Raw meat is always put into it's own plastic bag then into my reusable bag. I wash them every so often, but am pretty careful about putting stuff that could contaminate it.
When you plant ice you're going to harvest wind. - Robert Hunter
1. Some pompous blowhards in Congress will give some speeches, making sure they are televised on CSPAN
2. Set up a commission to study the issue in Congress.
3. Grant $100M to the FDA and EPA to study the problem for 2 years and recommend a law.
4. Campaign for safer grocery bags in the next election cycle..
5. Require 10 hours of mandatory training for all grocery clerks to properly bag dangerous foods.
6. Require that all check out lanes post warning signs of a proper size and font.
7. Install UV ovens in all stores to cook bags and kill germs.
8. Charge a 10% tax on all re-usable bags to fund all of the above.
9. Appoint a new grocery-bag safety Czar in the FDA administration.
10.
Did I miss anything?
In the end, it will be determined that the most environmentally friendly and health conscious product to use for grocery chains will be a brown paper sack.
It's funny how everyone looks for a single, cookie cutter solution. Every type of bag has its place. Just not stuck up in the tree outside my window because some yahoo upwind of me didn't secure his trash.
I do a mix, just because I don't want meat touching my cloth bags. I've got mesh bags for produce, but if it's really wet I'll grab a plastic bag and reuse those plastic bags for picking up dog poo, or I recycle them at the store to be used in tires or asphalt. As long as you are thoughtful and mindful of what you get and why, and what you do with it next, I have no problem with there continuing to be a plastic bag use as long as its as minimal as possible.
"Now, more than ever, the illusions of division threaten our very existence. We all know the truth: more connects us than separates us. But in times of crisis the wise build bridges, while the foolish build barriers. We must find a way to look after one another as if we were one single tribe.” -King T'Challa, Black Panther
The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it. ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is. ~Winston Churchill
I use and frequently was my reusable bags. When I get plastic bags I take them back the next time to recycle. They are flimsy and I have broken more than one glass jar when they have split. Bans are almost always stupid, but I would have no issue if a store charged me for using their bags. That would cut down on people being lazy and careless with their bags.
I use the plastic bags for kitchen trash bags, which with all our recycling tends to be just garbage. We don't have a real garden and don't want to attract skunks so we don't compost.
Oh, I did use one of the plastic bags to pick up the skunk that did show up and got taken out by my dogs. I would have loved them up for it, but they smelled awful! That was a good use of a plastic bag too. Actually two bags - I doubled up on that one.
They're thin enough that they make great skins for lightweight gliders made outta balsa wood.
"Whatever you are, be a good one." ~ Abraham Lincoln
I use cloth reusable bags on my monthly trips to the commissary. The baggers there put all of my cold/frozen stuff together 'cuz we put all of that in the cooler to drive back to the high country. I'm not real good about knowing which bags were used for meat. I don't buy a whole lot of produce. My meat is put inside smaller plastic, so any of the juices usually stay in there and don't mess up the cloth bag, though the few times that has happened, I wash the bag or bags.
I use the store plastic bags when I shop locally 'cuz my reusable bags get left in the cooler for the next trip to the front range. I take the store plastic bags back to the store and put 'em in the recycle bin.
Banning plastic bags is a problem...it isn't the plastic bags that cause the issue, it is the people that don't take care of them properly. Instead of charging a fee for plastic bags or banning them, give some kind of credit or incentive for the reusable cloth bags.
And, yes, I'd heard about people contaminating their food by re-using the dirty cloth bags a few years ago.
Did anyone actually take the time to research out this "study" on the consequences of increases in illnesses and visits to the ER due to the contamination of reusable bags to carry groceries. It turns out it this "study" was done by a couple of professors and published, not in a medical or scientific journal, but in the University of Texas Law Review. The "study" did not examine actual cases, but instead relied upon "statistical analysis" of ER visits in selected cities that have instituted disposable bag bans. The "study" failed to consider any other sources for increases in ER visits, or even compared these increases to similar cities that do not have disposable bag bans. Instead, relying solely on this skewed data, the "study" concluded that the increases in ER visits must have been solely due to the use of reusable bags.
The only documented case where someone became ill from a contaminated reusable bag was where the bag had been in the bathroom of someone with diarrhea and vomiting.
As more cities ban bags, data will start showing to backup or refute this speculation.
But common sense tells me to use the same bags for meat and produce.
The old world shopping bags were net like in design. I wonder if that cut down on transfering "bugs" and also made them easier to wash. Europe should have more data on this since they have decades of use of these bags.
Thomas Sowell: There are no solutions, just trade-offs.
