Behold the humble plastic grocery bag. It is small, flimsy and almost weightless, but in numbers it is mighty.
Since its introduction about 30 years ago, the plastic grocery bag has become as ubiquitous as the cockroach, but a lot more harmful to the Earth. An estimated 500 billion of the things are used worldwide each year. The United States alone uses about 84 billion.
Only 1 to 3 percent of these billions of bags are recycled. The rest end up in the environment – in landfills, or in lakes, streams, oceans, forests or your backyard.
Once in the environment, plastic bags hang around for quite a while. The estimated time for a bag to naturally degrade ranges from 400 to 1,000 years. It’s reasonably safe to assume nobody now alive will ever see it happen.
When they get into the environment – whether natural or human – plastic bags create one hell of a mess. In Bangladesh they clogged sewers and storm drains so badly that they contributed to massive flooding in 1988 and 1998. (The country finally banned the bags in 2002.)
Plastic bags that make their way into the ocean become a menace to sea turtles and other marine creatures that eat them or get entangled in them. (The turtles mistake them for jellyfish, a favorite food item.) The organization Environment California has estimated that bags and other plastic items kill up to a million marine animals each year. In the Northern Pacific alone, the estimated annual toll is 100,000.
As awareness of the plastic bag problem grows, a number of American cities, including San Francisco, have banned them outright or slapped heavy taxes on them. Now the Oregon Legislature is considering a bill that would make this the first state to ban the bags.
The measure – SB 536 – is being sponsored by two Republicans and two Democrats. It would prohibit grocery stores from offering plastic bags to customers, who would have the option of paying a nickel per bag for recycled paper bags or bringing their own reusable bags.
The bag ban has the support of the Northwest Grocers Association and Fred Meyer stores; arrayed on the other side is the plastics industry, which has been trying to rally the right-wing troops by (predictably) claiming the ban represents “unnecessary and intrusive government regulation” and calling the 5-cent paper bag charge a “tax.” (How it can be considered a “tax” when the state won’t get any money from it isn’t explained.)
What the plastics industry wants to do, of course, is to continue to externalize the costs of its products – i.e., to shift the burden of cleaning up the mess they create onto consumers and taxpayers. They’re been playing that dishonest game too long, and it’s time for the legislature to put a stop to it.
Oregon has a long and proud tradition of leading the nation in protecting the environment; the plastic grocery bag ban will be a worthy addition to that honorable record. Legislators, do your duty and join us in giving plastic bags THE BOOT.
This article appears in Feb 10-16, 2011.
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“How it can be considered a “tax” when the state won't get any money from it isn't explained”
Semantics. What the heck difference does it make to the consumer? It’s still a nickel they have to pay.
This is so ridiculous, its difficult to know where to start. Good rule of thumb on any topic: If San Francisco thinks its a good idea, its actually not.
To the Source goes my boot for supporting the recycling of this intrusion into private enterprise, free markets, and consumer choice first foisted on Oregonians 6 years ago by the great Kelly Wirth.
Hahahaha, yeah, of course there’s a first angry reply from The Pro-Plastic Baggers. Funny how the most vehement anti-regulators always wind up with such strange bedfellows. Every other kind of pollution is !!!FREE MARKET AMERICA!!!, and now they can even defend the precious free-enterprise rights of crumpled-up plastic bags twisting along the gutters of Bend.
Even funnier: just for the heck of it, while out jogging the other day, I counted no less than 37 plastic bags littered from one end of Drake Park to the other. But never mind! However, just wait until this summer, when the same folks who would defend plastic bag manufacturers to the death will be screaming in favor of another wholesale slaughter of geese. That’s because the same folks who walk through Drake Park and see a plastic bag tangled in a bush and think !!!AMERICA!!! somehow melt into screaming meemies when they step into poo-poo made out of grass and bugs. Man’s Pollution = Good, Nature’s Pollution = Bad? Is that it?
Donald T,
Some facts for your consideration:
1. I’m not “pro-plastic”, “pro-paper” or a “Bagger”(whatever that is, sounds evil though). I am pro- private businesses and their customers being able to execute their transactions free from silly, useless, and expensive regulation simply so a small slice of the population can gain relief for their feelings of enviro guilt. See a therapist instead, that way it only costs you and doesn’t bother me.
2. It was you enviro nazis who were touting plastic bags as a way to save trees twenty years ago.
3. Nowhere in my response did I advocate or encourage improper disposal of plastic bags. None of the 37 bags you saw were from me.
