I went to Walmart and they do heavy duty recycled bags and say use them 140 times and then if they are clean bring them back to the store to recycle. It made me wonder about the grocery choices and why....Dave's has the regular plastic single-use bags and Giant Eagle doesn't have any plastic bags.
Oh that reminds me... got this "reusable” plastic bag from Dollar General... one of my mom-friends said "wow -- Dollar General has really strong bags!" (they are... really thick!) [photo deleted]
How many mils is that bag?
2.25
Would be very nice if all packaging products had that kind of description at the bottom [photo of bag showed printing on it that told name of supplier, thickness of bag, recycled content, reusability test standard, and more]
That'd take away so much of the magic, though.
Seriously... The "reusable" t-shirt style bags are doing that now because they have to... to differentiate them from the ones that are classified as single use... since single-use options aren't allowed in some places
The question is will consumer behavior change and will those be reused or will they be put in the trash or in the environment like the cheaper bags? Meaning we are actually increasing the amount of plastic waste.
Hmmm… “carrying 22 lbs over 175 feet?”
That is the standard... a test for strength and how bags qualify as reusable rather than single use
I'm inclined to think upscale department stores see some value in providing fancy bags to customers to convey the prestige shopping experience or something. Dollar General is probably not looking for the same deal with its bags, so I'm guessing they're using them where they have to.
Here's another one [photo deleted]... CVS's paper bags are coming from Germany
Does importing paper bags from Germany make much sense? It's not like there aren't bags made from reclaimed fiber in North America.
Still a supply issue right now... I remember hearing from companies in 20/21 that it was hard to get paper shopping bags and everywhere they tried to pass a single use plastic bag ban, retailers complain that alternatives are hard to get in sufficient amounts reliably.
Yeah, but have paper companies just sat there in the 3-4 years since?
Of course they haven't but they are also having issue with raw material supplies to make paper AND paper is seeing strong demand everywhere, not just in retail bags.
Apparently box making isn't what it used to be... pivot to bags and mailers!
Plus at that time there were limited producers of the necessary machinery to expand production. Still looking into seeing if that issue has been resolved… limited packaging equipment production capacity is often an issue that slows packaging pivots and innovations.