Why don’t you bring plastic bags from home? They are very much reusable, you don’t have to throw them out. They are also quite easy to fold into small shapes and keep on you, or your car, or whatever. I have plastic bags which have endured for literal years. I also decided early on that if I forget to bring a bag, I either do without or have to go back to get one. You start remembering really fast after a few times of forcing yourself to go back.
Another thing you can do is just take a cardboard box from some product in the store. This may depend on country, but where I live the shops leave products on their transport boxes on the shelves. Walking around the store I can usually find one empty box, or maybe one almost empty that I can move the products from into another box for the same product next to it. Then I just take the box and use it to transport my groceries. Stores just throw those boxes out anyway, so they don’t care if you take them (I have asked). At this point it’s a bit of a game for me, to guarantee I always find a box. I have a personal rule never do anything that would make the lives of the workers harder in the process.
I have a cupboard full of bags at home I can reuse. It's right next to my door. Really easy to get to.
75% of the time I forget to take a bag to my car.
As well as all the single use bags (paper and plastic) I bought, I also have jute bags that I got years ago and are still holding up. I like them better as they are bigger and stronger.
Even if I managed to get a bag, the other 75% of the time I forget to take it into the shop and leave it in my car.
Even if I manage all of that, 25% of the time I will end up not having enough bags.
What I would like to see is some kind of deposit system with stronger bags (like my jute bags). Then when I actually remember I can bring them back to the store for someone else to use.
The trick is to always have them where you will need them. I always have one or two in my backpack, in my car, in my luggage when I travel... Their size and weight is almost nothing and the only effort is putting them back after use. Which is where it occasionally fails, sure.
The trick is to not bother, just make sure your bag ends recycled not in the street or in the ocean.
If you recycle then it's probably just going to a street or ocean somewhere else. Plastic recycling is more or less made up.
They could go into a furnace to get turned into heat, electricity and CO2.
In theory yes, in practice they will be "exported" to a thrid world country with limited processing capabilities and directly dumped into the ocean.
If you use single stream recycling for this, then this is actively bad. Plastic bags clog the sorting machines, and then get thrown out because (even if labeled) they are usually contaminated.
Reuse is significantly more effective than recycling. Bothering is something we should indeed do. Though yes, disposing of bags properly is also much superior to just throwing them on the floor.
Plastic bags are made of polypropylene, and are garbage.
Plastic for the most part is basically garbage, there are so many types that it’s hard to recycle it. PET and HDPE can be recycled fairly easily if they’re sorted, the rest aren’t really worth it (polypropylene, low density polyethylene, PVC).
The only thing that is almost always economically worth recycling is metal, which is separated from the paper/glass/plastic if you have single stream recycling. Plastic should be burned in a cement kiln or buried in a modern landfill, unless it’s well sorted HDPE or PET.
Would it make sense to keep those bags in your car? Or in some of your pockets even ?
> 75% of the time I forget to take a bag to my car.
Then take a bunch in the other 25%. You can just leave them in the car.
Grab a bundle right now, or whenever you’re at home and remember, and put them next to your keys, your wallet, or hang them on the handle of your door.
> I like them better as they are bigger and stronger.
Sure, use whatever you like. Just don’t let perfect be in the way of good.
> Even if I managed to get a bag, the other 75% of the time I forget to take it into the shop and leave it in my car.
Then go back to your car! It will be mildly annoying the first two times, and the third time it won’t happen. I mentioned exactly that in my comment.
> Even if I manage all of that, 25% of the time I will end up not having enough bags.
Then start bringing more. This isn’t hard. Leave the extras in your car.
Or just use the cardboard box approach I mentioned.
None of your mentioned obstacles is insurmountable. On the contrary, they are all exceedingly trivial to overcome with the tiniest amount of will to do so.
> 75% of the time I forget to take a bag to my car.
I put our reusable ones on the floor in the entrance to the garage and then that reminds me to put them back in the trunk whenever I go to the car for whatever reason. Then I always have them while out.
I've sometimes left them in the car but just excuse myself at the checkout and go fetch them while the groceries are being rung up.
We use a collapsible (plastic) shopping basket/tub-with-handles for wet produce, the stuff the grocery store insists on spraying periodically, and things like tomatoes where we don't care if they get wet. The store clerks are used to it now and prefer it because they don't have to scan through bags and just put the produce back in the basket afterwards.
If you go this route, keep onions and garlic separate. They last longer if they stay dry.
This. HDPE lasts. So reuse it.
Cardboard not so much, but where I live one can just take how many boxes one can haul off various shops and they will just thank you.
You can bring your own, non-plastic bags. I do wonder if maybe some cultures just don't have this and so the deprecation of plastic bags has left everyone quite confused.
It's a very solved problem, has been for centuries probably. You can even get some with little wheels! If you absolutely can't handle the looseness of the fruits amongst your shopping, you could use string nets.
> You can bring your own, non-plastic bags.
For sure. But reusing the plastic bag you already have is cheaper and more environmentally friendly than buying a new cloth bag, yet many people never even think of using the same plastic bag twice. Even if some food juice spills inside, you can quickly rinse it off, hang it, and it’s good as new.
In my original reply I was trying to convey that you can be the laziest, most forgetful person, and still have an easy solution.
Reusable shopping bags have been a thing for a long time, but I think for many, they never went back to them after stores banned them as a Covid mitigation.
Oh interesting, I don't think we had that ban where I live. We had many, many restrictions, but not that one.
We farm trees for paper anyway.
Because I forget them at home most of the time on the way to something else.
Again, force yourself to go back or do without whenever you forget, and you’re going to start remembering really fast.
Additionally, don’t just take them when you know you’ll need them, do it before. Next time you need to leave your house to go somewhere, grab some and put them in your car. Done. Go put some right now next to your wallet or keys or literally on the handle of your house’s door.
Or just use the cardboard box approach I mentioned. You can’t forget to bring what’s already inside the store.