sizes. We could fit the proper bags to the purchase. I could sort like items together and adjust the weight of the bags to the perceived strength of the customer. We had far less bag waste than I see today. Sometimes the old ways are a bit better. 

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1 hour ago, Square Wheels said:

We have a single, large barrel for all recycling, I love it.  Recycling every two weeks, trash every week.  We don't bother taking out just trash, we usually have very little.  Our recycling is always full.

You do realize that anymore most of your recycling barrel goes to the exact same place as your trash barrel.  They've closed down most of the recycling drop off centers around here because they can't get rid of the recyclable material anymore.

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2 hours ago, Razors Edge said:

Recycling in general doesn't really seem to work :(  Well, not in a simple and easy to execute manner.

It depends on how the program is run. Clean recycling material like aluminum and paper is still profitable. If it's not clean, it's worthless and you have to pay some company to take it and then they dump or burn it. 

Our local program is a pain, but it is profitable. They won't take a lot of stuff people think is recyclable.  A company can put the recycling symbol on anything even if it cannot be recycled. 

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We have lots of communities where you have to pay an extra fee and recycle all your recyclables in a separate tote that is picked up each week. It has recently been exposed that they are hauling all that crap to the landfill as well. I always suspected they did. The people living in those communities said I was wrong, a separate truck picks up the recyclables. I made them mad when I told them they follow the garbage trucks to the same landfill.

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Just now, Longjohn said:

We have lots of communities where you have to pay an extra fee and recycle all your recyclables in a separate tote that is picked up each week. It has recently been exposed that they are hauling all that crap to the landfill as well. I always suspected they did. The people living in those communities said I was wrong, a separate truck picks up the recyclables. I made them mad when I told them they follow the garbage trucks to the same landfill.

Isn't that the fault of the haulers and the gov't organization that isn't doing their due diligence? I don't see how it is political.

Our county currently diverts 34% of waste to recycling where it is then sold. They have never had a bale of material rejected.

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2 minutes ago, dennis said:

Isn't that the fault of the haulers and the gov't organization that isn't doing their due diligence? I don't see how it is political.

Our county currently diverts 34% of waste to recycling where it is then sold. They have never had a bale of material rejected.

You think?

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4 minutes ago, dennis said:

Isn't that the fault of the haulers and the gov't organization that isn't doing their due diligence? I don't see how it is political.

Our county currently diverts 34% of waste to recycling where it is then sold. They have never had a bale of material rejected.

Saw a piece a couple weeks ago that documented the worldwide recycling issue.  Up until recently China processed most of our recyclables.  They created cheap Chinese goods from our crap.  By government decree they have changed those industries and as a result they have gone from being a net importer of recyclables to a net exporter - mostly to India.  That has left us and now Europe with no market for our recyclables.  They are either stacking up or going to landfills now.  So we separate, sort, bundle haul and they still end up in the landfill.

 

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13 minutes ago, Kzoo said:

Saw a piece a couple weeks ago that documented the worldwide recycling issue.  Up until recently China processed most of our recyclables.  They created cheap Chinese goods from our crap.  By government decree they have changed those industries and as a result they have gone from being a net importer of recyclables to a net exporter - mostly to India.  That has left us and now Europe with no market for our recyclables.  They are either stacking up or going to landfills now.  So we separate, sort, bundle haul and they still end up in the landfill.

 

Exactly. That is why clean material is worth something and contaminated is not. The U.S. was shipping crap to China and eventually they got sick of it. 

 

32 minutes ago, Longjohn said:

You think?

I know. You realize you can look this stuff up. 

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Costco sells insulated bags are about 2' long by 1.5' high and that vary from time-to-time from being about 8" to 12" wide and sell for $6.99 to $8.99.

I have two: one of the smaller ones which is tremendous at keeping stuff very hot or cold for a couple hours and a bigger one which usually holds all my grocery shopping.

When I'm shopping at more than one place, I often carry the smaller, empty one into stores with me and store stuff in the bigger bag when I get to my car.

The bigger one looks like the left pic below where a double zipper runs around the long side and both short sides. The smaller one on the right or 2nd pic has one long zipper down the middle of the top. Both have a side storage pocket:

sim.jpg.82d6be2d79516967b5e3a722fdf409d9.jpgkeep-cool-shopping-cooler-bag-costco.thumb.jpg.0c14f43f4d391ff62b17d46256c61654.jpg

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