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03.29.10 - 6:45 PM
Bagging It
D.C.'s new 5-cent tax on plastic bags designed both to reduce waste and raise environmental funds has been wildly successful, with the number of bags used dropping in just one month from over 22 million to 3.3 million. Geez, that was simple.
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17 Comments so far
Show AllI wonder if they remembered to factor in the general economic collapse and rampant unemployment into this massive drop in plastic bag use.
Um, that happened about 3 years ago, not 4 months ago.
Remeber its DC...probably half of the remaining 3.3 million are being used for autoerotic asphixiation, and the other half for sniffing glue.
You guys who post here are always such a ray of sunshine--NOT!!! This really does work. Don't bother with those canvas bags they sell for 2 or 3 dollars, just reuse your plastic bags. Every so often I forget my saved bags when I go to the grocery store, so I just buy a few more, they will last months.
The thin ones get holes in them pretty quick (often they come with holes), but they will last for A HUNDRED THOUSAND YEARS! .
I've have a bunch of them saved; maybe I'll melt them down to reconstitute a dinosaur - but they make great packing material instead buying 'peanuts' or such. They are useful for a variety of things -- if people would pay more attention to how to recycle stuff this would not be such a problem. It's interesting how many solutions to problems comes down to raising awareness and attention levels.
Plastic bags still end up as garbage, eventually, don't they. NOT using plastic in the first place should be the goal. Canvas bags last a life time, which makes the investment worthwhile.
They don't have to -- they could be recycled and the plastic used for other things, saving petrochemicals. Canvas bags are good, but not for everything since they are not bug and water proof -- for some uses they are much better. The goal is a clean environment, not a particular scheme for getting there. I think plastic bags do serve a purpose, but they are way overused. You can even make sturdy, heavy-weight bags for permanet use from plastic, and I've seen these sold at some stores (Aldi & Walmart).
Worse than plastic bags, I think, is blister packing which can't even be re-used as containers, and which I've struggled with, and cut my hands on a few times. I've gotten metal tools and hardware in hermetically sealed blister packs -- and grain stuffs in cardboard, which bugs get into. (I've also gotten many cans (cat food, especially) which can't be opened with a can opener, nor any other good way. There is a lot of dumbness, and not much consideration for the customer or the environment, involved in packaging.
I agree that blister packing is very bad, and totally unnecessary. I would even go a step further, that packing things in general is taken too far. I was in Switzerland recently and noticed that toothpastes are sold just the tube without with the packing around. I thought that makes sense, what do you need the packing for?
I still disagree that plastic bags should be used at all. I have been using canvas bags forever, and there has never been a problem with bugs or water! Recycling is not the solution, it consumes a lot of energy - and where does this energy come from...?
Goooo DC :-)
Oh no! Another piece of the gigantic Marxist Socialist plot of the Gummint to take over every aspect of our lives and destroy the Constitution! Load yer gun!
Ha ha. And it isn't like plastic bags hurt the environment. I safely dispose them in my garbage can and the garbage is magically taken away to a garbage heaven every Tuesday after I set the garbage can next to the curb before going to work.
We should be saving the bags and putting them into the recycle bins at the stores.
Let's see...$.05 is what percent of income of someone on welfare, or unemployment, or even a minimum wage job, compared to someone making $50,000 and up. How about everyone paying an equal percentage of their income for everything? Gas, food, lodging, healthcare, transportation, etc.. I would love to see someone pay $50 for one of those bags while a low income individual paid $.05. While $2.59 a gallon is the price for gas per gallon for an unemployed person, $25.59 would seem fair for an attorney making $100,000 per year. Lets use our wage records(not tax record) to issue everyone a card that would automatically adjust the given price to the actual price so everyone pays the same percent of income for living expenses. That way we could stop fighting for raises and it would be OK for a CEO to make billions a year, cause it would also cost them billions to live.
In my neck of the woods in Canada, we've had 5 cents/bag for some time. What, again, is the problem? You either use cloth bags, or reuse your old plastics, or pay the goddamn nickel. Yes - it's THAT simple!
the place is filled with the discards of plastic. remnants hang from the trees. an ugly man made leaf that has no fall. we're awash in plastic. there's a new island the size of Texas in the whirl of the Pacific made out of toxic plastic. And yet any store here in Manhattan gives these bags and containers of plastic out willingly without much thought of the resting place for these. yes there is a recycling program thank goodness but sidewalks here are strewn with plastic bags only to be blown into the rivers and trees and oceans. one war we should be fighting besides the one against poverty is a cleanup on a massive scale. Our earth is suffocating on the ugly toxic plastic remains of our 'advanced civilzation'
"Plastic people, oh baby, you're such a drag"- Frank Zappa
For my travel souvenir's, I buy the $1 to $2 bag at the local grocer rather than a tee-shirt. I hope I am doing good for the environment, I use the bags weekly or more, and I get to remember the fun times I had.
China did you all one better. I saw that they have stopped producing plastic shopping bags and are basically outlawing them.