The plastics industry has been telling us that plastics are recyclable, which is partially true. Publix Supermarkets collect plastic bags at all their stores and at least some of these have been recycled into park benches in local parks. The company hired by Miami-Dade County supplies residents with blue recycling barrels and constantly tell us that that cannot and do not recycle plastic grocery bags, and begs us not to put them in the blue bins.
I do not know what percentage of the bags donated to Publix are recycled. But I always put them in the recycle bin at Publix anyway. I shop only for myself, and in a year, I accumulate enough of these things to compleetly fill a recycle bin. I estimate 40.5 cubic feet of plastic bags.
It turns out that on a national scale, only 8% of plastics are recycled. The other 92% goes into landfills or are incinerated, releasing toxic and greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.
I get most of my groceries at Aldi's, and bring my own cloth bags, which I normally get at no cost from people having yard sales. When I visit Aldis, I bring a couple of bags along and fill them with my items, rather than push a car around. Lots of people do the same, I have observed. Once I went to a Latino supermarket and did the same thing, and was accosted by some authority person who told me that I must use a cart. I told him that his store did not provide baskets as do Publix and other stores, and I had every intention of paying for everything.
I support Newsome in his lawsuit against Exxon and his banning plastic bags. To those who enjoy using plastic bags, I think they should collect them and bring these with them to the supermarket. It is not a difficult thing to do, after all.
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Humans did this!
