[magduf]

>Is there a giant swirling mass of paper bags in the Pacific Ocean?

I'm quite sure there's no giant swirling mass of plastic bags in the Pacific Ocean.

Sure, there's a huge amount of plastic pollution there in gyres, but it's not from people using plastic bags at the grocery store in middle America. It's from stuff like shipping containers blown overboard, and various other trash that has gotten into waterways.

Your other points are sound I think, but not this one. If you want to complain about the gyres, then you need to take aim at ALL plastics and discuss banning them ALL. That'll basically set our technology back to the early 1900s or so.

[astrodust]

The problem is if a plastic bag ends up in the ocean it never really breaks down or degrades. Turtles tend to eat them since they look like jellyfish, and this causes enormous knock-on problems when turtles start dying from eating too much plastic.

Turtles could eat paper bags all day and probably be fine.

They may not be the #1 contributor to the Pacific Garbage Patch, but they're a component of it.

[magduf]

My point is that plastic bags from most places in America are not winding up in the ocean. They sure as hell aren't getting to the ocean from people in Kansas being sloppy with plastic bag disposal. There's a lot of problems with plastics in the oceans, and I have a hard time believing that plastic grocery bags are one of the major contributors.

But as I said somewhere else in this discussion, I think all these grocery bags should be made of the corn starch plastic that breaks down quickly, and I'd like to know what those weren't mandated since they've been around for at least 20 years now.

[astrodust]

Canada just got on with a ban on single-use plastic items (https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/government-to-ban-single-us...) which presumably includes plastic bags.

Single use non-plastic items made of other materials like corn starch would be interesting, but they're going to have to be sure to not brand them as "plastic".