Enviro Girl has long despised the plastic bag. It’s the #1 form of litter she finds when cleaning rural ditches and fields. It represents the ultimate form of single-use waste. Heck, a lot of times she’s watched people purchase an item at a store and carry it to the door in a plastic bag before removing their item and throwing the plastic bag away before they’ve even reached the parking lot. No kidding. What a ridiculous thing.
Enviro Girl has watched with interest various efforts to ban the plastic bag. Yesterday California voters had a huge opportunity to ban plastic bags–a ban that would have surely spread like smoking bans. Effectively the ban would have been a ban on litter. But the petrochemical industry’s lobby proved stronger than common sense. The ban was rejected and the “magnificent plastic bag” will continue to float free, traveling unabated to the Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch.
It costs us all less to reuse old bags or buy or make shopping bags. The question of “Paper or plastic” is a false choice. It costs us all less to NOT have to deal with garbage and litter and beach clean-ups. But the fear of inconvenience and false cost calculations won the day. Enviro Girl is gnashing her teeth with disgust–a ban would have cost taxpayers nothing and had a tremendous environmental impact.
Team Plastic Litter–1, Environmentalists–0
The Environmentalists will have to knuckle down and keep fighting–like smoking bans, it looks like plastic shopping bag bans will have to start locally. It’s not time to give up the good fight.
The people in Sacramento seem unable to accomplish the simplest things. We will not discuss politics this minute.
I share your disappointment and disgust and will share my feelings with the above.
I take comfort in the knowledge that my daughter has purchased and uses some good sturdy shopping bags. This was a woman who loved the fact that she could use and reuse plastic bags (a form of recyling in itself). You’re right, I guess, so many of these concerns have to work UP to effect significant change. Jenny
I give away 5-packs of pretty/stylish reusable shopping bags to people as gifts all the time–yes, little change to make the BIG change.
It just makes me sad that the lobbyists won this round. Hopefully, the fight will continue. Just last night, my husband stopped in a convenience store for milk and some rolls. When the cashier put the milk in a bag, he told her that he didn’t need a bag — meaning that he didn’t need a bag at all. So she took the milk out but put the rolls, which were already in their own plastic bag, in. You would think stores would be happy not to give out bags. Although I was proud of my husband who is a bit slower to join the environmental movement — I think I must be rubbing off a little, finally!
The profound lack of COMMON SENSE is what kills me. Jobs won’t be lost by banning plastic bags. Life will go on–albeit, with less litter. Whole countries have successfully banned them with only good results. I also hate how money dictates policy in our country.
This doesn’t just affect California, it also affects the rest of the U.S. If California had banned plastic bags, I feel confident that a great many other states would have too. What a disappointment.
I (a cloth bag user since 1997), would feel better about this initiative if it weren’t so obviously hostile to big business. Yes, they added the provision that small shops would have to comply later, but the SF law is directed only at chain stores. Either plastic bags are good or bad. If they are bad, they are bad for everyone, not just the big shops that SF wants to keep out of its city limits.
Good point–but if you’re looking at banning the BULK of the litter, you have to go after the BIG BOYS. I live in a rural town with one grocery store. Guess what label is on 90% of the plastic shopping bags I clean up in our fields and ditches? You guessed it: WalMart.
Interestingly, IKEA quit giving shoppers plastic bags years ago. And they’re doing just fine.