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A 2020 law banning plastic bags in Vermont has nearly eliminated their use in the state
(www.burlingtonfreepress.com)
this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2025
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I think the "more than I thought it would be" comment was more a reflection on how low I thought it would be than on how high it is. It's still a pretty tiny fraction of the overall problem.
But, like, look. The optimal decision, and the only way to "stop accepting shit" as you put it, is for every single person to drop what they're doing and go live as a hermit in the woods, and never produce or consume another product.
That isn't realistic for the majority of people though. And while I could succumb to self-flagellation as a form of symbolic protest, I think my time and effort is spent participating in the system as it is, and donating to organizations that can make more systematic changes that might ultimately do some good.
Beating yourself (or others) up for "not doing enough" is at best a form of coping with things that are beyond your control, and at worst a form of alienating people who broadly agree with you.
And, to be clear, I didn't say I'd pay a dollar a bag for any old paper bag. I said I'd pay that much for one with handles. Big difference.
Bringing in a bag to store that I know I am going to be bringing items out of is not self-flagellation. Refusing to bring a bag into a store because I’ll just use a single use item instead is shitty behavior. It’s that simple. Minor shitty behavior? Sure. If you’re cool with that behavior, well obviously this isn’t going to change that opinion. It is a trivial behavior for you to change.
Look, it's easy to have the viewpoint that anyone who isn't doing everything you're doing to save the world is a shitty person, and anyone who does more than you is obviously just a try-hard.
Everyone, yourself included, makes "shitty" decisions for convenience sake every day. I assume you buy food from the grocery store instead of foraging through trash cans. I've had friends who did the latter, and called the rest of us shitty if we ever threw anything away.
Just because someone looks at a situation and comes out with a different "worth the effort" assessment than you, doesn't make it "shitty." That's just life man. Are you driving a car instead of a motorcycle? Using toilet paper? Buying food from restaurants instead of eating out of trash cans? These are all decisions you could trivially change in your life today to make the world a little greener. So why aren't you?
But, really, I think our actual disconnect here is that I've not articulated my position well enough. I'm talking paper bags with handles! I mean, if that's not worth a dollar, what is?
I appreciate the multiple attempts to diffuse with the bag handles, and I fully agree that we have to draw the line somewhere. My issue is that if people are unwilling to do something a simple as bringing a bag into a grocery store, then there is absolutely zero chance that we will change the more difficult but more necessary problems. How are you going to convince Bezos to reduce his footprint when you can’t even get people to stop using a straw? Who the fuck even uses straws? How am I going to convince people to buy less, when everytime they want to buy something, they buy a thing to carry they thing they want to buy? (Insert xzibit meme)
Yes, it is something as dumb as bags, and even if we did switch it may not have much of an impact. But so what? Far more important to me is the mere fact that bringing in a bag to carry items in is too much of a hurdle for people to help the planet? Doomed I say.
I think that it's a bit of a false equivalent to say that since we can't convince people to use reusable bags, we can't get Jeff Bezos to reduce his.
They're different problem sets. Industrial pollution (or pollution from people with access to industry levels of capital) is something that can be addressed with legislation. It's also something with fairly broad, populist appeal. And it's something that, if addressed might make meaningful and lasting impact.
The "people need to take personal responsibility for recycling" narrative has been largely funded by oil companies and polluting industries as a cover to avoid people realizing that those things make up such a tiny fraction of the overall problem. They work to turn people against each other so that were too busy fighting to address the much bigger environmental issues.
Also, I love straws. If I don't have one the drink gets in my moustache.
It isn’t a different problem set though, just a different flavor of the same issue: over-consumption and overexploitation. It is also something that can be addressed through legislation, as the article this discussion originated from is an article about how legislating bag bans is effective.
People do need to take responsibility. That’s the whole issue. People at the bottom do not take responsibility, they do not push for people above them to take responsibility, and they will actively curtail measures to improve things because ‘it’s the big guys we need to worry about.’ No, we all need to make efforts. And in the example of bags, I am asking you to make a trivial change to your lifestyle, that you would all but forget about once you had made the change.
Let me try to use a different example. Cigarette butts on the ground are fucking gross right? Major ecological concern as well. Nobody should be throwing cigarette butts on the ground, I think we can all agree. You throw a cigarette butt on the ground? No big deal, coal plants are worse. Same energy.
You kept at this way longer and put far more energy into it than it was probably worth. Imagine if instead of bitching about bag bans to anyone online we just, like, looked up from our phone and paid a tiny bit of attention to bringing a bag to the store. Then we wouldn't have to spend all this time justifying our lack of care.
I appreciate the examples you gave and I hope someone benefits from them. The simple fact is that the person you've been going back and forth with will not.
Haha, I’ve had years of practice failing to persuade my father in similar ways for forty years now. I know it changes nothing, but the other option is to not try. I appreciate the support.