I see plastic bags on the beach. I walk along the creeks nearby, and I see plastic bags and plastic garbage. I go for a hike in the sierras, and I find plastic garbage.

I bike along the roads in town, and I see plastic bags in the gutter. I look down the incline beside the road and there are plastic bags in the trees.

Is the USA as bad as Morocco? No. Is plastic waste a problem? Yes.

Littering/dumping is a much different issue than disposing of your waste through the wrong channel. The problem you are describing isn't because people use the garbage instead of the recycling.

If we only had paper bags and such, littering wouldn't be a problem. Single use plastics of any kind need to be banned universally. Pseudo multiple use plastic such as bags needs to be taxed like alcohol and tobacco, through the roof, until alternatives become economically viable.

How much does a plastic bag cost where you are? Here in Sweden there's a tax on it and a single bag can cost 7 SEK (USD 0.85).

It's still too low.

A plastic bag can be quite sturdy, it can be transparent so you can easily see what's inside, it's light, it folds well, is resistant to humidity, etc.

If you'd give a plastic bag to someone from the 18th century they'd cherish it.

We need to make it so the average person actually cares about buying a bag.

Something like €2 with a return value of €1. Or anything that makes you treat it like you'd treat, say, a good tennis ball. You wouldn't just throw those away willy-nilly.

And we need to ban the low grade ones completely.

>If you'd give a plastic bag to someone from the 18th century they'd cherish it.

Something very similar is happening in north korea.

http://koreabizwire.com/bottled-water-a-symbol-of-wealth-in-...

Yes well here in Spain bags are almost automatically handed out. And the cashier is personally offended if you say you don't need the bag.

We would also have torn handles, pants-staining leaks, groceries spilled across the parking lot, double and triple bagging, and so on. In fact we already have all of these problems thanks to the ham-fisted paper bag laws.

I would be more amenable to the idea if they made a bag that does not get torn (e.g. armor the paper with cotton or bamboo thread), and is leak-resistant (e.g. waxed), but that somehow takes the back seat.

Well, to your paragraph: oh, the humanity! Will someone think of petty conveniences?!?

You do know that we're creating country sized plastic patches in the middle of the Pacific, microplastics are everywhere and we're eating them, they're slowly changing us in ways we don't even understand, etc, etc?

The amount of plastic bags strewn across the environment in Morocco has drastically declined since new laws against them. There is still progress to be made, but the result has made me a supporter of plastic bag bans.

Multiply that by 100 truckloads per bag, and you have what goes into the dump. This blow-away trash is unsightly, but addressing it first is kind of the definition of virtue signaling. We end up at "If I don't see the problem, I can pretend it doesn't exist"?

Where do you live? In the Pacific Northwest I see nothing of the sort, the only nuisance is aluminum beer cans.

Plastic has found its way into water everywhere on Earth [1] and they don't degrade for centuries. Instead of making people recycle, why not tax the externalities upstream and nudge corporations into using biodegradeable materials?

[1] https://qz.com/1299485/antarcticas-waters-now-contain-plasti...

I always struggle with these answers because while the upstream taxing does seem like the “perfect” answer in a model, it has a spotty track record and future. When prices are artificially inflated, and politicians get elected by decreasing drag on your quality of life, a variety of reasonings get used to evade responsible costing as much as possible and to repurpose the proceeds for the initiative of the month. Hence why this nation is 27 trillion dollars in debt. It’s all to sustain an unsustainable way of life. Living off the principle, or indeed future debt, is so imperative to our lifestyle today (and our glide path to retirement and death) that it’s hard to make such burden sharing plans with a straight face. No American generation wants to be the first one to take it on the nose, especially when one of this country’s raisons d'être is to ensure our kids live better than their parents. This country (at least) needs a serious come-to-Jesus moment about consumerism and realistic expectations for sustainability. And yeah, I’m the guy telling you to cut down your drinking while holding a bottle of JD in hand.

You’re making some big assumptions: not intentionally dumping into the ocean doesn’t mean that they don’t end up there, and there are other places than the ocean of concern. Where I live in the DC area, plastic bags were about a third of the trash found in rivers, storm drains, etc. and in addition to impact on animals that caused problems for all kinds water processing facilities due to clogs. After a bag tax was passed, that sharply reduced the number of bags which ended up in the local rivers.

That's good to know. Do you have a source handy?

Are we really supposed to be thinking of all currently available land as being flexibly provisioned for landfills.

A 1x1x1 km landfill (they are actually holes in the ground) can contain the entire waste of the US for three years. How many of those can we hide in the western US without anyone ever noticing? Howa bout a 100x100 km patch, that will hold 30,000 years worth of trash. Meanwhile we can focus our energy on the only problem that really matter - the climate problem.

It seems more ethical to bury our trash in our own backyard than bury in a poor country’s backyard or chuck it in the ocean. In the US we definitely have an out-of-site/out-of-mind problem where “recycling” can often really be “another guy’s landfill (e.g. China)”. We value not trashing our own environs with scant recognition that in terms of the global impact of our consumption, it doesn’t matter who’s landfill it goes in. But we’re the same way with strip mining.

