The not-so-Great Canadian Corporate Greed thread

[Hecate]

It is very much a conspiracy. Big plastic and retail won! Much like Loblaws bread price fixing. Unfortunate though the damage is done.

Remember 30 years ago when you could buy Christmas lights that came with clips so you could easily hang them on your house. Then came the environmentally friendly LED models with bulbs you couldn’t change and unusable clips so awkwardly designed you had to buy additional plastic clips to attach to the lights so you can hang them. Do you think that’s a coincidence?

[lio45]

Originally Posted by Hecate

People can complain about corporate greed all they want, yet it’s our own governments who allow it. Companies like Loblaws are operating within the legal guidelines of what the country allows.

Absolutely incorrect. We weren’t complaining about greed, we were complaining about fraud.

Greed is legal, fraud is illegal. Huge difference.

Galen can (try to) sell a 100g bag of chips for $20 for all I care, as long as the bag is correctly labeled as 100g.

Conversely, a “200g” bag that only contains ~100g, even if it’s only selling for a couple bucks, THAT is unacceptable — it’s literal, fucking, FRAUD. Criminal.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

The fact that reusable bags use more plastic than a single disposable bag (when they're made of plastic which not all of them are) is irrelevant since they use much less plastic per use. Which is the whole point of switching to reusable things. Assuming sinister ulterior motives is getting into the realm of conspiracy theories.

I'm pretty skeptical of this based on my own experience. I have a pile of reusable bags like I've had for years, but sometimes I need a bag at the store for one reason or another so now I get an extra reusable bag I don't need rather than a much smaller disposable bag. It's not practical to carry reusable bags around all the time.

I have a dwindling supply of old plastic bags that were pretty useful. They would all get ~2 uses before. I'll probably be buying/using more plastic bags to cover this once the old supply is gone.

The environmental impact of all of this is minor. I feel like it was a waste of effort and political capital on an issue that has poor cost-benefit and is mostly an example of politicians making noise about easy to understand issues that make them look good.

[Wigs]

Originally Posted by lio45

Absolutely incorrect. We weren’t complaining about greed, we were complaining about fraud.

Greed is legal, fraud is illegal. Huge difference.

Galen can (try to) sell a 100g bag of chips for $20 for all I care, as long as the bag is correctly labeled as 100g.

Conversely, a “200g” bag that only contains ~100g, even if it’s only selling for a couple bucks, THAT is unacceptable — it’s literal, fucking, FRAUD. Criminal.

We're paying so much for groceries, at the very least, the bare freaking minimum we Canadians have the audacity to believe that the weight/volume of the package/container displayed of what we buy is what's actually inside

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by lio45

Absolutely incorrect. We weren’t complaining about greed, we were complaining about fraud.

Greed is legal, fraud is illegal. Huge difference.

Galen can (try to) sell a 100g bag of chips for $20 for all I care, as long as the bag is correctly labeled as 100g.

Conversely, a “200g” bag that only contains ~100g, even if it’s only selling for a couple bucks, THAT is unacceptable — it’s literal, fucking, FRAUD. Criminal.

agree completely.



^more false advertising from Galen. He is promoting No Name, but he is quite clearly named in the above picture.

[urbandreamer]

I find it amusing that many of you are complaining about 5 cent plastic bags (which have proven to harm bird & fish habitats) when most of you seem to be high income professionals. Stop being so petty. Given the chance, you'd out psycho Galen himself.

[theman23]

Originally Posted by urbandreamer

I find it amusing that many of you are complaining about 5 cent plastic bags (which have proven to harm bird & fish habitats) when most of you seem to be high income professionals. Stop being so petty. Given the chance, you'd out psycho Galen himself.

I don't think plastic bag bans are leading to food inflation, but it fun to harp on because its the perfect example of a well intentioned but poorly thought out policy having the opposite effect it was intended to. There's plenty of data out there showing that plastic bag bans at the grocer just lead to people buying more plastic garbage bags, which in turn have a higher plastic content than grocery bags. That's not even taking into account the problem of the reusable bags that someone123 brought up.

[urbandreamer]

Canada, US, Mexico should sign a NAFTA amendment banning the use of plastic bags, wrap, garbage bags, packaging etc completely. If we can spend $120 million on a 6 day robot to the moon, surely similar money could solve this problem on Earth.

Those tote bags could be recycled cotton, price raised to $10 so consumers always have them on hand.

