Local Disney Store - no bags!!!

[BadPinkTink]

Not really. Sooner or later, this whole fad of phasing out and banning plastic bags will massively backfire, and end in tears, or at best, unintended consequences.

well its been 17 years in my country since the plastic bag ban, and I can't see any of the doom and gloom you are taking about. There is now a generation of teenagers who have known nothing else.

 

[AurumPunzel]

- I don't think many people will refuse to shop because of lack of bags; rather, I think people will adapt their behavior and start carrying their own bags.

Even if people do take their own bags, it results in declining revenue because then you'll have the issue of 'bag anxiety', for a lack of a better term, and the decline of malls as we know them will accelerate, because people will no longer be able to shop spontaneously like they used to, and that has a detrimental impact on the economy. The only benefits bag bans have is that revenue of alternative bags skyrocket and employment benefits will only be seen in countries that are known to have a questionable ethics record (eg China).

well its been 17 years in my country since the plastic bag ban, and I can't see any of the doom and gloom you are taking about. There is now a generation of teenagers who have known nothing else.

Thing is, your country is a lot smaller, so the effects are going to be a lot smaller than what they’ll be in the United States, which is far larger than Ireland. And also, your country doesn't really have a ban, but rather a tax, and the effect it's had is that most retailers just switched to paper to still be able to offer free bags to customers, and paper is a lot worse than plastic in terms of production footprint, and I speak from experience I've had nearly 10 years ago when I went to Dublin on vacation. People don't realise that most alternatives have heavier footprints compared to plastic, and this whole banning fad will have a detrimental impact on climate change when you consider the production footprint.

 

[spiders]

Not really. Sooner or later, this whole fad of phasing out and banning plastic bags will massively backfire, and end in tears, or at best, unintended consequences.

If you say so...

In the meantime, Disney has been doing just fine since they introduced it in 2018 and Kroger will be fine too.

 

[ronandannette]

Good for your town. We have to get serious about our plastic problem in this country.
I totally agree that food packaging is a much bigger problem than grocery bags, but we the individual consumers have little control over that. We have to buy food, so we have no choice but to buy that plastic -- we do have a choice to bring our own bags. It's an easy "first step".

The reality is that MOST of the plastic we send out for recycling IS NOT RECYCLED. It's sold to other countries to "store", and those countries are on the cusp of saying, "No more."

We as a society really must downsize food packaging, and I personally don't know how we can do that -- but experts on the topic know. Maybe we need to stop buying 4-packs of muffins in plastic clam shells, need to skip pretty plastic sleeves that fit over plastic packaging, need to find a new way to package yogurt, sour cream, and other things that currently come in plastic tubs. We can buy milk in cardboard containers, which seem to me to be more recyclable than plastic jugs -- why not these other items?

What we as individual consumers can do is to choose minimal packaging and reuse what we do buy. Examples: Refuse to buy individual pudding packs /make your own pudding, even if it's from a small cardboard box. When you buy a glass jar of spaghetti sauce, save the jar and use it for leftovers. Take your own reusable Tupperware to a restaurant /refuse their styrofoam containers for your take-homes.
Yes, the consequences of our inaction are already upon us -- we must change our collective ways.
I think you're referring to plastic grocery bags -- and I agree that the good, thick ones make good trash can liners, but so many of them are too thin to really be useful.

Think beyond those grocery bags though: I suspect the bag that's inside your cereal box, the bag that holds your rice, the bag that contained a loaf of bread, and the bag that held your grapes all went into the trash can /on to the landfill.

Preach!! This is something 99% of the population is unaware of. Canada was recently forced to retrieve 69 huge shipping containers from the Philippines when it was rejected at their ports.

Much of the expense, effort and use of other resources that goes into separating and collecting plastics is largely wasted. There are inadequate facilities to actually recycle the used goods into something useful, and no market for the recycled products afterwards anyway since they are often more expensive than new. At this point the only path forward is to REDUCE AND REUSE.

 

[MrsPete]

In the end it all comes down to people getting used to the new "normal."

I agree that at the mall bring your own bag is more awkward. I just put loop the handles of a bag around my purse handles and go. If I had a larger purse I would just put one in my purse. Of course if one doesn't carry a purse then it becomes even more awkward but not really any more so that carrying bags filled with purchases.

