6:56pm | Editor’s note: This is a repost of an opinion piece originally posted on Nov. 23, 2010.
As noted here last week, in the foreseeable future Long Beach is likely to ban single-use plastic bags.
I wouldn’t think this to be a controversial move. But then I’d be forgetting about all the people out there who seem to believe public policy should conform to their convenience, no matter the cost to society at large.
If we go by the comments this story received thus far — about 25 percent of which are against any such ban — these are people who think that by opposing this type of obvious environmental reform they are fighting for a noble cause. “This has got to stop!!” writes Terrie. “If we let this continue, we will turn into […] a totalitarian state!! […] I will fight a ban against plastic shopping bags.” Her rationale is that “when you are spending 150 bucks a week at the grocery store … the last thing in the world you want to deal with is bringing a stack of freaking bags to the store.”
Terrie doesn’t say why this would be so difficult. By my scientific calculations, five canvas bags would cost Terrie $5 maximum, they could be stored in her car, four could fit inside the fifth, and the whole thing would weigh under a pound.
Of course, it’s not really about logistical difficulties, it’s about someone presuming to tell them the way they’ve been programmed to do things is less than ideal. “Only the tree hugging libtards would try to control people by banning bags,” opines nonunion. “What happened to my right to use a plastic bag[?]”
If asked, nonunion would probably know that rights in the United States are granted, for example, by the Constitution, and that the right to use plastic bags is not enumerated therein.
I suppose it’s possible nonunion might argue that use of single-use plastic bags is a human right. That, it would seem, is the sort of beef many feel over such a ban. This is what the “no nanny state” lobby on this issue boils down to: that we have a human right not to be subjected to an invasively micromanaging government.
While I myself am a civil libertarian — and so am sympathetic to this basic feeling — putting aside that most of these same people don’t have a problem with the government’s invasiveness extending into the realms of our wedded partners and what substances we can put in our own bodies, these no-nanny-staters seem too myopic to see the big picture. This is why well-meaning pamela isn’t quite right when she suggests that “the problem isn’t the bags, it’s the people who litter. duh. we will still have trash in our streets because so many people are pigs.” While I concur that often people are (in the sense she means) pigs, the problem is also the bags.
There was a great TV public-service announcement some years back that showed a time-lapse shot of a sidewalk trash receptacle getting filled up to overflowing, after which appeared a message asking what it means to throw your trash “away.” The point is that while out of sight may be out of mind, that doesn’t remove it from the picture. All trash must go somewhere — and if it’s not biodegradable, it stays where it finally ends up. By my advanced mathematical calculations, if you’ve got a finite amount of space you fill up with trash that for all intents and purposes never goes away, eventually you fill up all that space.
Eagle Eye says (s)he reuses the plastic bags at home — and that’s certainly better than simply tossing them into the garbage (as many people undoubtedly do). But the point about their eventual fate remains. Plus, for many purposes — such as the one Eagle Eye specifically mentions: garbage — paper bags (which, obviously, are biodegradable) will suffice.
But the point is not necessarily to make plastic bags illegal, but simply to ban single-use plastic bags where appropriate — or to put it another way: not to continue fostering citizen participation in an environmentally ruinous cycle. If (e.g.) grocery stores stop supplying people with plastic bags, not only does that take a huge bite out of the market for a disposable product, but then there is less pure trash out there to fill up our landfills and end up in our oceans.
Moreover, if citizens have to go out of their way to purchase each plastic bag they use (instead of just being given them), they will be a lot more likely to opt for more cost-efficient and hassle-free alternatives, such as reusable canvas bags.
An even weaker point Eagle Eye and others make concerns how banning single-use plastic bags will hurt business. While (as I’ve demonstrated above) I’m a masterful scientist and mathematician, I’m no economist — so perhaps someone can explain to me how supporting businesses from being able to spend money providing single-use plastic bags they give away for free hurts their bottom line.
But am I just (to use a truly fab phrase) a tree-hugging libtard? Is this, as John District 5 claims, “just another pointless, feel good issue”? Ryan P suggests people like me are doing nothing more than advocating that we “all hold hands and sing Kumbaya!!” He recommends that we “return to reality, [because] we have serious issues that need to be dealt with. For instance: illegal aliens, police, fire, road work, infrastructure, unempl[o]yment, etc.”
He’s right, of course, that these are serious issues. But isn’t the health of the planet serious, as well? And are these issues mutually exclusive, or do they in fact dovetail?
Without getting all Gaia on you, it probably never hurts to take a holistic view of things, to see life as a gestalt. Certainly physics points to the interconnectedness of all things. Really, I’m not sure there’s any good evidence in any field against the idea that everything exists in a nexus.
It’s just that sometimes it’s more convenient to focus on only one small part of the whole. That’s not always such a bad thing. Even so, we probably help ourselves — in that sense of ‘ourselves’ that includes all of us and the place we live, both city and world — when we take a broad view.
The goal should always be to do better. And in doing better by the planet, I’m not sure how we lose.
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