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this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2023
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Hey remember when they gave you free bags, bagged it for you, and rang you up? That was kinda nice. Now the price is three times as high and all that service stuff is gone. The day before Thanksgiving is going to be hell this year at my supermarket
Those free plastic bags deteriorate into toxic materials that are presently all over the inside of your body. You had to wait in a slow line for people to bag the wrong things together and sometimes scan the same thing twice. Now I have my own canvas bags that last forever, I never scan my things twice, and my shit is bagged with the right things together based on where they go in my home.
The irony is that the plastic bags became the norm over the paper bags because they were thought to be more environmentally friendly, over the infinitely recyclable paper that literally grows on trees.
The manufacture of plastic bags produces much less carbon emissions than paper bags. Consider the costs of logging, transportation of wood, the manufacture process which uses a ton of water, the transportation of paper which is heavier than plastic which means higher fuel costs, etc. And also consider that most trees we cut down from paper come directly from farms which often require irrigation or items like fertilizer (which have carbon costs). Although not every tree farm uses that, some are more "natural growth"
Plastic bags tend to be more durable and re-usable than paper bags. Unfortunately most people don't re-use either.
Of course, the main issue is the fact that they take hundreds of years to decompose and end up everywhere. Also, plastics come directly from petrochemicals which are a finite resource. There are ways to create plastic from renewable oils, although that raises the carbon emissions significantly.
I think this is an excellent example to give people to illustrate that a lot of times, the choices we make as a society about simple things can be counter-intuitive. Often times, we're making decisions about what bad thing we want less. Do we want plastic building up in landfills and oceans, or do we want the global temperature to stop rising?
Of course, these aren't the only two options and it's not a 1 to 1 linear relationship. But it's an interesting example.
I remember when plastic bags became a thing. We were encouraged to use a plastic bag to save a tree.
Paper is not infinitely recyclable.
Wow...
Switching from single use plastic to multi-use plastic has greatly increased carbon emissions of production. You also have to reuse the new plastic bags over 100 times for them to break even, emissions wise. (https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2020/04/30/plastic-paper-cotton-bags/)
I agree with you that canvas bags are better overall, but IMO we should move back to paper. It's WAY easier to reuse paper products, gardeners love the paper bags, and they break down quickly even if they are littered somewhere. There are some tradeoffs, such as transportation costs being higher because they are thicker than single use bags, but if you compare paper to multi-use bags, it's a fairly moot point.
Also, I'd still rather someone bag my shit for me. I've had so many things broken or otherwise damaged by the cashier haphazardly tossing my stuff into the cart just so I can walk 5 foot and take 10 minutes to pack my own stuff. Personal preference, but it should be given as an option imo.
Multi use plastic bags are a moronic half measure agreed. What some places are doing is using paper for disposable bags and selling actually long term re-usable bags for a little more like a 2-5 bucks a bag mostly.
Yeah the idea that people buying a dozen polyester bags made of substantially more plastic that still gets thrown away by people on average is not great. Our fast scramble approach to solving issues is often awful like that though. Look at the waste that the turn from plastic straws caused all because of a school report about turtles.
Don't get me started on fucking paper straws...
And cats! Cats love paper bags!
And cats! Cats love paper bags!
I don't understand. You've had cashiers break your shit, and therefore you prefer they do the bagging?
Bring your own bags => cashiers toss stuff into cart and break things, because you have to bag your own stuff.
Cashiers bag stuff => less things break, because stuff is bagged then put in the cart.
Here, everything goes out on a belt where you have to bag it yourself. The cashier never touches your cart or items apart from scanning them.
Costco recently came to my country and it feels so incredibly weird to wait for someone to first unpack your stuff and for someone else to scan it, and then someone else packs it again.
I am not sure how to put it, but I almost feel humiliating in a way.
It's also pretty common in grocery stores to walk around with a handheld scanner which you dock when done so you can pay. The great thing about this is that you bag your stuff while shopping and when you pay, it's already bagged.