Exactly. "The new normal." We're all in the habit of bringing our "necessities" when we leave the house: wallet, keys, phone, sunglasses, whatever. A bag will become part of those necessities. Small, foldable bags are available now; I always have one in my car.

We need to do much, much more than this for the environment, but this is an obvious, not-so-tough first-step.

 

[ronandannette]

People don't like change. It doesn't matter if the change is good or not. It takes them a while to realize that change is sometimes good. Won't stop them from complaining bitterly about it though.

True, and guilty as charged.

 

[AurumPunzel]

If you say so...

In the meantime, Disney has been doing just fine since they introduced it in 2018 and Kroger will be fine too.

How can you be so certain? You can't easily tell results from DPEP as they are conflated with other areas of DPEP that don't force reusables on customers. The long term impact will be bleak, not just economically, but also environmentally. Disney's reusable bags (and other reusable bags in general) have a far worse environmental footprint than plastic, not to mention that they're made in foreign sweatshops. Do people even consider that?

 

[belle032]

I'm technically a millenial if that matters, but I've been bringing my own bags to grocery stores for over a year now with no qualms whatsoever. I keep a bunch in my car at all times. I have one reusable cooler bag I always bring to places like Walmart and Target and have gotten tons of compliments/"where did you get that's" on it. And sure, it's annoying if you forget one and have to make a stop, but it happens and you move on. Plus, I do a lot of my grocery shopping at Aldi and they've never offered bags of any type for free. You can purchase reusable ones (quite nice if you ask me!), use their boxes, bring your own bags, or just carry them out. And Aldi's popularly has only increased in the US.

Good reusable bags are not expensive, last quite awhile, can even be super cute and are most importantly, reusable! Is it really that big of a deal if you're encouraged to use one? In the overall scheme of things, does using a reusable bag ruin your day? I'm truly sorry if it does.

This dilemma is just like the plastic straw issue. People argue that plastic straws and bags aren't important and we should be focusing more on bigger environmental issues. Yes, we absolutely should be concerned about other issues, but good lord, why can't people just be happy we're starting somewhere and it's a small step in the right direction?

 

[AurumPunzel]

I'm technically a millenial if that matters, but I've been bringing my own bags to grocery stores for over a year now with no qualms whatsoever. I keep a bunch in my car at all times. I have one reusable cooler bag I always bring to places like Walmart and Target and have gotten tons of compliments/"where did you get that's" on it. And sure, it's annoying if you forget one and have to make a stop, but it happens and you move on.

Good reusable bags are not expensive, last quite awhile, can even be super cute and are most importantly, reusable! Is it really that big of a deal if you're encouraged to use one? In the overall scheme of things, does using a reusable bag ruin your day? I'm truly sorry if it does.

This dilemma is just like the plastic straw issue. People argue that plastic straws and bags aren't important and we should be focusing more on bigger environmental issues. Yes, we absolutely should be concerned about other issues, but good lord, why can't people just be happy we're starting somewhere and it's a small step in the right direction?

Because it's token virtue-signalling. When you consider percentiles of plastic pollution, the West sit in the lower percentile, while China and developing countries are within the higher percentiles. And it really irks me when people say that such a small change will make a big difference - they won't, especially when you consider variables in regards to manufacturing impacts of various types of shopping bag vs plastic, and waste management.

Any effort in the West is going to be negligible, not at least until the worst polluters sort their waste management systems out. And the thing is, of all the items of single-use and conflated single-use, plastic bags are perhaps the most widely reused, and personally, if a plastic bag is viable for reuse and people reuse them, then their positive impact will far outweigh paper and most purpose-built heavy duty reusable bags, especially those made of PP, RPET or cotton.

 

[DuskKodesh]

I get a lot of the counterpoints here but I do like to point out that at one time the plastic was introduced to cut down on environmental impact ("Save the trees"). Humans have a way of applying short sighted fixes to things that actually turn out worse than the problem itself while also ignoring other worse issues entirely. Like the schools going 'paperless' that then have outdated or broken tablets with lithium batteries they have to dispose of. Or the 'organic produce' grown on fields lined with pesticides/rodenticides around the perimeter.

