Free Republic

Recently, many politicians were in such a hurry to ban plastic bags. California and Hawaii banned them, then New York. Then Oregon, Connecticut, Maine and Vermont passed laws against them. More than 400 cities did, too. Why? Because plastic bags are evil, didn't you know? "Look at the damage done by plastic bags! It is everywhere!" complained New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. A Washington state senator cited "videos of animals choked by plastics, tangled in garbage!" So what should we use instead of plastic? Cloth bags! They're reusable! "Certainly the way to go!" said New Jersey's assembly speaker. But now,...

Here’s where you can stuff your plastic-bag ban. New Yorkers were forced to begin grappling with a new shopping reality Sunday as the state’s ban on plastic shopping bags kicked in — and not many people were happy about it. “I think it’s ridiculous,” letter-carrier Scott Kimmel, 56, said while shopping at the Whitestone Target in College Point, Queens. “I understand about ‘conserve, take care of the environment,’ but c’mon!” About half the shoppers seen by The Post on the first day of the bag ban, including Kimmel, were compensating by bringing their own bags from home, while another quarter...

Plastic bag manufacturers on Friday passed their first hurdle in their effort to delay and eventually repeal California’s new ban on single-use plastic shopping bags before it takes effect. The office of Attorney General Kamala Harris cleared the way for the groups to begin collecting signatures for a referendum vote on the ban on the November 2016 ballot. Last week, Gov. Jerry Brown signed the first statewide ban on plastic bags, citing a “torrent” of plastic pollution in parks and waterways. It followed one of the fiercest legislative battles of the year, pitting bag makers against environmentalists. …

The high cost of living in California just got a bit higher as Governor Jerry Brown heeded the call of environmental activists and Democratic Party leadership in signing a statewide anti-consumer plastic bag ban. The law forbids retailers from providing free plastic bag packaging to shoppers, forcing the consumer to pay for either paper or (yes) plastic bags or providing their own means of transport for groceries, sundries or other items purchased throughout the state. While environmental groups and the grocery industry hailed the decision, the law has been criticized by consumer groups and manufactures who expressed concerns on the added...

Scientists are desperately scrambling to face the newest “global change” problem: plastic in the ocean. A recent expedition involving over 400 scientists from around the world has discovered that there is plastic in ALL of the world’s oceans. Really. ALL of them. Oceans, not scientists. “The findings reveal that plastic pollution is far more widespread than first thought,” says Science World Report. “Rather than being in isolated pockets of the ocean, it's a global problem. It's clear that steps need to be taken in order to reduce the amount of plastic waste currently winding up in our world's oceans. A...

Many people question whether or not bureaucrats care about or have common sense. The best example of this is the unending debate on reusable bags and plastic bag bans. Time after time, we’ve seen the truth that bag bans and mandated usage of reusable bags does next to nothing to boost the environment. No, they kill jobs and raise costs for no good reason. Most recently, an Edelman Berland study sought to examine how frequently so-called reusable bags were actually used. According to the study, some 61 percent of respondents stated that though they preferred the reusable option, they...

Both sides of the political debate think the other is way off in their thought patterns. The Left loves to repeat their mantra that the Right is ignorant of science. Unfortunately, it proves out that the left frequently blindly adheres to a policy developed to forward their agenda and then shames everyone else into myopically following their policies or asserts they are Neanderthals. This is the exact pattern they have followed in attempting to spread a ban of plastic bags at retailers. I first became interested in this when I saw the burgeoning flock of do-gooders coming to the grocery...

San Francisco passed America's first ban on plastic bags in chain groceries and drugstores in 2007. In a research paper for the Institute for Law and Economics, law professors Jonathan Klick and Joshua Wright crunched state and federal data on emergency room admissions and food-borne illness deaths and figured that the San Francisco ban "led to an increase in infections immediately upon implementation." They found a 46 percent rise in food-borne illness deaths. The bottom line: "Our results suggest that the San Francisco ban led to, conservatively, 5.4 annual additional deaths." So is San Francisco's bag ban a killer? Conceivably,...

CORPUS CHRISTI — Littering the landscape with plastic shopping bags is indeed a problem. The proposed solution — banning them — doesn't address the problem at its source, which is the people doing the littering. A bag ban only removes bags from their arsenal, much like a ban on so-called "assault" rifles can change the cosmetics of a law-abiding gun owner's home arsenal. For an inanimate object, the plastic bag, like the assault rifle, has attained quite a reputation for villainy. Truth is, its penchant for premeditated environmental depredation is overblown. Lift an empty one to appreciate the tininess of...

By American Statesman staff | Tuesday, January 22, 2008, 10:07 AM Whole Foods Market Inc. will eliminate plastic bags at all of its 270 stores in the United States, Canada and England by April 22, Earth Day. The initiative expands on a pilot project that began recently in Austin, San Francisco and Toronto. The company said it’s the first supermarket chain to launch such an ambitious program. Although most plastic bags are recyclable, almost all of them end up in landfills or as trash on roadsides and beaches. Environmental groups say it takes more than 1,000 years for the bags...

Bag the Bags Coalition will gather petition signatures, raise money for canvas bag giveaway By Sarah Coppola AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF Tuesday, September 25, 2007 Plastic bags will no longer be an option at most Austin checkout counters if a group of residents gets its way. The Bag the Bags Coalition began a campaign Monday to stop grocery stores and large retailers from offering petroleum-based plastic shopping bags. It wants stores to offer canvas bags, recycled paper bags or compostable plastic bags instead. The coalition will gather petition signatures to show the City Council that there is support for a ban. Also,...