Get This! LA Banning Plastic Bags AND......

Chilcoot, do you remember this?:

I give up.

I get your point, JM2300. You're not understanding what I was responding to.

When plastic bags were introduced in stores in the 1970s as a substitute for paper bags, it wasn't for environmental reasons, to save trees. They hit the market and succeeded because they were a lot less expensive to produce and market.

Which is what that 2009 article from the Wall Street Journal says:

"When plastic supermarket bags were introduced in the 1970s, grocers loved them because they cost less than paper bags and didn't take up as much storage space."

Market forces, not environmental concerns, drove the success of plastic bags.

Unfortunately, the market didn't account for the negative externalities that plastic bags produce: lengthy decomposition associated with litter and landfill demands, wildlife hazards, and environmental toxicity. To counter the market's failure to incorporate those costs into the price of plastic bags, governments are imposing bans, a step in the right direction. Perhaps a better solution would be to impose a deposit system not unlike the one that applies in many places for cans and bottles, but that seems less practical for bags. Hence the bans.

Here's how paper and plastic stack up side by side:

To make all the bags we use each year, it takes 14 million trees for paper and 12 million barrels of oil for plastic. The production of paper bags creates 70 percent more air pollution than plastic, but plastic bags create four times the solid waste — enough to fill the Empire State Building two and a half times. And they can last up to a thousand years.

Plastic, because it's cheaper to produce, is the overwhelming choice of grocery stores across the nation — the average family of four uses almost 1,500 of these a year. San Francisco is limiting consumers' freedom of choice, allowing only biodegradable plastic bags, which break down over months rather than hundreds of years.

For both types of bags, the environmentalist mantra is the same — reuse and recycle. But the best choice, they say, is cloth or canvas, and BYOB — bring your own bags.

DonDiego would like to do his part, . . . but fashion remains paramount in DonDiego's life.

Does anyone know if anyone manufactures reusable bags from the skin of the Northern Spotted Owl? Such bags would look good with DonDiego's leather vests and accompanying coordinated wild rags.

Please, in the 1980's studies were done which determined how long certain bits of trash took to decompose in landfills. Plastic took far longer than was originally thought, even foodstuffs lasted much longer.

The information gleaned from that study resulted in a better understanding of how to make compost.

I'd like to weigh in on this issue.. I've seen both sides of the fence and from one who sells produce at Farmers Markets we see many "wasteful" people who need one bag for each thing. i.e. one cucumber, one onion, etc. etc. this causes us to go thru 100's of bags 3 times a week. I like people bringing their cloth bags to the market, save me lots of bags. We put out a "call to people" to recycle their plastic bags for them. But if these same people don't GET bags at their local store, they won't have them to give to us. A vicious cycle.

I'm sure it saves the stores mega bucks, those bags, paper or plastic don't come cheap, but plastic is easier to reuse. Our bill for paper bags is a bundle each year.. Onions and potatoes need paper bags, some folks tend not to remove them from the bag once home and they sweat, go to pieces, so we try to get them to use paper bags for that.

BTW- plastic bags do NOT take 100's of years to break down, I have seen many disintegrate right in my hands, with one touch. Hard plastics maybe, but not bags!

I think the original plastic bags from the 80's took a longer time to break down than today's plastic bags.

Start charging for bags. People will then let their cucumber and onion touch if it means an extra 15 cents.

So Bags, how much should people charge for you????

With the amount of paper being recycled today, I would imagine it wouldn't take near as many trees to make paper bags now.

J

People are still under the impression that today's paper comes from wild timberland trees. Besides what comes from recycled paper, the rest comes from trees that were grown and harvested specifically for making paper. This is the same exact concept for Christmas trees.

I think it is great that people want to use cloth bags. You better be sure to throw them in a hot washing machine each and every time if you used them to hold meat.

I don't want my city government telling me what bag I have to use when grocery shopping, especially when there are hundreds to thousands of other matters that are far more important.