Friday, May 23, 2008

Plastic Bags

I hear they're trying to outlaw plastic shopping bags in California - and the rest of the nation will probably follow California. It may be all well and good for the environment, but what will we use for trash bags? And what will we haul wet swimsuits in?

They do have a lot of uses, you have to admit that. You can knit or crochet or make sturdy and pretty braided rugs by cutting strips from them and you can tie them onto your knees to keep your pants clean when you have to kneel to change a tire or pull weeds. And you can gather up things to take home or send away and you can... well, there are a lot of uses for them.

A discussion on the Dollar Stretcher forums called "Recycling Plastic Bags" spawned yet another one called "Plastic bags - continuing the discussion" has a lot more ideas.

So what are we going to substitute if we no longer get them?

6 comments:

  1. People lived for thousands and thousands of years without plastic bags, I'm sure we can do it again! We'd better start talking to our grandparents about the dark times before plastic bags became such a prolific resource.

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  2. LOL! I'm sure you're right, Jill. We'll get by. It's funny how these things become so much a part of our lives that we can't seem to do without them. Kind of like paper towels and ATM cards... (I don't use either, though.)

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  3. I have several cloth bags I now use for shopping and even a couple of stores have gone back to paper. The landfills just have too much in them! Not everyone uses up things and now we have to pay the piper. one thing I will miss if they eliminate the plastic bags is when my meat is bleeding, and they put it in a separate bag. Sure is a lot nicer. Also I remember the paper shopping bags when I was a kid getting wet, and groceries falling out of the bottoms. Hmmmmmmmmmmmm, perhaps just cutting back, rather than completely replacing them.
    Then your crochet rugs will have to be made of salvaged fabric! LOL, I also remember my elderly neighbour buying up mens long john , but only wool ones from the thrift shop. She brought them home, washed them well, cut them in strips, and dyed the strips the colour she wanted, then she drew a pattern on burlap, and hooked her rugs. Always her own pattern and always beautiful and coulorful. Now I am the elderly neighbour, my how time changes all things, and yet the more they change the more they are the same.

    T'other Pat in Kitchener

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  4. I think I will be happy to see these plastic bags go! They are everywhere! I was driving into town the other day and a plastic bag was caught in the branch of a tree! You can re-use them in many ways, but I agree. We'll figure something out!

    Shawna

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  5. "time changes all things, and yet the more they change the more they are the same. "

    Amen! :)

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  6. My daughter and I who have waist length hair use plastic bags on our heads for "deep conditioning" our hair. We use the inexpensive $1 bottle of conditioner, slather our hair in a generous amount, massage in and plop a plastic bag over it as a shower cap type thing to let it set about 20 minutes. Then we apply heat with a hair dryer and afterwards we comb it through and rinse the conditioner out. It is amazing how soft and silky our hair becomes using this method!

    (This is also a great method to suffocate and destroy head lice without killing your hair in the process!)

    I guess I can live without plastic bags, I guess we will have to switch to plastic bread bags or garbage bags if we have to.

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