this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2023
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Yet more environmental performance art that doesn't have a significant impact on actual waste. I wonder when the backlash will start, potentially putting us in a worse state than where we started? I'm plenty pro-environment, but my city just forced all the restaurants to charge 15 cents for each paper bag they put food in when you go through a drive through and I can easily see something like that getting on peoples' nerves. I bought a small portable cooler to keep in the car so I don't have to pay that fee and the amount of plastic that went into it is huge, so it's already a counterproductive rule from a practical sense.
Hot take: when an F-350 idles in a Wendy's drive through for 5-10 minutes to get a burger, fries and drink all in their own container, the recyclable/compostable paper bag to hold it all together probably isn't the problem. But that's just a guess.
Then go after both problems?
Big cities in Canada should also charge inefficient vehicles operating within urban centers (downtown Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal). In other places, this is enforced by license plate registration and discourages the operation of inefficient vehicles within downtown urban areas.
My friend, I think towns and cities shouldn't have personal motor vehicles at all.
Then you don't need the take out bag at all, you just eat it in the restaurant, or bring your own bag from home, or consignment like cans and bottles.
I'm more concerned about the implementation of the 15ยข paper bag charge. It feels like green washing to me, and i think the administration of the charge will likely net very little out of the fee to put towards other projects. But that's just a feeling, there's no data supporting it.
Do retailers pay the fee when they buy the bags in bulk? Do they reimburse the municipality for each bag sold? What about spillage/bad bags? Is this fee specifically being set close enough to plastic so people return to those?
Regardless, the problem isn't actually the bag (not even the plastic ones) the problem is that they are only used once. A nominal fee is unlikely to change that. A consignment fee is more likely to change it (worked pretty well for cans and bottles).
It's a radical take that has no political legs, but if you replaced every car seat with a bus seat in a major city it would just be awesome. No traffic, and no wait times (including unnecessary stops) because that's a lot of buses. Not to mention a fraction of the emissions.
A diesel bus runs 20-30 L/100km.
A Toyota Prius runs 5 L/100km.
Average car occupancy is 1.2 people.
Break even for a single bus is like 5 Priuses. So a city that has 500,000 car commuters a day would be carbon neutral to swap them with 100,000 busses.
That's a lot of bus routes for a city of a million+ people.
Or a town of 20,000 car commuters would be served with 4,000 bus routes. Not bad for a town under 100,000 people.
Thank you for doing the math!
Indeed. And just because I was feeling snarky and annoyed about the 15 cent charge, I asked for extra napkins one time and they gave me enough extra paper napkins to easily have made a paper bag out of. The burger comes in its own cardboard box. The fries have their own cardboard box. It's such a silly and pointless thing that's clearly just being done so that they can say they're "doing something."