When I was young I honestly loved the brown paper bags but if everyone switched back to them now then in another ten years there will be another 'save the trees' public campaign. I'm willing to wager that the reusable tarplike bags people have now at stores really will end up no better for the environment as those too eventually will end up in landfills. It's like the new toy trend of making the package a 'playset' so it's not single use. Before you had a thin shrinkwrap or cardboard package on blind bags. Now you get a thick toy storage container that eventually gets broken and thrown out with the toy (Poopsie, LOL, Blume dolls). It's very quick fix PR.

(I did however love the biodegradable plastic bags we used to have at ToysRus. They were nice, just don't leave them in your trunk for two months or they would turn to flakes of bag.)

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

Costco has never given away bags. Hasn't impacted their business in a negative way.

Ah but they give you all the cardboard boxes you want at the register. So does Aldi (though you kinda get those yourself throughout the store).

I've never understood the comparisons people use with Costco (and Aldi). 1) Costco and the like are warehouse stores with lots of bulk items (so not exactly easy for normal smaller plastic bags anyways for quite a lot of their items) anyways though Aldi is not a warehouse store and 2) they give you another way to carry out your items (and they don't charge you for it).

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

Exactly. "The new normal." We're all in the habit of bringing our "necessities" when we leave the house: wallet, keys, phone, sunglasses, whatever. A bag will become part of those necessities. Small, foldable bags are available now; I always have one in my car.

We need to do much, much more than this for the environment, but this is an obvious, not-so-tough first-step.

I really wish they would have started with making plastic bags of a more biodegradeable material. I feel like that would have been quite the step in the environmental world.

 

[AurumPunzel]

I get a lot of the counterpoints here but I do like to point out that at one time the plastic was introduced to cut down on environmental impact ("Save the trees"). Humans have a way of applying short sighted fixes to things that actually turn out worse than the problem itself while also ignoring other worse issues entirely. Like the schools going 'paperless' that then have outdated or broken tablets with lithium batteries they have to dispose of. Or the 'organic produce' grown on fields lined with pesticides/rodenticides around the perimeter.

When I was young I honestly loved the brown paper bags but if everyone switched back to them now then in another ten years there will be another 'save the trees' public campaign. I'm willing to wager that the reusable tarplike bags people have now at stores really will end up no better for the environment as those too eventually will end up in landfills. It's like the new toy trend of making the package a 'playset' so it's not single use. Before you had a thin shrinkwrap or cardboard package on blind bags. Now you get a thick toy storage container that eventually gets broken and thrown out with the toy (Poopsie, LOL, Blume dolls). It's very quick fix PR.

(I did however love the biodegradable plastic bags we used to have at ToysRus. They were nice, just don't leave them in your trunk for two months or they would turn to flakes of bag.)

I couldn't have put it into better words than you can, so well said!

Of all the plastic bags, I've always thought that if they had a design that people would have an emotional connection with (eg by having a cute or pretty design), then people are less likely going to throw them out and actually save/collect them, and that's especially true of the bags the Disney Stores had. I've saved and collected a lot of them over the years, and the ones I love the most were the ones they had up until the phaseout, and the era where they had different colours and characters that corresponded to their sizes (or in the case of the medium bags, either blue with Pixar characters on them, or pink with princesses on, especially the version that was only used in North America 10 years ago), which I thought was the best, even during the time the Stores were sold off to TCP and after Disney bought them back, before the comic strip design came out to coincide with the launch of the Imagination Park Disney Stores.

 

[Searc]

Yes you should just be able to click on the item in the store and have it shipped to your house.

Nope. I will shop online, but brick and mortar is necessary for some things.

 

[Searc]

Costco has never given away bags. Hasn't impacted their business in a negative way.

Costco has never used bags, but they'll give you all the free cardboard boxes you want to re-use.

 

[belle032]

And the thing is, of all the items of single-use and conflated single-use, plastic bags are perhaps the most widely reused, and personally, if a plastic bag is viable for reuse and people reuse them, then their positive impact will far outweigh paper and most purpose-built heavy duty reusable bags, especially those made of PP, RPET or cotton.

