
Michigan has banned the banning of plastic bags - quotha
https://www.fastcoexist.com/3066924/michigan-has-banned-plastic-bag-bans
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tabeth
Are there any grocery stores that give you discounts for bringing your own
bag, as opposed to banning certain types of bags? AFAIK Aldi's doesn't even
offer bags of any kind. Is there actually an argument against just putting the
crates directly in the store?

Benefits: 1\. Faster to stock items. 2\. Cheaper to stock items (because there
is no traditional stocking). 3\. More environmental efficiency, given the time
and energy required to stock items (though its debatable if this is actually
more efficient than a few stockers -- humans use pretty little energy).

Downsides: 1\. It doesn't look pretty. 2\. It may be harder to find things?
3\. Difficult to do with many brands (traditional supermarkets probably don't
receive enough of a given brand and category of specific item to just dump an
entire crate).

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ben1040
Target and Whole Foods both give you a credit for each bag you bring. I didn't
realize Target did this until googling; it's 5 cents at Target and 10 at Whole
Foods.

Incidentally, neither store gives you the discount for not using a bag at all
-- just if you substitute a reusable bag for the disposable one they otherwise
give you.

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PaulHoule
When I worked at a supermarket we were trained to use as few bags as possible
because each bag costs us 1-5 cents and our margin is tight. This was before
any legislation or regulation to do anything about bags.

~~~
stuaxo
I've seen a lot more people bringing in their own bags since the 5p charge was
brought in, in the UK.

I try to myself, but often don't remember often.

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eli_gottlieb
Pre-emption at work. Remind me of that time when these legislators supposedly
believed in local self-government?

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JoeAltmaier
Bags are pervasive. Limiting them city by city, county by county could make
trouble for a lot of people. Heck, having local sales tax is already an
enormous pain for online sales or mail-order.

~~~
gumby
> Heck, having local sales tax is already an enormous pain for online sales or
> mail-order.

Oh boo hoo. First of all, your customers need infrastructure and if they
choose to fund it from taxes that they pay that's their business.

Second of all, that "enormous pain" can be outsourced to a service that knows
the various tax regimes. You have to get it right, but you don't need to know
the details any more than you need to know how to design the computer your
e-commerce platform is running on.

~~~
Arizhel
>Oh boo hoo. First of all, your customers need infrastructure and if they
choose to fund it from taxes that they pay that's their business.

It's their business how they tax entities that are actually located within
their borders. It's not their business to tax entities that are located
outside those borders, even in other states, and merely ship into the
locality. If the locality doesn't like that, they're free to ban shipping and
the USPS, but I don't think the Federal government will take too kindly to
that.

~~~
gumby
> It's their business how they tax entities that are actually located within
> their borders. It's not their business to tax entities that are located
> outside those borders, even in other states, and merely ship into the
> locality.

They are taxing entities located within their borders: the customers pay the
tax, not the company. Sure, in theory you could require all the purchasers to
keep track of all their purchases and remit the tax at tax time. Right.

It's hardly unreasonable that the person handling the cash and who already has
to keep track of all the transactions should aggregate and manage these taxes.

I'm surprised that a CC provider hasn't offered to take care of all this for
small providers.

~~~
Arizhel
It's completely unreasonable to expect a small business located in one
locality in one state to figure out the applicable sales taxes in 10,000
different tax jurisdictions across the nation, and then send out checks to
every single different jurisdiction that his customers hail from.

Placing this burden on the merchant absolutely DOES amount to a "tax" on the
merchant. Time isn't free. And using the legal system against merchants who
refuse or who make mistakes with taxes supposedly due to some little town that
the merchant has never ever visited amounts to a violation of interstate
commerce.

If the locality can't get their citizens to remit their own taxes properly,
that's their own problem and they need to more strongly enforce their laws on
their own citizens.

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Joof
So how much plastic pollution do bags actually cause?

~~~
dingleberry
depends on who u ask

some will say that a drop of oil can polute acres of sea

or a drop of semen can fertilize a country.

but those don't actually happen in real life.

so the answer to your question can be little to very polluting (a bag requires
more than a drop of oil), depend on what you believe.

~~~
Joof
I was hoping for a more quantifiable answer like X tons of plastic compared to
total plastic pollution.

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serge2k
Wow, such small/local government.