4. Goose crap sticks to my shoe, plastic bags do not.
5. Goose crap smells bad and stains my carpet, plastic bags do not.
6. Geese are delicious. I’ve never tried to eat a plastic bag.
7. As an enlightened environmentalist, you surely must understand that not being in a natural ecosystem, Drake Park geese quickly overpopulate beyond the carrying capacity. I don’t think anyone would be comfortable with coyotes, cougars, and bobcats running around the park.
8. I have much better and more productive things to think about when I’m running than to angrily count plastic bags. See again tip from fact #1.
Hahahahahaha, priceless.
1. I bet you were once a Tea Bagger, though, and now a Tea Partier.
2. Wow, that’s the loosest use of the word ‘Nazi’ I’ve heard since… oh well, this afternoon on Glenn Beck. But the thing about people who care about nature and stuff is that we believe in evolution and therefore EVOLVE. In the case of bags, we went from paper to plastic, and now we’ve figured out to take a cloth bag to the supermarket. I’ve taken the same cloth bag to Newport once a week for the past three years (and yes, I launder it) and gotten all the groceries I need. Even Bend’s paragon of grocery excess and beautiful, beautiful capitalism, CostCo, uses recyclable cardboard boxes. Oh, and speaking of which, paper bags weren’t recyclable back when the switch from paper to plastic began to occur, and now they are.
3. Well, the ban isn’t about breaking the back of hardworking Americans, it’s about cleaning up a particularly noxious form of litter, so if you decry the ban, then you’re supporting litterbugs whether you like it or not.
4. I’ve never once noticed goose crap on my shoes in all my years of jogging through Drake Park.
5. If you’re managing to get goose crap all the way home and onto your carpet, maybe you shouldn’t wear your shoes in the house.
6. I’m a vegan, and haven’t eaten meat since I was 10. Which means I’m statistically likely to live ten to twenty years longer than you, and will therefore be around to prove the point that plastic bags need to be foregone for cloth bags or recyclable bags ten to twenty years longer than you with your meateating.
7. Drake Park geese overpopulate because we don’t have the police ticket people who feed them bread. There, there’s a whole other government regulation argument for you to get all up in arms about. Bread is, by the way, totally unhealthy for the geese, so those breadfeeders are double idiots, both attracting geese and destroying their digestive systems.
8. I didn’t ‘angrily’ count plastic bags when I was running, I CASUALLY counted them out of curiosity because sometimes jogging every day gets a little bit boring. I’ve noticed, though, that you seem to comment with infinite grumpiness and lots of loose uses of the word ‘Nazi’ on most every Source opinion ever offered, so yeah, I guess you do have lots of better and more productive things to think about. You go!
Let me add: It’s strange, this groveling, sweating, sycophantic worship of business the modern American right is engaged in.
Just because a business is a business doesn’t mean it’s sacred unto God.
Those Nazis whom Glenn Beck and the rest of the right are oh-so-afraid of? They were terrific businessman, and we all know the lovely tale of the likes of I.G. Farben and IBM making their fortunes off the concentration camps.
So… sorry about putting plastic bag makers out of business in Oregon; we sure had some great times and big laughs with those plastic bag makers. But maybe they can go make something else now. That’s evolution, where something is tried for awhile, then doesn’t work out, and things move on. Maybe all those out-of-work plastic bag makers can make and install charging stations for electric cars. There’s a growing industry to get into, and a convenient way to redeeming themselves for all those plastic bags wrapped around the necks of pelicans.
That kind of ALL BUSINESS IS GOOD AND HOLY AND WALKS IN LIGHT AND MUST NOT BE STAINED BY ANY VILE REGULATIONS WHATSOEVER thinking allowed for Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, etc. to walk all over America, sell snake oil mortgages, plunge the country into an impossible recession, and NOT go to jail.
So, again, just because a business is a business doesn’t mean it’s automatically an angelic entity of epic greatness with kissable feet blessed in Heaven by the shining hand of Our Sweet Lord.
Ultimately I only have myself to blame for this, but I can’t resist this one last diatribe on this topic. You seem to have a passing familiarity with my comments, so you surely must know that I typically don’t respond to cowards that refuse to sign their names to their writings, but occasionally someone catches me in the right mood I guess.
1. I am not a member of the Tea Party movement. I do agree with many of their stands. But you and the Source clearly display a common and low maturity level by writing and printing the filthy term that liberals are so fond of ascribing to members of the movement.
