[epanchin]

I didn’t believe it was about energy use. Cotton bags don’t kill fish and break into micro plastics. I’m yet to see a cotton bag floating down the Thames.

Like most of my friends, I’ve taken to carrying a rucksack around, with an additional bag-for-life inside. I don’t recall the last time I had to buy an additional bag. I guess I’ve saved around 300 bags in the past year.

[H8crilA]

As much as I hate plastics in water - it's the rising temperature that we have to primarily care about. +5*C will bring devastation to the planet and humanity. The impact of warming is not comparable to the impact of pollution (be it air, water or land pollution).

[lorenzhs]

It's a false equivalence to claim that we can only care about one but not the other. Plastic pollution is threatening entire species and food chains. We need to tackle both problems simultaneously.

Not to mention that everyone just assumes that fewer plastic bags sold = many more cotton bags produced without providing any numbers. Maybe plastic bags are mostly being reused more? Maybe people remember to bring a cotton bag they already owned anyway to the store more often?

Also, that 7100x number is for ozone. For climate impact, it's 52x, and that number doesn't include disposal. See hannob's comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20581751 and the point in the tweet chain here: https://twitter.com/arthurhcyip/status/1115749691566821376

[gambiting]

I just have these giant bags that every supermarket sells for like 2 pounds - they are made from plastic, but I've had the same set of 5-6 bags for a couple years now. It doesn't have to be a choice between a shitty 5p plastic bag or an energy intensive cotton bag - large sturdy plastic bags also exist.

[bobwaycott]

It’s not a false equivalence.

The parent is saying, “A and B are both bad. A is worse by an order of magnitude. I (and others) should care about A more.” There’s no suggestion of A and B being falsely equivalent to each other on the same order of magnitude based on a loosely shared common feature or property that is manipulated or misrepresented to incorrectly/dishonestly establish A and B as equivalent. That is what false equivalence means.

The parent is grading two bad things according to their estimated impact, and is perfectly justified in choosing to focus on the one they think is worse. They aren’t suggesting nobody care about item B—just that it not be cared about more than the far worse item A.[0]

[0]: I'm just rephrasing the parent's argument and pointing out the argument is not equating A and B (which is required for a false equivalence); I'm not taking a position on whether or not the argument is correct.

[nothrabannosir]

For global warming to be relevant in a conversation about culling plastic waste, it needs be shown that either the efforts are mutually exclusive, or that fighting plastic waste somehow increases global warming. The former I’ll leave to speak for itself, the latter is a bold claim that requires actual numbers: how many people switch to a supposedly worse reusable bag after said ban (as opposed to just reusing the existing bags), and how much does that actually influence global warming? The >1000x number posted elsewhere in this thread was about ozone. Once you have those numbers, there is one final question to answer: is it worth it?

Without those numbers, bringing up climate change does little more than discourage a worthwhile effort.

[bobwaycott]

> ... bringing up climate change does little more than discourage a worthwhile effort.

I almost entirely agree. From a purely environmental perspective, habitat pollution and species destruction is 100% worth caring about, understanding, and reducing/eliminating. I think we're sadly living in a time where public discourse has equated environmental impact with climate impact, and fails to keep them separated when necessary.

Some things are worth caring about and doing because they are destructive to the environment(s) on Earth as a whole—and we should avoid destroying the environment itself, as well as habitats, ecosystems, and species when we realize we are doing so. Some things are worth caring about, understanding, and reducing/eliminating because they are destroying the climate itself, which is getting dangerously close to becoming actively unfriendly to humans and other species in a relatively short timeframe. These things are occasionally, but not always, interacting & influencing the other. Environmental destruction can, in turn, cause climate destruction/change. The reverse also holds. I think many people have difficulty discussing one without bringing up the other, or in very specific cases, discussing them as if they are equivalent.

