What an exellent website! It's about time. Attempts by municipalities and "progressive" stores to ban plastic bags are misguided. Well-intentioned, perhaps, but irrational. Replacing plastic bags with paper bags will only result in more pollution, not less, as paper bags require more energy to manufacture and more fuel to transport. You can expect air pollution to worsen in cities, as more trucks emit more pollutants delivering heavier paper bags.
Recycled paper bags are even worse than virgin paper bags, since the shorter fibers in recycled paper are weaker than virgin paper pulp, so manufacturers have to make them even thicker and heavier to be as strong. Greener? Not so!
Plastic bags don't decompose in a landfill? Why does that matter? Paper bags don't decompose either. Landfills are designed to entomb their contents, they're not compost piles.
Americans want choice, we don't want Super-Nannies telling us what to do, especially when the Super-Nannies are unschooled in science, economics, air pollution and transportation issues. This website gets it right: stores should offer paper and plastic, and give customers 5 cents back when they use their own reusable bag. Incentives, not bans and fees.
"This website gets it right: stores should offer paper and plastic, and give customers 5 cents back when they use their own reusable bag. Incentives, not bans and fees. "
Good, but the lame store here only give you a miserly 2 or 3 cent credit.
Posted by: ScottoM | August 07, 2008 at 12:03 AM