Comment by DoreenMichele | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DoreenMichele | Hacker News Reader

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I left California last September. Moving someplace cheaper allowed me to get back into housing. That was all I expected to get out of it. Other than getting off the street, I didn't expect significant improvement in quality of life. I moved to a small town that did not have all the stuff I wanted. I expected to kind of put up with it in order to be able to afford housing.

But after getting here, our mantra has become "Thank god we have moved to civilization." There is no bag ban here. The library system here is better than anything I saw in California. Public transit is better. There are multiple things open 24 hours a day within a short walk from my rental.

Unemployment is high and there is a homeless problem, things I would like to try do something about. But homelessness was high all over California and I was one of the homeless there.

I really love the place I moved to and I am just jazzed to be here. At this point, I can't imagine going back to California.

The problems here look solvable to me. The problems in California look entrenched and like they can't be solved without some things changing in terms of state policies. That seems unlikely and it seems to me that even if someone can figure out how to fix it and somehow pull it off, the transition would be painful.

I really liked California for a lot of years. It saddens me to feel this way about the state.

When the plastic bags reach the ocean, they resemble jelly fish, so they look like food. Whales have been found dead with dozens of plastic bags clogging their digestive system. [1]

So coastal areas in particular are a priority to reduce the use of plastic bags. I'm disappointed California hasn't forced grocers to use biodegradable bags in the produce departments as well.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-norway-whale-idUSKBN15I2E...

I never finished my degree, but I am an environmental studies major. I began decrying the horrifying stuff we are doing to our oceans many years before that was trendy, when it just made me an opinionated nutter.

But all my free grocery bags get reused as garbage bags. There is no ban on the sale of garbage bags. If I were not getting free grocery store bags, I would be buying small garbage bags and going through about the same number of plastic bags.

We have multiple islands of floating plastic in the ocean. IIRC, one is like the size of the state of Texas. The plastics problem for our oceans is quite serious. But it is hardly limited to plastic bags.

I don't know what the solution is, but I have lived without a car for at least a decade. I am walking the walk to the best of my ability in terms of living light on the land. I think the big picture choices I have made more than make up for whatever small conveniences I find are essential to keeping my quality of life high.

> But all my free grocery bags get reused as garbage bags. There is no ban on the sale of garbage bags. If I were not getting free grocery store bags, I would be buying small garbage bags and going through about the same number of plastic bags.

You don't even need grocery store bags to use as garbage bags. I've found that composting and recycling allow me to get away with using the produce plastic bags for my remaining trash. I don't even bag all of my produce, just stuff that could be damaged easily or hard to gather together, like green beans or small peppers.

[There is no bag ban here]

Seriously? Single-Use Carryout Bag Ban a concern for you?

I agree and think that these sorts of laws create hassle without much benefit. There are probably a hundred more impactful things that could make a measurable impact in the earth without pushing cost and hassle on people dealing with enough of both.

In my county, (not in California) a former fat guy turned crossfitter on the legislature pushed bans on all sorts of stuff, including transfat. Counties only control regulation for food places less than 20,000 square feet, so mr. healthy food put every bakery in county out of business (literally) and left us with factory manufactured crap in supermarkets, etc.

The point is, flashy nonsense doesn’t help when you have real problems.

Yup.

http://michelerebooted.blogspot.com/2017/10/the-lawful-awful...

I have two objections to this post:

1. No numbers provided, in terms of actual impacts on poor people. Just a vague angry waving of fists and calling drafters of bag bans "assholes".

2. Carbon footprint isn't the only thing that's cut down with bag bans. Plastic waste itself is a massive problem - plastic is forever and it's getting everywhere, including our water. In my home city of Mumbai, India, plastic bags choke up drains and sewers, and contribute to monsoon flooding every year - and it's definitely not the rich that suffer most when the city floods. Reducing the amount of plastic that's produced might even be worth a slight increase in carbon emissions in the long run. That is if we can find emissions savings elsewhere, which luckily, we can by cutting out the McMansions and SUVs mentioned in the post.

In mostly poor communities, I'd support even free paper bags along with a plastic bag ban. In richer communities, yeah a plastic bag ban + non-free paper bags can be construed as "anti-poor" but virtually everything else in those communities already is anti-poor anyway (minimum plot size zoning, walkability, public transit availability etc).

It just makes my blood boil to see the way groceries are bagged in communities with no bag bans - it feels like they use a new bag per item.

> The people who are hurt by this are people who walk to the store, bike to the store or take public transit. These people now need to buy a backpack or something to carry their stuff.

I don't understand this part. When they leave the store after shopping, they will be carrying full bags, so they have to have some way of carrying full bags when they walk, bike, or take public transit home from the store.

An empty bag is a lot easier to carry than a full bag, so why wouldn't whatever method they use to carry full bags away from the store work for carrying empty bags to the store?

I was homeless in California at the time the bag ban became law. I did buy a $3 backpack for shopping. In fact, I bought a series of them because I have a serious medical condition and cleanliness is a big issue in my life.

If you are in a car, tossing a bag in the trunk or back seat is no big deal. In fact, you can just leave one there by default. But if you are walking, biking or taking transit, you need to remember to take it, you have to carry it and keep track of it. It requires more organization, more mental energy, and more physical energy. You don't have to plan ahead, keep track of things, etc if there will be free bags provided at the time if purchase. This also means that spontaneous purchases are problematic for those without a car in a way they are not for those with a car.

Even if you aren't homeless and don't have the cleanliness concerns I have, it is sort of a death by a thousand paper cuts for people who are typically already poor, overburdened and struggling to cope.

There is also this theory that it's caused a Hepatis outbreak: http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/hepatitis-crisis/sd...

People who are homeless would often use plastic bags as a bathroom, and then throw it in the trash. No more plastic bags, so they can't do that...

Not sure what real evidence there is for it, but I always love an unintended consequences story.

I'm not so sure that's a cautionary tale about unintended consequences as much as an illustration of the lack of public toilets. Do we really want people doing their business in plastic bags?

I'm a proponent of the idea that the bag ban is a contributing factor to the hepatitis epidemic. I don't think it is the only factor. The epidemic also started about the same time the multi year California drought broke. That was an especially wet winter, with deadly storms and flooding. I think the heavy rains likely also contributed to the epidemic.

There are probably other factors as well. I believe homelessness has been on the rise in Southern California. Concentration of poverty tends to go bad places healthwise.

Where did you move to? I do agree that many of the problems in California will not be easily solved.

I'm in Southwest Coastal Washington.

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