However, the two examples I called out as accusations of false equivalence that do not hold were more whataboutism than false equivalency. The accused were not claiming the two things to be the same—they directly admitted they were different issues, with different concerns and impacts, and still wanted to push that one was more important (at least to them) than the other. Had the accusers pointed out the whataboutism, I wouldn't have commented. But they called it false equivalency, which prompted me to point out that their responses actually rode the line of false equivalence far more egregiously than the comments to which they replied. I stand by that assessment. I wasn't seeking to defend the accused's whataboutism—it was both distracting and unhelpful. But it was important to me—some random internet nobody who really doesn't mean much of anything at all—to point out that the accusations were incorrect and try to prod the accusers to not go throwing around a term like false equivalence without it being warranted. I guess just because words and terms matter. Public discourse is better when we keep that in mind.

[Retric]

The false equivalence is assuming the impact on A and B is equivalent. If A is 100x as bad as B, but X’s impact on A is 1/1,000 as much as B then B is more important.

[C1sc0cat]

Unfortuetly you cant have every thing as priority 1 (as anyone who works in tech knows).

This is something the "green" movement needs to take on board - unfortunately a lot of the hobbyist end of the movement doesn't really get this.

[Hitton]

Plastic pollution isn't valid argument against use of plastics in developed world. When you throw out your bag, it doesn't end in ocean, it ends in a dump, is incinerated or recycled. Plastics which end in ocean are virtually all from developing countries without functioning waste management.[0]

[0] https://www.dw.com/en/almost-all-plastic-in-the-ocean-comes-...

[H8crilA]

I'm trusting the upper level comment on the numbers:

> Studies have shown multiple times [1], [2] that cotton bags require far more energy and water to produce than almost everything else and need to be reused circa 7.100 times for non organic and twenty-thousand times for organic cotton until they surpass plastic bags.

And yeah sure, both is better than one. But one of those two is much more important. One will remove , say, ~10% of species and humans, the other will remove, say, ~50% of species and humans.

[DCKing]

It's still a false equivalence. Comparing the comparatively higher energy costs of making reusable bags [1] does not compare to the systemic causes of the climate catastrophe. Arguably the behavioral pattern of using non-durable, non-reusable or non-repairable items that are "cheap" [2] is one of the systemic problems.

The climate catastrophe also is not only caused by rising greenhouse gases (although yes, that's causing the most disasterous results). Other results of unbridled human (ab)use of their natural environment is causing biodiversity collapses everywhere. Single use plastics are an important factor there, wreaking havoc to many different environments.

Sometimes priorities really are complicated but in this case they aren't.

[1]: I'd argue flimsy cotton bags are a non-solution to this problem, as they still do not really discourage single use. They don't fundamentally change people's behaviour, and as a result don't address the systemic cultural problem. Proper, well made, high quality, repairable shopping bags exist. It's a shame we need to be so inconvienced to go out shopping prepared, but that's a cultural mindset we have to get over.

[2]: They are only "cheap" because the real impact of these products are not accounted for in the price you pay for it. Again, it's a systemic cultural problem that this is acceptable and even desired.

[bobwaycott]

You’re now the second commenter to incorrectly accuse a parent comment of a false equivalence. Neither commenter to whom either of you replied were claiming rising temperatures and reducing single-use plastics are equivalent—which is a necessary condition for them to be making a false equivalence between the two.

Each commenter is stating the two things are definitively NOT equivalent, that one is far worse than the other, and that everyone can care about both—but should really care about the temperatures issue more because it’s worse by a lot.

It sounds like you and the other false-equivalence-accuser are the ones who are making false equivalency happen here—you’re both saying that because rising temperatures and habitat pollution/destruction are bad for the environment or Earth's climate, they are both equally bad and worth caring about equally, or at least simultaneously—THAT is so textbook false equivalence I'm struggling to understand how you and the other FE-accuser are doing it without realizing.

[lorenzhs]

Sorry, I edited my comment after/while you posted yours. The 7100x number is totally misleading because it's the maximum over all factors they considered, which turned out to be ozone depletion. But the study didn't communicate that well and apparently nobody who reported on it saw the footnote. The number of reuses required to get the same climate impact is 52x, excluding disposal. See the last paragraph of my edited comment.

[terminalhealth]

It's still a relatively minor issue. There are far greater sources of microplastics, especially wear and tear from tires, paint:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CA7zXLWUIAAaSfS?format=png&name=...

