Reading material: About Paper Cups

[Trek420]

Coffee: my pre work cup-a-joe I bring my own cup. Knotted gave me one that's ... made from corn. Looks like a regular mug yet quite the conversation piece in the coffee line
"ooh, you brought your own cup"
"yep, they give .10 off here and it's made from corn"
" nice"

Bags: BMOB mostly cloth, I have quite the collection from Bike to Work Day. Trader Joes puts you in a drawing for a gift card (I've never won), Safeway gives you $ off etc. Besides the green thing I just find them easier to carry.

Plastic bags: If they give them, I take them, I don't quibble or jump up and down. Sometimes talk about why I bring my own with clerks, store owners etc. But if they give me plastic bags that's ok. I have to admit that on dog walks I pick up plastic bags we encounter on the ground, not if they are messy but if they are clean we pick them up. All these bags get used for mutt poop bags. We need 'em, Mae gets lots of walks.

Still it's a lot of bags. Its no trouble to drop the rest of the bags off on the way into the store at the plastic bag recycling bin we have at most stores here.

[OakLeaf]

Water isn't actually renewable, it's a cycle.

Did you know the water you are drinking this morning in your coffee could have been water that a dinosaur stood in or Lewis and Clark canoed through, or Shakespeare washed with?

V.

Ewwwwww.... Richard Nixon's pee.... I'm switching to beer.

[Veronica]

You know there is water in beer.

V.

[Jolt]

Ewwwwww.... Richard Nixon's pee.... I'm switching to beer.

LOL--as soon as I read Veronica's post that you quoted I thought "or somebody's urine..."; I guess I'm not the only one!

[jesvetmed]

I still get my groceries in plastic bags. They fit my kitchen trash can nicely and I've also started using them when I scoop the kittens' litter box. It keeps my garbage can from being so stinky.

OK.. Here's my question. I do the same and "reuse" multiple times. Starts as a grocery bag, is then used as a lunch bag, and graduates after that to kitchen garbage bag.

Is there a good alternative to garbage bags? I have tried to find ANY garbage bags that are from recycled material and just haven't seen anything.

So, if I have to buy garbage bags, haven't I made things even worse in the long run? At least the grocery bag gets three uses this way.

I've been having guilt about this for awhile (do I need a life? )

THANKS for any input!
Jes

[jesvetmed]

I lost this thread on my listing .
Wondering if anyone has a comment on their use of plastic bags / garbage bags.... See my above post. Thanks!
J

[7rider]

You know there is water in beer.

V.

Yeah, but the alcohol kills the cooties!

I generally don't get coffee at coffee shops, so the whole paper/styrofoam cup thing is lost on me. I either drink coffee at home b/f work or carry coffee from home in a vaccuum thermos that fits in my bottle cage on the bike. I have a mug at the office that I use and re-use.

Re: grocery bags. I have a fairly large selection of cloth-bag options, and sometimes, I even remember to take them to the store with me! I save all the plastic bags I've gotten for re-use. I get all itchy if I just throw them out without at least using them for some other purpose (like freezer trash or whatever). Last time I was in Trader Joe's, they didn't have any slips for the drawing for those who re-use bags. I was kind of bummed about that...not that I've ever won or anything. My local grocery stores also give you a credit of any where from $0.03 to $0.05/bag re-used.

Oh...and haven't found an option for kitchen garbage bags (the 33 gallon sized - or is it 13??). : (

[Blueberry]

How 'bout these bags: http://www.ecokitchen.com/shop/biode...tchenbags.html

I haven't tried them, but they are a corn plastic. And are biodegradable.

I definitely have biodegradable dog poop bags. Of course, if we get plastic bags despite our best efforts, we also re-purpose those to poop duty.

CA

[redrhodie]

Our stores are bad about packing everything in separate bags. I often bring cloth, but sometimes like to get plastic because I also use them for garbage bags later.

Well, when one of the baggers was insisting the cans of cat food needed to be in their own bag, DBF came to the rescue with this lightening fast comment, "We're going to have that for dinner, so it's fine to bag it all together."

Oceanfish Feast. Yum.

