Lift the Ban on Plastic Bags-help curb the spread of the virus

[Blueplanet]

People are using bags that they bring from home for shopping. Who knows where those bags have been. Clerks have to handle them, maybe the consumer's pets have laid on them, etc. When you purchase meat, which bag from home will you use?
This is very unsanitary. Some will say the virus is not spread via food, who knows?

[handmade34]

1. ...

[marlakay]

2. Use paper bags

But i did think about that since i don't wash my canvas bags very often.

I think i will start spraying with lysol.

[Boxerfan]

3. Disagree...

No actual difference. They handle both.

And we keep our re-use bags at home. Might even be safer than plastic I'd wager.

[frazzled]

4. Womp womp. /nt

[Squinch]

5. And the plastic bags aren't handled? Do they just fill themselves up and then waft

through the air to the car?

This is dopey.

And guess what: there's plastic in every morsel of food you eat and in the soil and the birds and the fish and the animals. There's even a continent of plastic in the Pacific.

So, um, no.

[WA-03 Democrat]

6. Do not keep them

Throw them away. This is the advice from friends and co workers in Hong King and China.

[Mike 03]

7. The virus survives longer on plastic than paper so I don't

see this as being a very good suggestion.

Surface Hours
Plastered wall 36
Formica (laminate material on counter tops) 36
Plastic 72
Stainless steel 72
Glass 96

https://qz.com/1810508/covid-19-can-likely-live-up-to-96-hours-on-your-phone/

Experts I've heard on Doctor Radio and other places say it probably can live on paper for hours to two or (at the extreme) three days.

Paper is extremely porous where as plastic is less permeable. That's one reason it's easier for detectives to get fingerprints off plastic longer after a crime and harder to get them off of paper (not impossible by any means, but a crapshoot.)

[Blueplanet]

10. Thank you Mike 03

But having to throw all of your food into a cart without a clean bag is unsanitary.
Maybe I did not state it correctly suggesting the virus can be spread via unsanitary bags.

[karynnj]

13. Don't you thoroughly wash all produce before cooking or eating it?

Don't you wash the lids of cans before using the can opener? Other than meat and fish, which our packaged if only with butcher paper, everything else in the store is packaged.

I have NEVER seen anyone not put everything into the cart - at any grocery store I have ever been in. For instance if you buy a butternut squash, don't you put it into the shopping cart?

[Bev54]

8. Maybe what you do is in Canada

We bag our own groceries

[moonscape]

9. Be more concerned about all the food packaging that is

touched over and over by different people which we bring into our homes.

[Goodheart]

11. I'm sure you've witnessed a cashier or two lick his/her finger in order to separate/open a

new plastic bag from the rack. Has always grossed me out, but now it might even be deadly.

[maxsolomon]

12. No.

Plastic bags are killing the Planet.

[Voltaire2]

14. gosh no.

Seems like lots of people are using this crisis to push their particular agenda.

Wash your fruits and veggies. Consider cleaning your reusable shopping bags.

[Blueplanet]

15. For further discussion:

In light of what's happening with regards to the spread of the coronavirus, I've noticed that some clerks do not want to handle the reusable bags. They just place the food in the shopping cart, and the customer has to fill their own bags. Also, some customers
have already placed their reusable bags on the conveyor belt prompting the checkout clerk in a particular store to disinfect the entire belt before checking out another customer.

It was pointed out in one of the previous comments that the virus can survive on the plastic. The stores were using brand new clean bags. Clerks fill the clean bags, customers leave the store. Apparently, the canvass bags can sustain the virus:
https://nypost.com/2020/03/14/using-tote-bags-instead-of-plastic-could-help-spread-the-coronavirus/

"The COVID-19 outbreak is giving new meaning to those “sustainable” shopping bags that politicians and environmentalists have been so eager to impose on the public. These reusable tote bags can sustain the COVID-19 and flu viruses — and spread the viruses throughout the store.