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Comment by dfxm12 | Hacker News Reader

• Bags aren't big or heavy

• What spur of the moment shopping are you talking about?

If you don't already carry a backpack or other bag, you don't have anywhere to put grocery bags. It's not like they fit in your jeans pocket.

And I do a lot (the majority?) of my grocery shopping spur of the moment. Basically when I'm on my way home and realize I have extra time and it's not so late that the grocery stores have closed. And my life is such that knowing whether I'll have time to shop that evening is entirely unpredictable.

The reusable bags in the UK certainly do fit in your pocket (when correctly folded up)

Can you please link me to something I can buy? I've never found something both small enough when folded to be pocketable and big enough when expanded to be useful.

Not recommending this specific one, just an example of the category: https://www.amazon.com/Reusable-Shopping-Eco-Friendly-Waterp...

Search term was "pocket shopping bag"

The normal bags from a UK supermarket fit just fine in my back pocket, smaller than the wallet I used to carry around

In a pocket on your bulky winter jacket? Sure.

In your jeans pocket? Not unless you want to look... well let's just say that bulging pockets on your butt, or on the front of your pant, are not a good look... not to mention not being particularly comfortable.

The problem is one more unique to being a walker in a city. You're out and about, maybe just walking to the park or something so you brought nothing with you, but the park you like is a 15 minute walk from your apartment.

Near the park there's a great bakery. You see they're having a nice sale on a box of a dozen croissants, and their croissants are the best in the city. So do you:

- Grab a couple boxes, and a reusable bag to carry them in?

- Walk 15 minutes home to get your bag, then 15 minutes back, then 15 minutes back home (45 minutes total) just so you don't pay $3 for a bag?

- Carry around a bag all the time even though you had no intention to buy anything when you left, and use it only a few times over the hundreds of time you leave your apartment?

I’m not the person you asked, but I’d do none of the above. I’d buy the boxes and carry them. They’re presumably perfectly ordinary parallelepipedical cake boxes, perfectly suited for carrying in your hands. There’s no need for a bag.

This is certainly an option (as is not buying the pastries), but it gets pretty uncomfortable over a 15 or even 10 minute walk, because you have to keep the boxes level. You can't just hold them by your side.

It's even worse if you have to e.g. jump on a crowded subway.

And now you know for next time: “there’s a great bakery near the park that I like, better come prepared”. You now have two reasons to go there. Take a disposable plastic bag (hint: they are and always were reusable) folded in your pocket.

This not a hypothetical. I learned pretty fast to always bring a mostly empty backpack with me to the park. I pack a couple of beach towels, maybe bring a jacket, and an e-reader. Sometimes I may not lay down on the grass, or not read. Or I may meet with someone and have a towel at the ready for them. But I have multiple options and none of them is a burden.

Carrying an almost empty backpack for a recreational activity takes zero effort, and it can be used to carry groceries on the way back if I want. Each of the things I carry in it is the result of a previous time where I didn’t have it. People in this thread are acting as if this is an intractable problem. It’s not. Every time you’re faced with a problem of this nature think “what could I do to avoid this next time?” then do that.

If I had to bring a backpack or purse† everywhere I don't think I'd want to live in a walkable city anymore. It makes the experience of walking substantially less pleasant.

† Or whatever the latest euphemism is for a purse carried by a man

You don’t have to bring it everywhere. I gave you a specific example of somewhere you may want to bring it, and why.

Looks like you’re not willing to endure any inconvenience, however minor, to avoid buying the plastic bag and being a bit friendlier to the environment. That’s your prerogative, but let’s not pretend these “problems” don’t have simple solutions.

My feeling is that these laws are mostly advocated for and passed by people who own and drive cars, even as they make life harder mostly for people who don't drive cars. This is despite the fact that driving a car clearly releases orders of magnitude more carbon than some disposable plastic bags.

If more people were willing to give up their cars (or accept something like a 100% extra tax on gasoline to be put towards carbon removal efforts), I would be more open to arguments to give up my plastic bags.

Put another way: I would like legislation which makes walkable, car-free living as easy and painless as possible. Disposable plastic bags make car free living more pleasant, so they shouldn't be banned unless there is a very strong case for significant and meaningful carbon savings.

I don’t drive either, so I should be inclined to agree with you. But when I’m drowning due to the effects of climate change, it won’t do me any good to turn to the person drowning next to me and tell them it’s their fault.

Yes, we should pass better laws. Yes, we don’t have them now. But when (if) we do, I’d rather have a fighting chance than it being too late because the water is already up to my neck.