[jonny24]

Originally Posted by urbandreamer

Canada, US, Mexico should sign a NAFTA amendment banning the use of plastic bags, wrap, garbage bags, packaging etc completely. If we can spend $120 million on a 6 day robot to the moon, surely similar money could solve this problem on Earth.

Those tote bags could be recycled cotton, price raised to $10 so consumers always have them on hand.

How would garbage bags be replaced? Loose garbage in bins? My garbage guys already suck at actually emptying my bins. Seems like there'd be a lot more loose trash everywhere.

The new bags suck. Yeah they're a bit thicker, but they rip pretty easily. That's the 30 cent ones, but the store has heavier duty ones for $1 if you want.

I'll admit it. I just pay for 2 or 3 bags every time, and they go straight in the trash. We use the old plastic ones to line our little garbage baskets, and they're great for cat litter. The new ones suck for both of those, so now we use purpose bought trash bags, or use the plastic bags that our takeout comes in (why is it ok for takeout to use them? :hmm: ) For $1 per grocery shop, I can't be bothered to remember to move piles of bags to my truck.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by Wigs

We're paying so much for groceries, at the very least, the bare freaking minimum we Canadians have the audacity to believe that the weight/volume of the package/container displayed of what we buy is what's actually inside

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

agree completely.

Let’s consider the fair and equitable reciprocal action:

Loblaws Customer brings two “200g” bags of chips to the self-checkout, scans only one, pays only one, leaves with the two “200g” bags, declares “we’re even, Galen”

How does that sound? Reasonable?

I mean, surely paying for ~200g of chips then leaving the premises with ~200g of chips can’t possibly constitute shoplifting, right?

[someone123]

Originally Posted by urbandreamer

I find it amusing that many of you are complaining about 5 cent plastic bags (which have proven to harm bird & fish habitats) when most of you seem to be high income professionals. Stop being so petty. Given the chance, you'd out psycho Galen himself.

Not sure what the rules are around the whole country. Around here we had the bag fee years ago, which I don't care about (likely another net negative due to having no real value but adding some bureaucratic overhead), but now a lot of places have no bags at all and certain kinds of bags seem to be banned while other less useful kinds of bags are sometimes still provided. It's noticeably much more annoying to be a consumer in Canada than in most other countries I visit (we're above Cuba for sure).

I don't mind environmentalism but let's be creative, competent, and implement things in ways that work and make sense instead of focusing on sacrifice and moralizing. A lot of day-to-day things in Canada (or BC) are becoming more and more of a hassle with a bunch of people acting as though that's a feature and not a bug. It's harmful and insidious as a social phenomenon and it feels like things are being run by the dumbest in the room sometimes instead of the brightest.

[Hecate]

Originally Posted by lio45

Absolutely incorrect. We weren’t complaining about greed, we were complaining about fraud.

Greed is legal, fraud is illegal. Huge difference.

Galen can (try to) sell a 100g bag of chips for $20 for all I care, as long as the bag is correctly labeled as 100g.

Conversely, a “200g” bag that only contains ~100g, even if it’s only selling for a couple bucks, THAT is unacceptable — it’s literal, fucking, FRAUD. Criminal.

I never said it wasn’t fraud, lol, so you have old Dutch and Loblaws colluding together, The government obviously doesnt care that they’re lying, because these companies are both still operating, and all they got were little fines for lying to consumers. So once again… it’s the government doing fuck all to protect the citizens it’s meant to serve.

It’s kinda like how a company can charge you for theft if you steal from them, but you can’t charge them for theft if they steal your wages. That’s how society rolls.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by Hecate

I never said it wasn’t fraud, lol, so you have old Dutch and Loblaws colluding together, The government obviously doesnt care that they’re lying, because these companies are both still operating, and all they got were little fines for lying to consumers. So once again… it’s the government doing fuck all to protect the citizens it’s meant to serve.

It’s kinda like how a company can charge you for theft if you steal from them, but you can’t charge them for theft if they steal your wages. That’s how society rolls.

Perhaps the government should seize all Loblaws stores and begin operating them all.

[urbandreamer]

OMG you guys are bitching about $1.50 bags of junk food. NN chips are extremely unhealthy, so less is probably good for you.

It must be nice to 1) have a cushy job 2) spend the majority of your job bitching online about things you have no control over 3) feeling superior to the unfortunate

Why are Canadians so lazy and unproductive?!

