I'm curious how people with pets feel about plastic bag bans and what alternatives they are finding. I don't want to argue about what is best for the environment, I'm looking for real solutions for pet owners. Please be thoughtful when sharing.
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I reuse grocery bags for cleaning and disposal of my kitties business. When the bags are no longer available, I'll need something else to clean up. I know lots of people who use them to pick up after their puppies when out walking. The way I see it, this is just a way to force people to BUY bags for this purpose or get rid of their pets. Animals don't stop going just because there are no more free bags. What are others doing or planning to do?
I don’t see them as a single use plastic bag, because I can use them for things like picking dog, cat poop. But when grocery shopping, I would much rather use paper or my own.
I'm that middle aged lady that has an entire cupboard full of plastic bags. There's so many things you can do with them! Besides reusing them for all the small garbage cans around my house and litterbox scooping (I have a lidded pail I scoop into, then tie off and toss when full) I also make it into "plarn" - plastic yarn. It's pretty easy, and then you can use it to crochet reusable tote bags (or many other things!) Or look up online, you can donate the plarn to people who make it into plastic mats to distribute to homeless. It helps create a waterproof, insulating layer to sleep on. (There's plenty of how-to videos about how to turn bags into plarn. It's very easy and you can still recycle the leftover bits and torn bags.)
I think the issue is the excessive use of it. Not everyone is reusing plastic shopping bags, so when only the people who need them are buying them, there's a lot less of that excess out there. And even outside reusing, single-use plastic is a really good way of keeping things sterile and knowing when they aren't, like in the medical field. So they have good uses, and there are ways to recycle them, but the vast amount that they're used in right now is unnecessarily excessive.
It's a shame that people don't return them to the store for recycling if they don't reuse them. I think all of our grocers have collection bins. I'd like to see bag holders around town, maybe on telephone poles. You can use one if you forget when taking puppy out or if you have some you don't need, you can stuff them in the holder for the next person.
I live in the Midwest so we got a p big yard and there was a supb (single use plastic bag) in a really tall tree for like 8 years 🤔
There are many uses, and none of them should be in shopping. Really minimal reasons not to get a few reusable bags. Although I can see that people use them for other purposes, they souls be something you have to try to get. Also please recycle them as much as possible.
