Posted on 02/24/2020 7:20:47 AM PST by karpov
Why do our political leaders want to take away our plastic bags and straws? This question is even more puzzling than a related one that I’ve been studying for decades: Why do they want us to recycle our garbage?
The two obsessions have some common roots, but the moral panic over plastic is especially perverse. The recycling movement had a superficial logic, at least at the outset. Municipal officials expected to save money by recycling trash instead of burying or burning it. Now that recycling has turned out to be ruinously expensive while achieving little or no environmental benefit, some local officials—the pragmatic ones, anyway—are once again sending trash straight to landfills and incinerators.
The plastic panic has never made any sense, and it’s intensifying even as evidence mounts that it’s not only a waste of money but also harmful to the environment, not to mention humans. It’s been a movement in search of a rationale for half a century. During the 1970s, environmentalists like Barry Commoner wanted the government to restrict the use of plastic because it was made from petroleum, which we needed to hoard because we would soon run out of it. When the “energy crisis” proved a false alarm, environmentalists looked for new reasons to panic.
They denounced plastic for not being biodegradable in landfills. They blamed it for littering the landscape, clogging sewer drains, and contributing to global warming. Plastic from our “throwaway society” was killing vast numbers of sea creatures, according to Blue Planet II, a 2017 BBC documentary series that became an international hit. Its depictions of sea turtles, dolphins, and whales in jeopardy prompted Queen Elizabeth II to ban plastic straws and bottles from the royal estates
(Excerpt) Read more at city-journal.org ...
Nothing comes without a ‘cost’. Even posters, rallies, and blogging against plastic have an environmental cost (paper, trash, travel, electricity, etc).
The global warming scare industry has HUGE environmental impact costs for all of their blather. If they wanted to stop polluting they’d shut the hell up.
The demonKKKrats’ America: banning plastic straws and bags while handing-out hypodermic needles, indicting the NRA as terrorists while allowing Antifa, BLM etc to riot in the streets, leaving Veterans homeless while giving free healthcare and college education to criminal illegal aliens. Plastic straws and bags? Heh.
In NYC we have an Italian market chain, Iavarone’s, which uses the sturdiest plastic bags around. They are now selling their stock in boxes of 1000 for $45. They can be reused. Are great for disposing of cat litter. I bought a box of a 1000. Hope to live long enough to use them all.
Political leaders?? No, just leftist liberal whack-jobs exercising their rabid desire to USE POWER TO TAKE THINGS AWAY from the free public.
Crazy people need something to focus on. Plastics works for them.
Use that oh so chic and relevant cloth bag to carry your gallon of Milk (in Plastic jug!), your bread (in plastic bag), your cheese (in individual plastic wraps), your meat (wrapped in plastic), Your condiments (in plastic bottles, oh and your ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY bottled water (in plastic of course).
Just keep this as a handy rule of thumb. It will help you judge the merit of various arguments on various subjects:
Everything every liberal says is a lie. Every single time.
There is a huge mass of discarded plastic in the middle of the Pacific ocean. The problem is in peoples’ actions - not allowing plastic articles to go into storm sewers, into rivers, and into the ocean.
Banning plastic bags will not solve the problem.
Oregon is full of them...crazies, that is
Here in Ct they made it law that people would have to pay 10 cents a bag. So people did what people do, and that is improvise. They just steal the grocery stores hand baskets.
No one says a word bout disposable diapers. By volume, I would guess that they are a much larger problem than anything else plastic.
Plastic grocery bags DO dissolve in less than 3 years. Cornstarch is in them now, and I have ones in my garage that are flaking apart.
Why not go back to paper bags? Here are a few reasons:
Making paper is a very polluting process.
Paper bags tear and get wet.
They cost more
They do not biodegrade in landfills where most trash ends up. Nothing does.
Plastic bags are made from natural gas, not oil (polyethylene), and we have more natural gas that we know what to do with.
If we burned our waste, as we really should, we could recover all the BTUs locked in the plastic and paper and turn it into energy.
bring your own reusable cloth bags is a common sense approach
A few years ago I remember reading that environmental groups gave up about trying to get people to not use disposable diapers. The convenience was just too great to not use them.
I’ve read several articles by this guy. He makes great well thought out arguments against recycling.
When we moved to Maryland, our town charged for trash by the bag but recycling was free, so we dumped a bunch of trash in the bin. I refused to allow my wife and kids to use water to wash out our trash.
Last year, they changed and issued us large rolling bins, one for trash and one for recycling. The recycling bin gets used a couple times a year, because it holds lots of leaves and yard waste. Otherwise, it site behind the house.
I refuse to play their stupid games.
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