2. I could write an entire book on radical environmentalism(or as I referred to them enviro nazi’s). Not like actual Nazi’s, kinda like the Soup Nazi. Only instead of soup, you guys would love to regulate and inconvenience the rest of the world in nearly all aspects of life in an attempt to releive your feelings of enviro guilt. However, owing to the unspeakable atrocities committed by Nazi Germany, I will refrain from future use of the term in other contexts and try to keep the threat I am addressing in proper persective.
3. “so if you decry the ban, then you’re supporting litterbugs whether you like it or not.”
This argument is without merit and I flatly reject the accusation, since one can expand the range rings of responsibility out to encompass anyone who does not take any measure to stop the evil plastic bag makers. Proper disposal boils down to personal responsibility, and once again none of the 37 bags you CASUALLY counted were from me.
4. “I’ve never once noticed goose crap on my shoes in all my years of jogging through Drake Park.”
I have.
5. “If you’re managing to get goose crap all the way home and onto your carpet, maybe you shouldn’t wear your shoes in the house.”
Point for you sir.
6. “I’m a vegan, and haven’t eaten meat since I was 10. Which means I’m statistically likely to live ten to twenty years longer than you, and will therefore be around to prove the point that plastic bags need to be foregone for cloth bags or recyclable bags ten to twenty years longer than you with your meateating.”
The only statistics I could find showed that vegans die earlier than occasional meat eaters, and the same as meat eaters. Apparently your inferior diet prevents absorption of or intake of vital nutrients such as B vitamins and calcium.
See you on the other side.
7. Feeding wild animals is never a good idea.
8. I actually don’t care about your mindset while you run. But I am sorry that it is boring for you at times, because its when I do most of my best thinking(do with that as you will). I still don’t believe you just happened to count plastic bags CASUALLY and come up with a very precise number. Radical environmentalists only see two colors: Green for how they think the world ought to be and red for what they see when others choose to disagree.
As for the follow up, if you believe in evolution, you don’t know the first thing about the Lord.
That’s it for this one.
Ah, that old right-wing chestnut ‘coward’ argument about me not giving my last name. Why does it even matter what my name is? Why did you even bring it up out of the clear blue? If this was New York, then I would be totally anonymous whether I gave my last name or not, so what are you even getting at? For that matter, your name sounds mighty suspicious-like, stranger. You sure you ain’t using some kind of alias there, are ye?
Or maybe it’s as if, because I’m semi-anonymous, my arguments somehow don’t exist, and you’re off the hook for getting creamed in this debate. Is that it?
1. The Tea Party originally called itself The Tea Baggers. They did that for months and months and months on end. Finally, somebody in The Tea Baggers noticed everyone was laughing their heads off at them, and at long last The Tea Baggers discovered that their total unfamiliarity with the films of John Waters had led them to give themselves the most unfortunate name in all political history. ONLY THEN did they become The Tea Party. That’s the facts of the case. But so now I’m deducing from you that The Tea Party has trotted out all their revisionist history skills, and are pretending ‘Tea Baggers’ was a name the liberal media saddled them with. Hahahahahahahahahhahaha. Brilliant. I love it. But (sigh) totally untrue. Tea Baggers called themselves Tea Baggers to start with. They did it to themselves.
I don’t have time for the rest of all this stuff, either. Blah blah blah blah…No, meat eaters do not live longer, but you’re probably getting your statistics Fox News-ways so I can’t help you there….blah blah blah blah…Environmentalists don’t operate on ‘guilt’, they operate on the perfectly valid knowledge that if you choke the planet with enough litter, it eventually won’t be a fun place to live. Try it at home sometime by not taking the garbage out and not flushing the toilet for a month…blah blah blah blah blah…Oh, here we go: yes, I do know the first thing about The Lord, and I even believe in him, and I even attend church once a month. I’ve read my Bible cover to cover. Ever seen the statistic on how many religious folks have actually read their bible? And check this out: I believe in God, but I also believe in Evolution. Wow, what a radical concept! And why? Because Evolution would be the work of an extremely intelligent Supreme Being and The Ultimate Craftsman. Creation would be the work of a someone very sloppy. Think about it. To quote a pastor I once had: ‘You just can’t be interpreting that Bible too literally, son. It was written so shephards 2000 years ago could understand it.’
And on the very first page of The Bible God grants us dominion over the earth, which I take to mean that we’re stewards of this planet, and when the Lord returns we better not have clogged it all up with a bajillion plastic bags, else we won’t get back our deposit.
And when you’re writing your book on radical environmentalists, just remember that Barry Goldwater was a member of The Sierra Club.