Those are some pretty big "ifs." Single use plastic bags are maybe used one more time? Maybe twice if lucky? I'm speaking about grocery store or Walmart type bags. Of course some may use them more or less, but just speaking in general terms. Just doing some quick research, a good reusable bag has a lifespan of equal to approximately 700 plastic bags.

And yes, I agree that the actual manufacture of different types of resuable bags isn't great for the environment, but overall the environmental impact of reusable bags is substantially lower than the impact of plastic or paper bags when you use them frequently enough. Another quick search shows that a canvas tote bag would take 171 reuses to negate the environmental impact of using a plastic bag or something like a Polypropylene or Polyester Bag would only take 11 times or more. So canvas probably isn't the best choice, unless you use it enough. Key word in any of these arguments is you have to REUSE them, no matter what type they are.

Moral of the story is that any plastic bag can be reused, but people just typically don't because they know how easy it is to run to the store and get more. Then you have an entire cabinet full of single use plastic bags that get thrown away because you can't use them all. We've all done it, it happens. If you take away that option, I truly believe just taking your own bags to the store will become a new normal. Maybe not in your lifetime or mine, but eventually. And I don't see that as a negative thing.

Please shop as you see fit, but I've used the same reusable bags and totes for a year or more, and will continue to do so without guilt.

 

[AurumPunzel]

Moral of the story is that any plastic bag can be reused, but people just typically don't because they know how easy it is to run to the store and get more. Then you have an entire cabinet full of single use plastic bags that get thrown away because you can't use them all. We've all done it, it happens. If you take away that option, I truly believe just taking your own bags to the store will become a new normal. Maybe not in your lifetime or mine, but eventually. And I don't see that as a negative thing.

That's why I prefer the voluntary approach of educating on reuse and making plastic more sustainable through improved recycling regimes and adoption of bio-based plastics. I'd rather there was a happy medium and a level playing field than the forced and dictated, emotive, ideological approach that seems to be increasingly common.

As for reuse of substantial bags, that depends on a number of factors, including remembering the bag 365 days a year, and frequency of shopping trips, but that's assuming the bag does hold up to meet the lifecycle goal, and doesn't break or gets lost by the user.

Trouble is that in a ravenous, convenience-focussed capitalist society, you also have to take into account spontaneous shopping trips where one would come unprepared and would need a means of carrying the purchases out safely without lugging it around bagless, and that includes a spur-of-the-moment trip to the mall, a downtown in a major city, or an emergency trip to the supermarket or convenience store to quickly pick up a few things that might be missed on a weekly supermarket shop. There's so many variables that end up causing a Catch-22 on convenience vs conservation, which doesn't always yield a straight answer.

 

[kaytieeldr]

it often has a lot of unpleasant side effects such as increasing plastic consumption through dedicated single-use plastic bags people would now have to purchase to make up for the free bags they used to get

Purchased bags do not have to be single use. People slightly reuse store-provided plastic bags; why would they treat self-bought ones differently?

Not really. Sooner or later, this whole fad of phasing out and banning plastic bags will massively backfire, and end in tears, or at best, unintended consequences.

Tears? Seriously?

- As for shopping online instead, that does create a new issue: so many cardboard Amazon boxes! We need a mechanism for re-use.

Cardboard boxes biodegradable in about 1% of the time it tak3s for plastic bag to break down. Plus you can reuse boxes as, well, boxes. Or for crafts. Or cut them up and make protest signs, or political candidate signs, or Haloween costumes, or draft blockers, or drawer dividers...

if people do take their own bags, it results in declining revenue because then you'll have the issue of 'bag anxiety', for a lack of a better term,

Bag anxiety? Where are these imagined states or conditions coming from?

and the decline of malls as we know them will accelerate, because people will no longer be able to shop spontaneously like they used to,

Malls decline due to online shopping. Availability of bags is not a factor.

Thing is, your country is a lot smaller, so the effects are going to be a lot smaller than what they’ll be in the United States, which is far larger than Ireland.

Geography lesson noted and appreciated. Interesting that a physically small country can adapt, but this young country is stomping its collective foot and refusing to change.