We'd need to drive way less, stop sending products overseas, build high speed underground trains. Even more importantly we'd need to make sure that India and Africa are going to follow the same principles because they're going to exceed the consumption of the West in future. That being said, I do not care because I do not plan to have children.

[seunosewa]

> I won’t have children

That is a bit sad. We need more thoughtfulness-enhancing genes in the genetic pool.

[tomjen3]

Humans can only focus on a few things at a time, so between job concerns, family concerns do you really want to risk global warming versun some harm to food chains (nothing new)?

[_ph_]

As much as I see the fight against the global warming the most urgent and existential problem we are facing, it is important to do the right things to fight global warming. So, how much energy is used when creating a cloth bag? How does this compare to a single drive with a car to the groceries store? Is this anything that matters in comparison to driving, flying, heating, producing electricity?

Personally, I have a "consumption" of less than 1 cloth bag per year, I fear I commit worse sins to the climate than that during that year.

[chrisseaton]

> The impact of warming is not comparable to the impact of pollution (be it air, water or land pollution).

But impact of the air pollution is the warming!

[sweeneyrod]

No it's not. The CO2 and methane that causes warming doesn't have effects on health (at least at current levels), and conversely smog actually cools the local area by blocking sunlight rather than warming it.

[chrisseaton]

The CO2 is the pollution in the air. The effect it has on health is warming the planet. Even the US Government will tell you this!

https://climate.nasa.gov/causes/

> Humans have increased atmospheric CO2 concentration by more than a third since the Industrial Revolution began. This is the most important long-lived "forcing" of climate change.

[zaarn]

We can and should act on both; the plastic pollution is a problem where the symptoms could occur only in 3 decades, similar to global warming, there is already a very very large number of symptoms in the ecosystem as plastic clogs up the food chain.

Buy a single cloth bag and keep it for life, atleast in my area, they survive a long time.

[scotty79]

> I’m yet to see a cotton bag floating down the Thames.

When they are widly used you will.

I've used canvas bag from Tesco. It fell apart after few years. I definitely did not use it 7000 times.

When plastic bags were free I was reusing them as trash bags if I collected too many of them. Now I'm buying dedicated trashbags. I definitely spend more on plastic bags then I used to. I can only hope part of this money goes towards environmental efforts.

[MAGZine]

Selection bias... I used those bags for garbage too, but the number of bags I received to the number I used for that purpose was not comparable. There was already an abundance.

PlanetMoney said you needed to use a bag 131 times to be equivalent, not 7k. I see numbers floating around but no sources.

In any case. Reusing a bag not only reduces the bag usage the first time it's used but every subsequent time too. A reusable bags isn't preventing a single plastic bag, it's preventing at least one, probably two, maybe three and possibly four plastic bags each use considering how durable and large they are. Which is to say, you could fit (at most) two double bags of groceries into a single reusable.

[jasonzemos]

> I’m yet to see a cotton bag floating down the Thames.

>> When they are widly used you will.

But all those cotton bags you see quickly disintegrate back into the biome, while the plastic ones stay plastic for a million years...

[scotty79]

My canvas bag had thick plastic lining. You'd definitely would see it. Selling point of those is multiple use not biodegradability.

[lorenzhs]

I don't think anybody's claiming that canvas bags are the answer. As you said, they contain a lot of plastic. The comment you replied to was about cotton bags, not canvas.

[scotty79]

Oh. I thought they were the same thing.

I had one that looked pretty much like this: https://m.indiamart.com/proddetail/tesco-shopping-bag-368709...

Is it canvas or cotton?

[lorenzhs]

Hard to tell what it's made of from the tiny image, but the cotton bags I know are 100% cotton (except for the print), like this: https://www.sinplastico.com/3742-large_default/organic-cotto... while canvas bags are usually made from cotton + PVC.

[patall]

But that's just a convenience issue. There are some many other plastic bags still around that may not be as flexible as the generic fruit and vegetable bag but can still be used for most types of waste. For example I have been using cereal bags for the same task and while they do not fit as nicely in the trash container and you have to be a little more careful when you throw something in, they absolutely work too. Although in the long term we should maybe get rid of the cereal bag too and just use a multi-use hard plastic container that you have to clean with water after use.