Reading material: About Paper Cups

[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.

[OakLeaf]

FWIW, rather than having a real compost pile last year, I was just throwing my kitchen waste in an unused spot in the garden patch. (Grass clippings and autumn leaves went in a separate pile to use as mulch.) I tilled in a couple of those corn oil-based salad bar containers, and haven't seen any scraps of plastic this year. Maybe it's just broken up into very small pieces and not actually biodegraded yet, but as long as they're nontoxic, I don't suppose it much matters.

Cornstarch packing peanuts are water soluble. I have plenty of the EPS ones to reuse (plus I didn't want to leave any potential mouse food around the house), so I just threw the starch peanuts on the pile and they soaked into the ground with the first rain.

[jesvetmed]

Oakleaf: That is great to know! We rent this place so no current compost / mulch piling going on. But when we get the new house... (she says dreamily).

[Blueberry]

I haven't searched all over...but is there a concensus on a good hot beverage mug that fits into a standard water bottle cage? I know about the Nissan hiker mug, but that has a straw (which I don't think I want with hot stuff). Other ideas??

I've been looking envoiusly at some of the lunch kits on the reusable bag sites. Bento kits and the like. Very cool - more veggies would probably be consumed Might be worth it

CA

[sgtiger]

CA_in_NC - Nissan Thermos Backpack vacuum bottle model JMV-500 will fit in a water bottle cage. Mine fitted a bit loosely so I was experiencing some rattling. I picked up a Topeak adjustable cage to fix that, but someone(Eden?) else mentioned on another thread that she just bent her cage.

Here are a couple of places online that carry it:
http://sweetmarias.com/prod.travelmugs-bottles.shtml
http://www.amazon.com/Thermos-STAINL...875191&sr=8-11

I think I saw some at the local Target, too.