In the beginning of March, single-use plastic bags were banned from many stores in Austin. This means the thin plastic
bags in stores are replaced with the 4 mil thick plastic bags, recycled paper
bags, or the reusable bags. While doing some research I learned that the ban is
good environmentally, but can cause problems with customers and businesses.
For customers, the problem is their health. Sometimes when customers have their groceries in their reusable bags,
they don’t realize some of the groceries spill and leak. Customers don’t realize
how dirty their bags are so they continue using them, which causes contamination.
The ban was also put into effect in San Francisco in 2007. Since the ban
started, there has been a rise in E. coli cases as well as an increase in
deaths from people getting food-borne illnesses. For businesses, the problem is an increase in theft. Since the customers are entering the store with their own
bags, they can easily steal items. According to an article from the
National Center for Policy Analysis, a store in Seattle estimated a loss of
$5000 in produce and $3000-$4000 in frozen foods, as well as more grocery
baskets.
I think that some of the efforts to
“go green” are really great and helping the environment, but I don’t believe
that this is one of them. It seems to be more dangerous and inconvenient more
than it does to be helpful. Instead of banning them all together, we should spread
the word on ways to recycle the bags.
3 comments:
While I agree that the plastic bag is a negative overall, I feel that way for a different reason. Sure, banning the single use plastic bags will lower the amount of plastic in the landfills slightly, but at the same time we will be creating yet another shortage and/or form of pollution to replace it. Starting with paper bags, the pollution from production is 10 times that of the plastic bag production. On top of that, we use trees at a rapid pace. After paper bags, we went to plastic. Plastic does not decay and pollutes landfills and almost everywhere you can imagine. The side of highways for example. It inhibits growth of plants and can kill animals in some cases. Now as we move to the re-usable bags, it is a near guarantee that we will find something else that is wrong. Rather than fix the materials, I believe that we need to fix the concept behind the bags themselves, such as a portable grocery cart that you can use both at home or the grocery store.
Maybe next time, try adding in some statistics. It would be interesting the end difference in the amount of pollution each type of bag makes. A brief background of the issue would definitely help as well.
In the post Plastic Bag Ban plastic bag ban, the author does a good job of clearly making her argument on why she disagrees with the new ban on plastic ban. However, I disagree with her position because I think environmental protection is important, and this law is a simple, and effective in moving us in that direction.
The post stated several reasons why the ban is a problem, such as it is a problem for peoples health and there is an increase in theft, but I think those issues have solutions that can be easily resolved and don’t necessarily call for a halt in the halt of plastic bags.
Tamara was very informative in her facts about contamination from dirty reusable bags, but I believe people have the common sense to see a spill and clean it up. Like everything else, people need to be conscious about germs and contamination. We all know that washing our hands reduces our chances of illness, and that using good hygiene when cooking reduces our chances of food borne illnesses. It shouldn’t be difficult to keep our reusable bags clean. Also, it is not just food we are carrying. All shopping is done with these bags, so that issue would not even arise unless it is food. In that, I felt the post was not thorough.
Secondly, the problem for businesses the author claims is more theft. Businesses must rise to this occasion. For the sake of striving for a better future, businesses could easily implement better loss prevention policies to alleviate this problem. They should not rely on plastic bags to eliminate their theft.
Overall, I thought this post was good, well organized and to the point.
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