Manbird wrote:  

 and they leave a handsome bruise the next day.

 ScottFromWyoming wrote: 
We bought some biodegradable trash bags. The dam things started to degrade before we could get it out to the trash. It just reacted with the garbage scraps and almost fell apart as I took it out to the bin. FAIL. 

 winter wrote: 
Surprisingly few. I think people make a point of not reacting. Which is fine by me. 

 cc_rider wrote: 
They do. There is a Subaru plant somewhere that powers a substantial portion of their operations will a landfill gas fired turbine. I think GM was looking at this too, not sure where it fit with the whole restructuring though.

 winter wrote: 
Well there's a happy medium somewhere where the time and energy used to go to the store every single day is cut dramatically if you can just plan ahead and make one trip a week. Or if you go once a month (or quarter) and get a month's worth (or 3 months worth) of canned goods and other staples, and then once a week for perishables. Justine's got a semi- rule about not going to the store for just one item. Too inefficient and if you grab something else on a lark, then the cost of the trip winds up being double what the thing would have cost if you'd waited and put it in the cart with the rest of the week's stuff.
 
None of this means plastic bags are needed though. Costco has the A-No.1 best solution to getting your stuff to your car, btw. 

 Manbird wrote: 
I've seen ones like this around:

 Alexandra wrote: 


Put down the weapon. I mean your mother no harm.

 winter wrote: 

My mom probably needed two carts and an older sibling to help. She had to feed an army every. single. f-ing. day.

That is why no one is allowed to put her in a nursing home!

 ScottFromWyoming wrote: 

Well....we did bury it in soil....and it had broken down some....it was really cheap & thin (probably recycled). Not like the Wal-marks thickness.

 ScottFromWyoming wrote:  That's a point many people miss. UV rays eventually destroy practically everything, but the normal landfield procedure covers everything up.

One thing I wonder though: landfills have vents, to allow gases like methane to escape. But what is 'natural gas' but methane? Why not capture it? Yeah, the concentration/pressure is very low compared to underground sources, but since it is a good fuel AND a greenhouse gas, why not capture it?

 Alexandra wrote: 
photodegradable. In a landfill they are forever. In sunlight they break down eventually. Sort of.

 Manbird wrote: 


You must get some interesting looks carrying that around. 

 winter wrote: 
 My buddy bought me one of these, I use it all the time ...
  

 winter wrote: 
In many cases here it's an easy call - just look at the girth of the person pushing the basket and the number of cartons of Twinkies in it.

 Manbird wrote: 
Interesting. It always amazes me to see someone pushing a shopping cart stacked high with groceries - I think, "wow, they must have a really big family".

I have re-usable shopping bags for Fresh & Easy and Trader Joe's. Very handy. Plus if you only have two bags, you try to buy no more than two bags' worth of stuff. 

 oldslabsides wrote: 
The store whose name must never be spoken. 

In Ireland, they shop differently. Frequent smaller shopping as opposed to the 2 cartload family style you often see here. It was pretty easy for them to adapt to the bring your bag routine. They do have some hypermarkets like the German chain, Aldi, with loads of euro-product but even those are kind of small compared to many yankeedoodle supermarkets.  

 oldslabsides wrote: 
top down, the player is the game

 oldslabsides wrote: 


Why do they scatter their bags everywhere? Seems unprofitable.

 Manbird wrote: 
yes.  around here most of them come from valdamart.  one more reason to hate that place.

 JrzyTmata wrote: 

Okay, so I guess it's different than full-on biodegradable. The project was to show how long some things break down compared to others. But our plastic definitely started decomposing. Especially when heated.