Plastic Bag Ban Fails in California!
Posted by Ethan on Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Under: Say "no" to plastics!
Hey Neergs--
I have some bummer news for you if you didn't already read about it. The Plastic Bag Ban failed to pass in the California legislature. Unfortunately, the American Chemistry Council decided to run a pretty aggressive television campaign against passing the ban. The commercial talks about a huge loss of jobs and costs to the consumers. The commercial is ridiculous. What about the environmental costs to our earth and oceans. Remember that plastic bags take 500-1000 years to decompose in a landfill. The oceans present a tricky problem too. The sun and water break down the plastic into such tiny pieces that they can't be removed from ocean waters. Instead, they get into our food web. That's right, plastic is getting into the fish we eat. It's pretty scary.
I actually read an article where the blogger protested the ban as a civil rights infraction. I don't get it--there are lots of things we are not allowed to do by law because of the harm to the general public. I think this counts as one of them, don't you agree? My fear is that if you charge customers a few cents per plastic bag in the store, they'll just keep on using the plastic bags. A few cents is not much of a deterrent. I think if you forget to bring your own bag to the store, you better be able to carry out what you buy with your own two hands. The inconvenience would help us all to remember the next time.
I wonder how much money the American Chemistry Council donates to environmental causes and cleaning up plastics that don't decompose? I visited their site to find that they quote statistics about "access" to recycling. They do not report the real statistics, that is that 380 billion plastic bags are produced annually and only 5.2% are recycled. And it takes 1.6 billion gallons of petroleum to produce them. So, let me put this together here--we are destroying our oceans with deep sea drilling to produce the petroleum that goes into manufacturing plastic bags and plastic water bottles that never get recycled and end up collecting in landfills and polluting our oceans and food web. I can see why the American Chemistry Council had to spend all that money on a commercial to convince us that a plastic bag ban was a terrible thing.
Do me a favor and check out our Video of the Day page here at www.GreenKidsRock.com. Vote for your video--which is better?
Peace Out--Ethan
I have some bummer news for you if you didn't already read about it. The Plastic Bag Ban failed to pass in the California legislature. Unfortunately, the American Chemistry Council decided to run a pretty aggressive television campaign against passing the ban. The commercial talks about a huge loss of jobs and costs to the consumers. The commercial is ridiculous. What about the environmental costs to our earth and oceans. Remember that plastic bags take 500-1000 years to decompose in a landfill. The oceans present a tricky problem too. The sun and water break down the plastic into such tiny pieces that they can't be removed from ocean waters. Instead, they get into our food web. That's right, plastic is getting into the fish we eat. It's pretty scary.
I actually read an article where the blogger protested the ban as a civil rights infraction. I don't get it--there are lots of things we are not allowed to do by law because of the harm to the general public. I think this counts as one of them, don't you agree? My fear is that if you charge customers a few cents per plastic bag in the store, they'll just keep on using the plastic bags. A few cents is not much of a deterrent. I think if you forget to bring your own bag to the store, you better be able to carry out what you buy with your own two hands. The inconvenience would help us all to remember the next time.
I wonder how much money the American Chemistry Council donates to environmental causes and cleaning up plastics that don't decompose? I visited their site to find that they quote statistics about "access" to recycling. They do not report the real statistics, that is that 380 billion plastic bags are produced annually and only 5.2% are recycled. And it takes 1.6 billion gallons of petroleum to produce them. So, let me put this together here--we are destroying our oceans with deep sea drilling to produce the petroleum that goes into manufacturing plastic bags and plastic water bottles that never get recycled and end up collecting in landfills and polluting our oceans and food web. I can see why the American Chemistry Council had to spend all that money on a commercial to convince us that a plastic bag ban was a terrible thing.
Do me a favor and check out our Video of the Day page here at www.GreenKidsRock.com. Vote for your video--which is better?
Peace Out--Ethan