Disney's reusable bags (and other reusable bags in general) have a far worse environmental footprint than plastic, not to mention that they're m

Citation? Because this sitehttps://ntepa.nt.gov.au/waste-pollution/plastic-bag-ban/environmental-impacts refuted that claim (and Australia isn't a "small" country, being about the same size as the US).

Because it's token virtue-signalling. When you consider percentiles of plastic pollution, the West sit in the lower percentile, while China and developing countries are within the higher percentiles.

If China jumped off a bridge, would you? We don't (have to) follow. We lead.

I'm willing to wager that the reusable tarplike bags people have now at stores really will end up no better for the environment as those too eventually will end up in landfills

Not really https://www.bettermeetsreality.com/...terials-everyday-items-to-break-down-degrade/

then people are less likely going to throw them out and actually save/collect them,

Then do what? Frame them? Make purses out of them? Shove them in a drawer?

 

[kaytieeldr]

That's why I prefer the voluntary approach of educating on reuse and making plastic more sustainable through improved recycling regimes

Educating doesn't seem to work. The world has been concerned about the environment for over a century, and the US for at least 50 years. https://www.reference.com/science/did-environmental-movement-begin-695ee77d2f6762a7

As for reuse of substantial bags, that depends on a number of factors, including remembering the bag 365 days a year,

Anybody who shops spontaneously 365 days a year can reasonably be expected to realize they are going to make one of more purchases each and every day, and leave the house prepared.

one would come unprepared and would need a means of carrying the purchases out safely without lugging it around bagless, and that includes a spur-of-the-moment trip to the mall, a downtown in a major city, or an emergency trip to the supermarket or convenience store to quickly pick up a few things that might be missed on a weekly supermarket shop.

Ask for a box. He prepared with your own bag that literally foods small enough to fit in a purse and comes with its own pouch with a loop for one's keychain. Or, yeah, carry the item/s bagless.

 

[AurumPunzel]

Purchased bags do not have to be single use. People slightly reuse store-provided plastic bags; why would they treat self-bought ones differently?

Because those dedicated single-use bags often use more plastic than the free bags, and not only do they add to the living cost, it makes the bag ban a rather hypocritical one.

Tears? Seriously?

Not in the literal sense, but rather the metaphorical one. Opponents say that bag bans cost local jobs and harm the local economy.

Bag anxiety? Where are these imagined states or conditions coming from?

It's the feeling that you worry about having enough bags or a bag to carry your purchases in, and the worry of having to purchase one, particularly if the only bag option is either an unsatisfactory one (eg paper) or a costly one (eg a price-point reusable sold at $/£/€1 or more).

Malls decline due to online shopping. Availability of bags is not a factor.

It does exacerbate a decline in brick-and-mortar stores. Although online shopping has always been a threat, bag bans can also lead to a decline in physical retail, particularly when the overheads of operating under an ordinance increase.

Geography lesson noted and appreciated. Interesting that a physically small country can adapt, but this young country is stomping its collective foot and refusing to change.

It's not just the physical size of a country, it's also the economy size. Ireland's economy has shrunk since the halcyon days of the Celtic Tiger, which occurred before and just after their bag tax came in. Although it's far from being a ban, it's resulted in paper bags being freely available, and that's not necessarily a good thing.

Citation? Because this sitehttps://ntepa.nt.gov.au/waste-pollution/plastic-bag-ban/environmental-impacts refuted that claim (and Australia isn't a "small" country, being about the same size as the US).

Google 'shopping bag lifecycle analysis' and you'll see various analyses conducted by the Environment Agency of England and their Danish counterpart.

If China jumped off a bridge, would you? We don't (have to) follow. We lead.

That's just false equivalency. Leading by example should mean improving recycling infrastructure and making plastics more sustainable, not imposing hairshirt environmentalism on a populace that may have conflicting views on the matter.

Then do what? Frame them? Make purses out of them? Shove them in a drawer?

Well, making something out of them is repurposing, but saving and reusing them is also another way of reducing their impact. After all, I've seen more Disney plastic bags being reused than thrown away, but whether or not everyone does is a moot point, but my reasoning is that people are less likely going to throw away a pretty bag than one that looked rather plain and spartan.