Unintended result of San Jose's plastic bag ban

[KamaAina]

I have just been informed that the small food pantry we run in our office has run out of plastic bags. I suppose we shall have to smuggle some in from Santa Clara or Sunnyvale.

But what if the ban goes statewide? Are people really going to bring their ten-cent (and it's going up to twenty-five!) paper bags in for the food pantry?

[gopiscrap]

1. Yeah there should be an exemption for food banks

[Jackpine Radical]

2. Off the top of my head--

1) Ask donors to bring in re-usable cloth bags (or donate money to buy them) & give them out with the food, telling recipients about the problem & asking them to re-use the bags.

2) Ask people in the community to donate their used paper bags. Set up a handy collection point--maybe a local grocery store

3) Put up donation jars in groc stores & elsewhere to collect $$ for cloth bags--maybe ask the groc stores themselves for a reduced price on cloth bags.

[Vincardog]

3. Use donated boxes.

[dorkzilla]

4. This is all I can think of....

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...I know that wasn't terribly helpful...but it's funny!

[dipsydoodle]

5. Might be a good time to learn how to juggle.

[Warpy]

6. I think you'll see them showing up with cardboard boxes

and you'd do well to recycle any boxes you unpack as alternatives to bags.

It works at Costco. They don't have any bags at all, paper or plastic.

Also put out a call for string bags. They're cheapest and can be brought into the food bank in a pocket. Donors would probably be happy to help once they thought about your bagless situation.

[KT2000]

7. Costco has tons of boxes

If you have one in your area, you could make a weekly run. They have lots of small ones too.

[KamaAina]

10. We generally get Costco pizza

for our all too infrequent office pizza parties. Thanks!

[NightWatcher]

8. You think that's bad, what about cat/dog crap

When we scoop the cat box we use the plastic shopping bags. We do the same when walking the dog and we have to pick it up.

[Hekate]

13. I hope the plastic bag ban never extends to the small bags intended for that use....

Those and the tall kitchen trash bags!

When I was a kid in the San Fernando Valley post WWII there were several immutable features of home trash: the backyard incinerator and the maggots in the stinky garbage cans in the side yard. Both of those have disappeared and good riddance to them.

[petronius]

14. If they ever ban the small plastic bags from the grocery store produce section, then my cat is

going to be in a lot of trouble. We may finally have to toilet-train her...

I have to confess, I get a little greedy with those produce bags when our supply runs low: "Hmm, does a cantaloupe need a bag? Why, yes - yes it does!"

[JDPriestly]

9. Before plastic, we used paper bags.

The butcher wrapped the meat in brown paper.

Paper bags do not kill ocean life. They disintegrate and become the soil.

While I'm at it, I bought a sort of macramed or crocheted looking net bag in the 1970s when I lived in Europe. I still have it. I still used it. Instead of making the bags that are not really reusable, we should encourage people to make these net bags and then reuse them and throw them away through some means that allows them to be recycled.

[Hekate]

11. Ask donors to bring in their paper grocery bags--I've always got a ton of them around from TJ's

I'll be taking them over to the Planned Parenthood annual book sale later on this weekend, but mostly they just accumulate because I can't bring myself to throw them away after a single use, and I never remember to bring them back to the store to reuse.

I'd be only too happy to have a plastic grocery bag ban for the state.

[KamaAina]

12. The bag nazis here charge ten cents per paper bag.

And it's going up to a quarter next year. So, most San Joseans, including this one, have gone over to cloth.