Hooray! I saw on CNN that Mexico City went green Wednesday, August 19, as amended ordinances now outlaw businesses from giving out thin plastic bags that are not biodegradable.
I’ve written about the horrors of plastic bags twice now, first in my blog post No More Plastic Bags! and again in the post Once Again… Paper or Plastic? Reusable. If you do nothing else for the planet, please stop using plastic bags!
San Francisco enacted an ordinance in March 2007 to phase out the bags. Los Angeles is set to impose a ban if the state of California does not impose a statewide 25-cent fee per bag by July of next year.
China has adopted a strict limit, reducing litter and eliminating the use of 40 billion bags. Violation of the law carries a possible fine of 10,000 yuan ($1,463), according to World Watch.
In Tanzania, selling plastic bags carries a maximum six-month jail sentence and a fine of 1.5 million shilling ($1,137).
Mumbai, India, outlawed the bags in 2000 and cities in Australia, Italy, South Africa and Taiwan have imposed bans or surcharges. Ireland reported cutting use of the bags by 90 percent after imposing a fee on each one.
Some leading environmentalists are still calling for a global ban on the bags, about 5 trillion of which are used worldwide. In the United States, about 100 million bags are used each year, 90 million of which are not recycled.
Plastic bags are a major threat to ocean wildlife, causing the deaths of 100,000 sea turtles and other marine animals that mistake them for food.
Paper is biodegradable as are cloth bags that you can use over and over. Why use something so harmful as plastic bags when we have readily available alternatives?
What do you think? What do you use?
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Interesting question to which I don’t have a firm answer. I’ve been in the flexible packaging industry since 1980. For the first 3 years of my career, I printed on plastic films that were converted into bags.
Our industry also prints paper sacks, shipping sacks, T-shirt bags, newspaper bags, and every type of flexible package you can think of, including all of the packaging that holds the junk we eat from convenience and grocery store shelves. I continue to make my living teaching folks how to print on packaging and labels, and selling them some of the stuff they’ll need to do it.
I do the grocery shopping for our home, by choice! Every time I go to the grocery store, the bagging clerk asks me “paper or plastic?” I always reply “plastic.”
However, each time, I contemplate the harm plastic can do, some of which you have outlined here. That said, paper is not exactly zero impact. Making either results in irreparable damage to our environment. The choice is not that simple. (Remember the paper vs. Styrofoam clam-shell burger packaging debate a few years back?) While paper is biodegradable, keep thinking on that the next time you drive by a foul-smelling paper mill dumping billions of gallons of poison into streams and rivers. To me, the debate is not so simple.
Every problem has a solution that is obvious, simple, and WRONG! As we debate these issues, let’s be sure that we are well-enough informed to make correct and meaningful decisions based on science and reason, not the obvious decisions based on emotion and ignorance
I don’t know the right answer, but I keep accepting plastic because it feeds my family!
Best Regards,
Frank
Aug 22nd, 2009 / 5:36 pm
Paper goes away. Plastic is suffocating birds and fish. I understand the impact of paper and the pollution in the manufacturing and killing of trees. Not nearly the deaths of plastic. And plastic is a carcinogen even when we store our foods in it or, god forbid, drink from a water bottle that has gotten warm in the car or outside.
It is a debate that rages and we need to be aware, informed, concerned and make educated choices instead of moving through life without thinking.
Thanks for your reply.
Aug 23rd, 2009 / 10:53 am