Alt text: Meme caption: "When you forget to bring your reusable bags to the grocery store", below is an image of Dexter from Dexter's laboratory weeping as he strokes a picture of the earth, saying "I have failed you!"
this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2025
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Last I remember, a cloth bag needs to be used for a minimum of 1000 grocery trips for it to even begin to offset the environmental cost of making it.
Now, I've had mine for 5 years. So I'm making good progress.
But I do miss the plastic ones just because I always used them as garbage bags. The tax on plastic grocery bags are nuts. They cost a buck each. Unless you buy 50 of them for garbage use... then they're all of a sudden dirt cheap and so thin it feels like breathing on them will poke a hole.
So one cloth bag is equal to 1,000 plastic bags? That doesn't seem right. Certainly it can't be taken into effect that garbage created by the 1,000 plastic bags.
Taking garbage from 1000 plastic bags into account is exactly what it does.
You're underestimating just how much is needed for a cloth bag.
From growing the cotton, to processing it, to making the bag. That's a long way. There are a lot of steps involved. A lot of energy required.
Yes I understand the cotton bag will take a lot more than a plastic bag to create. I'm just doubting the Thousand to one number. But again what I'm really really doubting is that they've taken into account the effect of a thousand bags have after they're made. Which is rather the point of switching to the cotton bags in the first place. Or other types of bags by the way they don't all have to be cotton. I've never owned a cotton one. Not sure why that has to be our only example here.
Here is some info from the UN. They take into account a lot of factors beyond carbon output, including acidification of oceans and land use changes. So the 1000 uses is how many uses to be better in all categories. For carbon output, it is around 150 uses.
I guess it depends which categories are more important to you. Plastic is obviously going to be superior in agricultural run-off issues. Cloth is obviously superior in micro plastic emissions. They don't evaluate microplastics though, so it might be skewed in favour of plastic.
https://wedocs.unep.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.11822/31932/SUPB.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
There's really not that much plastic in a plastic bag.
There's more plastic in a happy meal toy than most bags.
Solution? Sewing DIY bags from old clothing.
More reusable and personal than a factory bag, and you already know how to mend it to keep it going. Uses less raw resources than a plastic bag, as it was going to the trash anyways. It's a great beginner sewing project.
Absolutely! If only people would bother to do it. If they were. We probably wouldn't be here to begin with.