Yeah. Piling stuff on another belt so we can bag it ourselves is the norm here as well. I find it fascinating that I will simply pile everything into a haphazard pile on my side of the cashier, but when the cashier scans it, he/she usually piles it up into a very nice and tidy organized group.
I see, that explains the confusion.
I'm in the states, but I still kind of feel weird having them do this. That said, they're much faster at it than me and lines are always huge, so they probably prefer it this way.
What country is this if you don't mind me asking. If uncomfortable with answering , no pronlem. Also, they have hand scanners for everyone?
Yes, anyone that is a (free) store Member can use the scanners.
Note that not every store has those, only bigger grocery stores do.
Sorry, I wasn't clear. In the olden times, a bagger (or the cashier) nicely packed the stuff into bags making sure not to break shit. All the stores around me now just yeet shit back into the cart after scanning it with no regard to what it lands on or if it breaks.
My body is fine but thank you for your "sincere" concern.
I went on the fast lines, maybe you need help with this. The trick is to look for lines that are shorter not longer. Easy mistake to make.
I never had an issue with the cashier making a mistake and I have never been so freaken insane that I need to have the items in my bag in the reverse order of removal. Maybe they made so many mistakes scanning you because they were distracted by your fugly bag and advice on what order to put things in. You don't want to waste a single half second of your life putting groceries away. That could add up over an entire lifetime to a whole minute or so!
Like a lot of the crap in your body that is hurting you its not obvious until you get a health issue or cancer later and then noticeable statistically not individually EG you look at two populations and one had more folks with a much higher incidence of cancer or auto immune diseases or what have you. The fact that its not obvious doesn't make it any less real. Those free bags were closer to free cigarettes.
I used to manage cashiers and handled 10 of thousands of transactions and observed more. Like any human beings they do occasionally make mistakes. If you haven't noticed anyone EVER making a mistake ringing you up it means you don't pay attention.
I don't tell cashiers how they should bag things because that's obnoxious but I do know that I do a better job of not putting fresh things with meat or things that are liable to be squished with canned food or all the non-food items together.
If you avoid 4 minutes waiting once per week and 2 minutes putting away things over your life you will save over 300 hours. You aren't liable to be awake for much more than 100 hours a week so that is like 3 weeks of your life.
We are just lying now I see.
Could you just not follow the math. Do you not believe I was an illustrious supervisor of cashiers, or do you just not believe microplastics are bad for you?
I agree with the top level comment but this one reeks of toxicity, so unnecessary
I can’t remember the last time I let someone ring me up at Walmart. Self checkout was always faster because most of the attended registers were closed. Most of my adult life I’ve bagged myself and idk if I’d want to go back tbh. The tech is annoying to deal with though
Trust me it was nice. Value adds keep going down and prices keep going up. Keep hearing how everyone is unemployed and how CEO pay keeps rising. Biggest shareholder of Walmart has a mega yacht, maybe could have spent some of that money hiring people at the register.
Whatever, enshitification continues. Now if you excuse me I want to watch a fifteen second yt vid and will have to watch a 30 second ad first from some alt-right "news" service that hates trans people.
Ahh yes the value of getting something for free for almost 2 decades goes down the moment they actually want people to watch the ads or ask people to pay.
I can't even count the number of Epoch Times ads I have gotten telling me how the media invented trans people. I keep blocking them but they keep coming back. Do you support that ad as well? How about the Prague-U ones where a woman explains how the Southern Strategy is a myth? This morning I got one about the Turtle Twins, the author explained how slavery wasn't really all that bad.
If you are going to go on the day before, I'd recommend doing your shopping at 5:00am and be done by 06:00 am. That's when the day shift comes in. I wouldn't bring a cartful of groceries to the check stands before that time though, nite crew will be stressing out.
Notes and thanks
They even used to bring your groceries out to your car, put them in your trunk, and return the cart for you.