Yes, except that I'm not convinced these laws reduce emissions, and I'm concerned they do the opposite. I realize the study being cited around this thread [1] was commissioned by the plastic industry and is thus suspect, but just based off of watching people in the checkout line at the grocery store, I see far too many shoppers buying "reusable" bags for me to believe they're actually being reused enough times. [2]

The inconveniences I'm describing are personal gripes, but I don't believe they only apply to me! On the contrary, I think they explain all the not-reused reusable bag sales. You can say "these people should just do X Y and Z", but unless they actually do that, plastic bag bans aren't helping the environment.

(If we're exclusively discussing my personal carbon emissions, I used to reuse every single one of my shopping bags as trash bags. Now I buy separate plastic trash bags instead, so my emissions have gone up.)

And then there's the other way they harm the environment: we need more people to give up their cars and move to cities (or form new walkable cities). If you make city life less convenient, fewer people will do that.

---

1: https://www.freedoniagroup.com/press-releases/freedonia-repo...

2: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/grocery-bag-environmental...

> If we're exclusively discussing my personal carbon emissions

No worries, we definitely aren’t.

Unfortunately I have an early flight tomorrow so won’t be able to continue the conversation. Still, thank you for the discussion. Have a nice <your time of day>.

> Disposable plastic bags make car free living more pleasant

Nonsense. I haven't owned a car for years, nor have I used anything other than a reusable bag for years. Disposable bags are awful for carrying because they tear so easily and can't be carried on your shoulder.

If I don't put something heavy in my 20L backpack I literally don't think it anymore after a minute or two. Even more so with a jacket underneath.

really?

usually when i'm walking in a city, i'll have a coat with pockets or a small bag with me, containing things like a water bottle, a snack, an extra layer, a book, maybe laptop. it's not hard to fold up a small cloth tote and carry that too.

Carry around a bag all the time

As I was saying, this is not the hassle it seems like it is being made out to be. Setting that aside, a box seems like just as good a vessel to carry as a bag, so in this specific case, I really don't understand the issue. If this place has such good pastries and you know, you can plan ahead and pay full price.

If this really is somehow life changing savings on pastries I mean, yeah, taking some extra time walking won't do any harm.

>• What spur of the moment shopping are you talking about?

"Honey, can you get eggs on your way home? We just ran out"

If not being able to carry a carton of eggs in your hands a serious concern of yours, I think there are other issues at play...

Bags are big enough that they don't fit in my pants or jacket pocket. I don't understand your second question.

Some companies offer compact reusable bags that can be stored in a coat pocket. For example:

https://seatosummit.com/products/ultra-sil-day-pack - I've had a few different versions of this bag for years. There are also cheaper/bigger/different versions of the same sort of thing you can find online for "packable daypack".

https://nanobag.com/products/nanobag - I have heard good things about these, but I prefer a backpack because it allows me to be hands-free, or to use my hands to hold more items.

However, I would start by carrying a lightweight "single-use" plastic bag, and simply re-use it. Plastic bags are not as strong as these premium bags, but they hold up well enough to be useful in most scenarios.

Thank you, these look amazing, I'm going to get one! They don't entirely solve my problem because they don't get large enough (for the smaller sizes, the larger sizes are too large when folded) but they'll be useful to have.

Reusable bags are big and heavy to carry around everywhere. Ironically the old disposable bags are much better for this reuse scenario.

There are reusable net bags that are very compact.

They aren't heavy, but they are big/bulky. You can't just stuff them in a pocket. Ironically, the "bad" plastic bags (thicker and bigger than standard US grocery bags, but still a single layer of soft plastic film) could be folded into a pocket, while the new "reusable" ones can't, making it harder to actually reuse them.

> What spur of the moment shopping are you talking about?

Groceries. It's common around here to shop often but in small quantities, because the grocery store is likely somewhere on the footpath from work to home, from work to public transit, or from public transit to home.

Which means you're either carrying the bulky bag with you all day, or using single-use bags. Or, of course, you could buy a car to follow the "stop whining just throw a few in your trunk" suggestions always posted /s

This is incorrect. There are reusable bags that fold into pocket sized. Ikea has them, among other brands. Now that you know, I'm sure you'll reevaluate your outlook on them, right?

Additionally, if you're coming back from work, you probably already have a bag to carry stuff you need for work that you can use to carry a "spur of the moment" amount of groceries or other bags. However, this sounds more like a regular occurrence you are neglecting to prepare for rather than a spur of the moment thing.

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