Why not? You can still live on top of a landfill. Is it better that we live on top of some ecologically inactive rocks instead?

I don't believe you can live on top of a landfill; it's too toxic. In fact I don't think you can even build housing on the site of a former landfill.

Airports and golf courses, on the other hand.. many uses for surface area besides living. I don’t know (truly) if the issue is really toxicity (in a well designed, reclamated landfill) or the simple fact that city services like sewer, water, gas, electric were never under-grounded there by design. You’d think settlement would be a cause for concern too, but I’d also think they have that solved if airports are made atop them.

Clearly you've never heard of Foster City!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foster_City,_California

That's "landfill" in the sense of raising the ground level, not in the sense of "dumping trash", which is what we're talking about.

We are running out of land. I don't disagree with your point that landfill space isn't "a problem." But if you zoom out and look at inefficient land use more generally (like fields for feed corn), you find that there is for all intents and purposes no nature left in many of the places we occupy.

If we are fine with Cemeteries in extremely valuable land in major city centers, I’m fine with a square mile landfill in Oklahoma.

Cemeteries are also an incredibly inefficient use of space.

I’m not fine with either.

Burn it all, she said!

Ever look at satellite images of coastal cities, such as LA or the greater NYC region? Turn off all map and road labels so it’s just a view of land use and cities just look like a giant concrete mass sprawling hundreds of miles. Now view over Nevada or other major flatland, desolate regions. 2x2 miles of landfill wouldn’t even be visible from the same altitude view. I believe ground water and aquifers are near non-existent in many western areas too so we wouldn’t have to fret about ground water contamination.

A landfill 1x1x1 km can contain the entire waste the US produces in 3 years. A small patch of land 100x100 km has enough space to keep trash for 30,000 years.

https://www.epa.gov/facts-and-figures-about-materials-waste-...

I'm not disputing that landfills aren't really a big deal, I'm disputing the claim that we aren't running out of space.

Mm, you’re running out of coastal land in temperate areas. That’s an entirely different problem. I wonder how the carbon footprint of taking trash to a Nevada desert to be buried compares to shipping it to SE Asia. On the surface (sorry) it seems the former would be more efficient and more ethical. Don’t know the numbers tho.

Developed countries outsource plasti garbage handling to other less developed nations that are happy to take care of it for a fee.

“Take care of it for free” == put it in a hole in their ground because for the developed world, its “outta site, outta mind”. Pretty stunning ethical blind spot we all have, really. At best, it’s a case of wishful thinking, on behalf of developed-world consumers, that once it’s in the bin something responsible is being done with it.

Until they realize that handling plastic garbage becomes a noticeable health problem and health insurances are no longer willing to pay for this externality.

I don't think that happens anymore?

Assuming that we can keep burying it forever is not a healthy attitude.

People used to assume that dumping sewage in the streets was just fine, but it led to cholera outbreaks [1]. There was no push to change that until it became a major problem and something had to be done. Sure, we can assume burying plastic will be a solution forever. But is it not better to avoid risking the event where it suddenly is a problem, and try and mitigate it now?

(Personally, I think so, but it is one of things that will be forever debatable.)

[1] http://www.hubhistory.com/episodes/boston-in-the-time-of-cho...

> Assuming that we can keep burying it forever is not a healthy attitude.

Yes it is. Just because some decision made in the past is wrong doesn't mean a different decision made in the present is also wrong. There is no harm to landfill, and we know it quite well by now.

It isn’t about being right or wrong. It is about sustainability and foresight. Yes, landfill works now. But the population is growing and eventually the land may need to be reclaimed. It is about recognizing that excess waste now may become a problem for future generations. It is about realizing that things could, you know, maybe be done better.

Dumping our trash in the ground is lazy and I just don't understand how anyone wants to defend it.

Well, I’ll have a go - first, most people have no idea where their trash goes and don’t worry about the problem that something has to be done with it. It just magically disappears because we (especially urban and suburban dwellers) are that abstracted from dealing with it.

The options are to make a pile of it, bury a pile of it (ocean or land), burn a pile of it, or eject a pile of it into space, while recycling what we can to reduce load on the aforementioned options (often far, far less than people imagine, btw).

So it’s not an issue of people desiring to put their dirty diapers in the ground for its own sake, but it being the better of several shittier options.

Fundamentally we all make too much trash. Each of us. But while that problem is being worked we still need to put it somewhere where it minimizes sanitation and environmental risk.

Far from being lazy, modern landfills are pretty meticulously engineered for surface reclamation in the developed world. You are probably acting more responsible by putting developed-world trash in a developed-world landfill than by shipping it across the ocean in container barges to the developing world, where often as not it just ends up in an unmanaged, seeping pile (assuming it makes it to and stays on land).

There’s a lot of wishful thinking about what to do with garbage (if “we” only..., “people” just need to...), but the best thing any of us as individuals can do is obsessively reuse finished materials without becoming hoarders, donate, and consume less (opt out of gratuitous packaging, don’t buy tchotchkes for decorations or gifts, buy things that will last for decades or generations, not seasons or years).

How’s that?