Unintentional consequences

[owlmoose]

Some time ago, the city of San Francisco outlawed the use of plastic grocery bags. I remember hearing about this at the time, and Whole Foods made the switch awhile ago, but it still came as a surprise when we walked into Safeway last week and the only bags in sight were paper.

It's not so much the carrying groceries in paper bags rather than plastic -- I'm pretty neutral on that, although the Safeway paper bags aren't great; the handles are pretty flimsy. But I use plastic bags for other things, and I know I'm not the only one: we use them to line garbage cans, when traveling, to clean the litterbox. That last thing I'm particularly concerned about. We can use paper bags in most of the other garbage applications, but how am I going to clean the litterbox every day without a plastic grocery bag? The only thing I can think of right now is to buy more plastic bags. Somehow, I don't think that's what the environmental groups who supported this law had in mind.

Well, I'm sure I'll think of something. The results aren't all bad. We went back to Safeway today, and they're giving out a free cloth bag with every $25 purchase. It's pretty flimsy as cloth bags go, but it's still more reusable than paper. So that's a win. I wish Whole Foods would do that, too -- their bags are a lot more substantial.

Comments

[anzubird.livejournal.com]

I use flushable kitty litter, which makes the whole plastic bag question moot... and is much easier to clean up. And it's not really all that much more expensive than the regular little, you may just have to give your cats a couple of weeks to get used to the new stuff. At this point my cats are fine with pretty much any of the natural flushable options and i use them interchangeable (though of course I have favorites :) )

[owlmoose.livejournal.com]

We can't use flushable litter here -- a parasite that's common to cats and doesn't hurt them gets into the ocean and makes sea otters sick. They're actually trying to make flushable litter illegal in CA for just that reason, although so far they've only gotten warning labels.

Otherwise it would be tempting! But I can't do anything against the interest of sea otters.