Bag Ban Phase 2: All Retail Stores
by George Spyros, New York City, USA on 07.25.07
NYT reports on the efforts in the maritime city of Annapolis, Maryland to pass a bill aimed at protecting marine life and would ban plastic bags from all retail stores, not just from larger groceries and drugstores as is the case with the measure recently passed in San Francisco. Alexandra Cousteau, granddaughter of Jacques Cousteau and director of EarthEcho attended a public town meeting on Monday to support the bill aiming to help protect Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries, whose fish and birds often die after ingesting discarded plastic bags. Stores would be required to offer paper bags made from recycled material under the bill, which goes to a final City Council vote in October. While opponents attempt to argue their way out of that paper bag, saying such substitutes will raise both costs and fossil fuel use and pollution, Alderman Sam Shropshire the sponsor of the bill drops some knowledge:
To make 100 billion plastic checkout bags per year, which is how many we use in the U.S. each year, it takes 12 million barrels of oil. No oil is used to produce recycled paper checkout bags.
Additionally, a spokesman said the city planned to distribute reusable bags to residents by the fall. To accomplish that, the city is considering teaming with sail makers to use excess material that teenagers in a jobs program may sew into sacks. :: New York Times
Visit any major city in Europe and you'll note that almost everyone has a shoulder bag, string bag, backpack, or whatnot for groceries and other everyday purchases.
If they can do it so can we. Save oil, less waste, hey, I'm for it.
so i guess trees are still chopped down by hand and moved manually to a sawmill, and bag production facility not powered by electricity?
the fact is this. they use vehicles to move wood. vehicles use fossil fuels. production plants use electricity. most power plants are still coal powered. coal is a fossil fuel. even if you don't want to count coal, think of the fossil fuels used in transportation of coal, of the wood, of the paper, of the bags, and so on.
and then think of all the trees you have to cut down to make the paper.
meh. at least i recycle. i hope everyone else does too, at least a little bit.
"Visit any major city in Europe and you'll note that almost everyone has a shoulder bag, string bag, backpack, or whatnot for groceries and other everyday purchases."
Unfortunately in the US, so many people get a week to 3 weeks worth of groceries and trying to carry 200lbs of groceries and all the bags needed is difficult. Perhaps grocery stores should push for both shopping more often for fresher foods along with their reusable material bags. This could also help to cut down on the plastics, papers, and metals used in all the frozen and canned goods if people were buying fresher foods. It would also increase farmland income.
Maybe we should make littering penalties stricter so as not to introduce plastic bags into the waterways in the first place.....but, to dictate whether I can have paper or plastic?
Wasn't paper the anti-environment choice just a few years ago? Depends on if you're for the wildlife or the forests, I guess.
What about the millions of tons of coal used to make paper bags?
While it's probably true that recycled paper bags use less oil than plastic bags. They do use oil to transport the waste paper, power the plant that makes the bags and transport the bags to the stores. Paper plants also produce a list of dangerous chemicals which have to be carefully dealt with to prevent run off reaching the drinking water.
Again, recycled paper is still probably a better option than plastic bags. Presenting them as a holy grail environmental cost free item is just plain lying.
As Mr. Long noted, cloth bags are an even better option than either paper or plastic. It still takes oil to transport and create the bags, but you only transport them once, then they get re-used.
And just how does Alderman Sam think paper bags get produced and delivered? It most definitely takes oil (among other fossil fuels) to produce and deliver paper bags.
It takes gas to pick up the recyclable paper and deliver it to the paper recycler. The recycler uses energy (frequently produced by coal in the US) to make the paper and gas to deliver it to the bag producer. The bag producer uses energy to make the bag and gas to deliver it to the store. Paper bags are much heavier per unit of contained volume than plastic bags, so energy use and cost factors will substantially increase. But will it increase beyond the 12 million barrels of oil feedstock the plastic bags require?
Sure this may be better for the fish, and perhaps it is worthwhile endeavor. But don't use bogus energy efficiency justifications unless you have research to back it up.
"No oil is used to produce recycled paper checkout bags."
uh, it takes a LOT of energy to recycle paper, which comes from (wait for it...) oil. or coal, which is cheaper but dirtier for the environment.
trees are a renewable resource, while oil, coal, and soldiers lives to protect our reliance on these things are not. we should be using non-recycled paper bags, in my opinion, and all that wood should be coming from either domestic tree farms or tree farms in other countries that have laws against just going out and cutting down someone else's rainforest.
I disagree! Do not ban these bags - I use them for my trashcan and they work great - I don't have enough as it is due to the store's policy of trying to give you as few as possible
Being in Orlando, FL they are a little behind. I asked for paper at a local Publix and they looked at me like I just grew a horn in my forehead.
in Ireland in 2002 we brought in a 15c plastic bag levy for any bags that were bought and it has dramatically reduced the amount of plastic in the countryside and in towns and citys. plastic bags are a major source of problems from small scales (such as killing wildlife, looking terrible and not biodegrading) but also on the larger scales. If it takes 12 million barrels of oil just for the amount of of bags the US consumes, there is obviously going to be a much bigger number for the whole world put together in terms of using them, and especially since you guys have a good paper bag system (and always have) it must be a huge amount of oil being used worldwide. I say to push for a US levy similar to ours at least to be implemented
What a ridiculous statement and misleading statement. "No oil is used to produced recycled paper checkout bags." Recycling is a manufacturing process. Any process that uses energy in this country is likely contributing to global warming as over 50% of our electricity comes from coal... Sure, coal ain't oil, but it's just as bad/worse.
Why not use re-usable bags as qouted;
"Visit any major city in Europe and you'll note that almost everyone has a shoulder bag, string bag, backpack, or whatnot for groceries and other everyday purchases."
This saves the agruement here on coal etc. I use re-usable bag and sure from time to time I forget them and use a plastic which I then use as a bin liner. Re-usable bags are also great when you are popping over to a BBQ to carry your treats etc in.
Stop having children. End of controversy.
There are issues with permanent fabric bags as well. Vermin and disease may well be lugged into a super market in fabric bags. It might be kind to the environment but it might also have far reaching health effects. As far as selling fresh foods then we would just be begging for it. What kind of packages would we need to keep fish from oozing into a permanent bag or other obnoxious food by products?
TreeHugger? Doesn't this law adversely affect trees in a very direct way? Sure they use less oil, but at the expense of trees.
I always re-use my (paper) grocery bags as trash & recycling bags. I'd be more than willing to use grocery totes, except that I'm forced to purchase plastic trash can liners, which, to me, seems counter-intuitive.
You folks who use totes, what do you do about garbage bags? Does anyone have any suggestions on what I could do?
bags r baaaaaad, naughty