apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

do these actually breakdown in landfills, where there is a lack of light and oxygen and whatever it takes things to biodegrade?
(just reading that article about paper v plastic bags in the wapo)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2007/10/03/GR2007100301385.html

tangential comment - I am 99% sure that this sign is from my hometown of Ottawa, Canada.

annnnnddddd.... zooming in shows that it is english/french bilingual. I'll upgrade that 99% to 99.9%

Break down in a few years?? I use Spike's Biodegradable Business Bags. They're 15 cents each from PlanetDog (something I hadn't even thought to calculate until this post), but they completely break down in 45 days.....for real. My dog goes through two a day, and I guess that does add up, but it was something I considered before I even got my dog and I'm happy to do it.

I think it's a great idea to take the kind you found to the grocery store, but who wants to carry a full size plastic bag with you every time you take your dog out? The Business Bags fold up into a tiny flat square and the packaging is really attractive. Bonus!

If you or yr neighbors get a newspaper delivered, collect the plastic bags they come in. There's little other use for them, and many cities won't recycle them, so they end up in the landfill anyway -- might as well put them to use and reduce use of other bags, which take energy to create regardless of their sustainability. Also, newspaper bags are free.

I use the newspaper bags when I forget to order enough biodegradable bags and I'm waiting for new ones to come in the mail. With a plastic bag, you're basically preserving your dog's poop. I suppose it stands a chance if you don't tie it in a knot...but who doesn't tie it in a knot?

By the way...are you recommending removing the plastic bag from your neighbors morning paper?

I actually only get the little plastic bags on Sundays, because that's the only day I get the paper. I read online.

My neighbors are all too happy to find a use for their stack of bags. They keep them until they have a full bag of bags, and then they just toss it on my porch.

By all means tie the knot. The plastic bag only preserves the poop if you are convinced that through the process of being compacted in the trash truck, loaded, offloaded, and reloaded en route to the landfill, and buried with a motley collection of objects (many of them with sharp edges, or at least corners), that gossamer-thin plastic newspaper bag somehow remains perfectly intact. I have my doubts.

And again, I think that when calculating impact, we can't myopically focus on one aspect like biodegradability or landfill use. There is additional energy being expended to create even the most biodegradable bag, and that energy (unless it is generated via clean sources like wind or solar) causes pollution that likely exceeds the environmental impact of another plastic bag in the landfill, where that plastic bag has already been created for another purpose.

Good point, CJL. First reduce, then reuse, then recycle/compost when possible.

I've been wondering what to do about this dilemma, as I'm trying to switch to reusable bags for groceries. I live in a large building with a lot of dogs/dog owners and bulk deliveries of sales circulars and newspapers. I think I'm going to ask the mgmt if it's ok to put up a bin for clean bag recycling so that dog owners will always have bags available. At least then they're not ending up in the trees and sidewalks or in the trash (without being used twice).

"holy crap", these OXO-Biodegradable bags aren't biodegradable by any reasonable definition of the term. Nothing biodegrades in a landfill...their purposely designed to inhibit biodegradation (EPA). Further, the questionable claims of oxo-biodegradable plastic makers have yet to be substantiated and they are prohibited from making their claims in states like California that have acutally defined what biodegradability means (ASTM 6400-99). Most troubling is the fact that oxo-bio bags contain a variety of "metal salts" that are leached from the bags causing degradation (lots of little pieces of plastic) adding toxic residue to the landfill mix!