[GLC1968]

I'm amazed how much it varies by location. In NC, I'd pull out my own bag and people would look at me like I was weird (except for at Earth Fare, but that whole place was different). And when I'd buy two things at CVS or Home Depot and say that I didn't want a bag, they were like "what, you just want to carry it?".

Here, not so much. In fact, a lot of places ask if I even want a bag which is nice because it reminds me not to mindlessly take one!

And I keep a travel mug in my car so that I don't have to get disposable cups when I stop for coffee somewhere. I haven't figured out a good way of handling soda type drinks. My coffee cup wouldn't be big enough, but I don't really own any type of cup that would be the right size.... I'll have to think about that one.

Oh, and I bought a couple of these bags and they are AWESOME! They hold a ton, are super strong, have comfy handles when heavy, and they roll up to about the size of a deck of cards, so I can leave one in my purse at all times.

http://www.envirosax.com/pages/products.php?icat=1


If you want biodegradeable garbage bags, there are lots of options here (some that are even compostable!):
http://www.earthbasics.com.au/prod10pbg1.html

[Brandi]

How about your favorite thai food place that uses styro. How do you get them to change?
I use my plastic bags for cat waste. But i try and use my clth bags as well. I put my paper bags in recycle bin. We use the paper bags for our can's. We don't use plastic bottle's anymore. We use stainless sig bottles.

[Blueberry]

How about your favorite thai food place that uses styro. How do you get them to change?

Recycle it? Are you getting takeout or taking leftovers home? If leftovers, bring your own container. Takeout is a little harder - but I've been known to let places know I think it changes the flavor of food.

CA

[mimitabby]

OK.. Here's my question. I do the same and "reuse" multiple times. Starts as a grocery bag, is then used as a lunch bag, and graduates after that to kitchen garbage bag.

Is there a good alternative to garbage bags? I have tried to find ANY garbage bags that are from recycled material and just haven't seen anything.

So, if I have to buy garbage bags, haven't I made things even worse in the long run? At least the grocery bag gets three uses this way.

I've been having guilt about this for awhile (do I need a life? )

THANKS for any input!
Jes

After years of throwing away trash in the brown paper bags that my groceries came in, my husband bought a garbage can for inside and bought plastic bags for it. As a result, not only are we now using plastic for the trash, if we're not real careful, it STINKS HORRIBLY because unlike paper bags, it doesn't breath and gets disgusting fast.
If it was just me, I would be using whatever bags were around, and even with taking cloth bags to the store, we STILL have oodles of plastic bags around here from assorted places. I use them as well for cat litter.
When I had more brown paper bags, I doubleed them and used them for cat litter too. I use feed bags to dispose of litter, as well as the bags the litter came in.

[OakLeaf]

No reason to use bags at all for dry trash. As for wet trash, in the country, we compost. In town, between the rats and raccoons, composting really isn't an option, so we do use small garbage bags for the wet trash (and what the vacuum cleaner picks up).

Yeah, when we had dogs, we used poop bags too, no real way around that - I guess you could carry a pail and small shovel on walks and flush the results, but then you're using potable water

Once something goes into the landfill, it won't degrade regardless. I guess the corn oil based bags are ultimately less toxic - but how much petroleum did it take to grow the corn?

[jesvetmed]

I listened to an NPR conversation last week -- they talked about the "biodegradable" and "compostable" cups and bags... basically it takes specialized recycling ability to actually get the compost "hot" enough to compost the cups (which most recyclers are not yet doing), and the bags only biodgrade over long periods of time, IF exposed currectly to the environment (which the point out is unlikely in a large pile of garbage at the dump). It seems overwhelming to know the right thing to do.

One person suggested using the compostable cups to plant seedlings in (put them straight into the ground once big enough to replant the seedlings). Said he thought that in that environment it could be fairly broken down in 1-2 years, but no one had studied it.

It would be nice to find garbage bags made from a large percentage of recycled products, not just "recyclable" in their own right. I'll keep looking! In the mean time, I just try to keep the actual garbage down to a minimum and remember my bags and cups from home. THANKS for all the suggestions here. Important topic to chat about.