[GuestFAUniverse]

Brown paper, from recycled fibers are often contaminated with mineral oil residue (e.g. from ink on paper) and other unhealthy chemicals, sadly.

There was a report in Germany, years ago, of a range of organic products that failed during testing. They discovered the packaging (recycled paper) was the issue, not the crops and the supply chain before packaging.

So, a _really_ biodegradable cellulose bag is desirable. Even if only to use it I side a brown bag (to stabilise it).

[jajko]

Road to hell is paved with good intentions... I wonder how many here even notice the most important comment here from you and just keep repeating how plastic bags are worse.

Yes they are terrible, but we shouldn't just blindly replace them with anything and call it a day but do the (continuous) investigation for best solution, poisons are these days everywhere.

[loopdoend]

Wouldn't the best solution be ensuring they all end up in an appropriate landfill rather than a river?

It seems people are so against landfills that they're happy to sort their plastic and sent it on an epic journey of fraud where it ends up in a river in India. Meanwhile it could have been buried with their other trash and appropriately managed.

[JTbane]

IMO most plastics should be incinerated. This reduces the amount of waste that needs to be landfilled immensely and generates electricity as a bonus.

[jraph]

> happy to sort their plastic and sent it on an epic journey of fraud where it ends up in a river in India

It's not like they like this outcome or are even aware of it. We can't blame the individuals who want to do things properly here.

The correct solution to "broken recycling chain" is not "let's not recycle", it's "let's fix the recycling chain".

The issue with non-reusable / non-recyclable stuff is that we have a limited amount of it and is also environmentally expensive.

Even recycling is not ideal. There's waste, and it costs energy. It's in the end not so sustainable.

The best solution to me is reusable bags and containers (washable, and possibly refundable / returnable) whenever possible.

[ethbr1]

The issue with recycling, as-practiced, is that there's no lifecycle accounting (in many countries, including most of the US).

If we boosted plastic price at point of sale by a recoverable amount, claimable when returning the container for recycling, we'd get higher participation.

Separately, we should also apply the same to the post-return lifecycle: company pays a premium for the material flow, then it rebated that premium upon proof of recycling.

[jraph]

Yes, and same for reusable containers / bags.

[permo-w]

if energy is a problem then surely we'd just build global recycling plants at geothermal hotspots? it's not like shipping is a problem. the sense I get is that the main bottleneck with recycling isn't energy, but labour. handling and sorting rubbish properly is tedious and unpleasant and the west doesn't want to spend the money that its workers would expect for it

tangentially--and I'm aware this sounds incredibly stupid, and I'm sure it is--but on the topic of geothermal hotspots, what is the downside of finding some lava/magma source deep, deep underground and just dumping rubbish in there? surely most of the fumes would just be absorbed before they reach the surface? is it just too expensive of an idea/has it been done/is it likely to have undesirable long term side-effects/do we simply not have safe access to such things

[potato3732842]

>It seems people are so against landfills that they're happy to sort their plastic and sent it on an epic journey of fraud where it ends up in a river in India

See prior comment about road to hell being paved with good intentions.

[DownGoat]

You have the same problem with plastic. Recycled plastic may not be food safe, and have contamination from whatever it was used for before recycling.

[lupusreal]

About a year or so ago, somebody in the chain of suppliers of plastic PET bottles for seltzer water, used by several different brands, switched to a recycled plastic with a distinct dark tint to it. Immediately obvious because the product, water, is obviously clear.

My family returned six cases of 15 bottles each to Costco, then found that the other brands at local stores were the same way. A couple of months later the bottles went back to normal. I still wonder if they switched back due to customer rejection of the new plastic, or if they found the new plastic was in some way leeching contaminants.

[nandomrumber]

New plastic doesn’t have that problem and is incredibly cheap.

Take price as a proxy for resource / energy input and see that new plastic is also incredibly lite on inputs.

New plastic may have some off-gassing / contact contamination concerns though.

Last time I checked, energetically we’re better off using plastic over paper or recycled plastic, and burying the waste… if we could do that reliably, which we don’t seem to be able to.

[mapt]

There are several separate problems here.

One is "People don't like bags stuck in the branches of trees and clogging waterways in their parks". Lightweight plastic shopping bags are so thin that a light breeze can pick them up and loft them up into the air easily. They cost approximately nothing - <2 cents retail, significantly less in bulk. It is incredibly expensive by comparison to pay someone to remove them from tree branches and riparian zones - tens of dollars in wages, equipment, and liability insurance. This is a pragmatic reason why municipalities passed bag taxes or bans. Forcing people to use paper or heavier-weight plastic bags that don't blow in the wind, even if they're not in practice "reusable", solves this one. Taxing them 5 cents or 10 cents or 25 cents per bag nudges a high percentage away.

[mcv]

You don't have to make the bags our of recycled paper. You can make them out of new, unbleached paper. Still much better than plastic.

[potato3732842]

>road to hell is paved with good intentions

At some point there are so many bricks in the road, it's direction is so clear, that the intentions are not longer good. At best they are ignorant, but too often they are self serving malice sailing under the flag of ignorance.