Comments on: Paper not Plastic

By: rhennesy

rhennesy — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

i am glad that there are people in politics who are trying to make a difference environmentally. It seems so often you hear about the individual citizen trying to make a difference, and that is good, and i applaud it, but the truth of the matter is that the general population is lazy and apathetic, myself not excluded. i feel as though a great deal more will be accomplished when we start creating legislature that requires change in behavior.

This is an excellent start.

By: rcalnan

rcalnan — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Similar legislation is happening in Los Angeles, under the title Renew LA. Check it out for great ideas on the city’s efforts to eliminate landfills in the future.

By: arunner

arunner — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I found this article interesting and a good idea in theory, but I wonder if all the numbers have been figured to calculate the environmental impact of using another source en lieu of plastic bags. NPR’s Science Friday did a snippet on this type of conservation effort in Ireland (I believe it was Ireland) and they found that more energy was used to transport the nonplastic bags because not as many fit in a truck; also, people ended up buying more garbage bags since they no longer had the smaller plastic bags to reuse for waste.

I try to ask for paper when it is possible, but I feel that I do reuse the plastic bags for transporting of goods that may leak in my backpack; tying groceries to my bike frame if it is a quick run to the store; reusing for garbage waste and lining trash bins. It would be a shame if my state of Iowa would adopt a no plastic rule without weighing the environmental impact of the replacement bag. Sometimes educating the public to reuse and recycle may just be better than mass change without the research.

By: aneles

aneles — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I think the goods outweigh the bads here! The absence of plastic bags will force consumers to think about other options – most notably, bringing their own shopping bag along. I always do, and have surely saved thousands of bags – think of that multiplied by a whole city.

Lots of societies don’t automatically include a plastic bag for your purchases. In some it’s expected that you’ll bring your own tote. In Korea, for example, bags are not automatically given – you have to PAY an extra five or ten cents for one.

By: amateur6

amateur6 — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Trailwriter is correct. Want to make an actual impact? Ban bag distribution at the store level. Grocery stores in England, even as recently as the mid-80s, didn't provide any bags -- quite a shock to me as an American visitor buying groceries! But I quickly bought a carrier bag and brought it with me, every time.

From MSNBC: "â€” Paper bags generate 70 percent more air pollutants and 50 times more water pollutants than plastic bags.

â€” 2,000 plastic bags weigh 30 pounds, 2,000 paper bags weigh 280 pounds. The latter takes up a lot more landfill space.

â€” It takes 91 percent less energy to recycle a pound of plastic than it takes to recycle a pound of paper. It takes more than four times as much energy to manufacture a paper bag as it does to manufacture a plastic bag."

The idea of swapping plastic for paper is a typical knee-jerk reaction that doesn't come down on the green side of the equation.