[whatnext]

Originally Posted by Loco101

Walmart has been in Canada since 1994 so I wouldn't call the company new here. But they didn't get into the grocery business starting in 2006 so 18 years should give the company enough time to have good supply chains. Loblaws has an advantage of being a larger company within Canada still.

I agree that the groceries at Walmart aren't as good for what you pay but some people prefer it simply because they can shop for many non-grocery items at the same time.

And lord knows the Walton family are just good ol' regular folks not rapacious billionaires who destroyed small businesses and downtowns all across America.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by urbandreamer

OMG you guys are bitching about $1.50 bags of junk food. NN chips are extremely unhealthy, so less is probably good for you.

It must be nice to 1) have a cushy job 2) spend the majority of your job bitching online about things you have no control over 3) feeling superior to the unfortunate

Why are Canadians so lazy and unproductive?!

Depends how you measure “productivity”. I’ll have you know my yearly real estate appreciation per capita has been a pretty damn good performance for nearly 20 years now plus I can be on SSP while it works its magic.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by Hecate

It is very much a conspiracy. Big plastic and retail won! Much like Loblaws bread price fixing. Unfortunate though the damage is done.

Remember 30 years ago when you could buy Christmas lights that came with clips so you could easily hang them on your house. Then came the environmentally friendly LED models with bulbs you couldn’t change and unusable clips so awkwardly designed you had to buy additional plastic clips to attach to the lights so you can hang them. Do you think that’s a coincidence?

Outcomes don't determine intent. The fact that something was beneficial to a person or group doesn't prove that they conspired to achieve it. You're making the common conspiracy theorist mistake of assuming that because you can think of a motive for why someone might want to do something that it automatically proves they did it. The government isn't selling plastic so unless there's proof that the decision makers who implemented the bans specifically did it to help plastic companies sell more plastic, then it is indeed a baseless conspiracy theory.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by someone123

I'm pretty skeptical of this based on my own experience. I have a pile of reusable bags like I've had for years, but sometimes I need a bag at the store for one reason or another so now I get an extra reusable bag I don't need rather than a much smaller disposable bag. It's not practical to carry reusable bags around all the time.

I have a dwindling supply of old plastic bags that were pretty useful. They would all get ~2 uses before. I'll probably be buying/using more plastic bags to cover this once the old supply is gone.

The environmental impact of all of this is minor. I feel like it was a waste of effort and political capital on an issue that has poor cost-benefit and is mostly an example of politicians making noise about easy to understand issues that make them look good.

The extra reusable bags definitely required extra energy and resources to create, but unless they end up getting tossed away into the environment without ever getting significant productive use then that's the main issue. Plastic waste in the ocean and other waterways is actually getting to be a fairly big problem. I personally have a few of the small fold-up nylon bags and tend to keep one with me either in my pocket or backpack so I don't usually have that problem. It's not practical to carry the bulky reusable bags but the ones I use fold down to the size of maybe a small computer mouse.

[Gresto]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

The extra reusable bags definitely required extra energy and resources to create, but unless they end up getting tossed away into the environment without ever getting significant productive use then that's the main issue. Plastic waste in the ocean and other waterways is actually getting to be a fairly big problem. I personally have a few of the small fold-up nylon bags and tend to keep one with me either in my pocket or backpack so I don't usually have that problem. It's not practical to carry the bulky reusable bags but the ones I use fold down to the size of maybe a small computer mouse.

We started using the white, linen No Frills bags about 25 years ago, when they were first introduced. Unfortunately, they were soon replaced by the black, nylon ones. For Costco, I use the large Ikea bags.
As for microplastics and nanoplastics, our bodies are likely all full of them already, and no one yet knows the long-term health consequences.

[theman23]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

The extra reusable bags definitely required extra energy and resources to create, but unless they end up getting tossed away into the environment without ever getting significant productive use then that's the main issue. Plastic waste in the ocean and other waterways is actually getting to be a fairly big problem. I personally have a few of the small fold-up nylon bags and tend to keep one with me either in my pocket or backpack so I don't usually have that problem. It's not practical to carry the bulky reusable bags but the ones I use fold down to the size of maybe a small computer mouse.

CBC just had a piece on this and while they didn’t really have any study to back up the segment, most people interviewed seemed to have 30 or so reusable bags lying around at home tucked away in a corner somewhere. It’s probably safe to say that the majority of these bags don’t get reused.

https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.7092380