Ban The Plastic

This bill was introduced in the General Assembly yesterday.  It looks like several other states are considering the same thing.

What do you think about this?

Hat tip to Jim Duncan for the heads up.

Comments

[Pam]

I’m not as green as I should be, but I agree with getting rid of the plastic. At Kroger’s in B’burg at University Mall, you have a choice of paper or plastic. We always got paper-the bags had handles on them which made them fantastic for multiple uses.. Here in Martinsville, you get a choice, too, but the baggers give you dirty looks when you ask for paper. In addition, the bags don’t have handles, making them less useful afterwards.

The plastic bags don’t hold much and the handles break at inopportune momemts. The fact that they hold just so much weight causes the store to use an inordinate number of them. I’ve gotten home on numerous occasions with just one item in a bag. Yes, they can be recycled but not nearly as efficiently as the paper bags.

Paper will disintegrate naturally while plastic is with us forever.

[Aaron]

This bill is not a BAN of plastic bags, like similar legislation in some localities, but a proposal to require vendors to provide more DURABLE bags so that the bags can be reused. Is this intended to be an "environmentally friendly" bill? I assume promoting the reuse of plastic bags is intended to cut down on the demand for plastic bags, and that's how it improves the environment? Stronger bags equals bag reuse equals fewer bags in landfills? Yeah, right...

Here's a novel idea: how about non-petroleum-based CLOTH bags? They're durable and reusable, and if one ends up in the landfill, it probably takes a lot less time to decompose than plastic. Oh, but cloth probably costs more than plastic (won't the new super-duper strong plastic bags cost more than today's whimpy ones?).

And how about having to remember to take the reusable bag (plastic or cloth) INTO the store so you can reuse it? I have three cloth shopping bags that I keep in my car all of the time. Unfortunately, many times I forget to take them from the car into the store with me when I shop. I doubt my memory would improve if the bags were plastic instead of cloth. In our culture, I think we have gotten so used to the cheapness and dispose-ability of EVERYTHING that the availability of more durable containers is not likely to discourage dumping them. In fact, I overheard a woman commenting recently that she loved Tupperware - because if she found moldy food safely tucked away in a Tupperware in her fridge, she could toss it in the trash (container and all) without having to smell it!

While we're talking durability, how about more durable vacuum cleaners and clothes washers and kitchen stoves?

And speaking of reuse...is there anyone else out there besides me who finds today's shopping bags durable enough to reuse them? I do reuse them, particularly when I need something waterproof and a paper bag won't work. If I'm not reusing them myself, I take them to the local Habitat for Humanity ReStore (where they use them for the merchandise they sell) or put them in the recycle bin at the grocery store.

Anyway, this bill seems counterintuitive to me, if it is in fact an effort to improve our environment. I would think we'd be looking into ALTERNATIVES to plastic instead of MORE DURABLE plastics. Silly me?