San Francisco to Ban Plastic Shopping Bags
April 13, 2007
Progress!
It’s about time something like this happened:
San Francisco is banning plastic shopping bags that are made with petroleum products. The move is predicted to save 450,000 gallons of oil per year and eliminate 1,400 tons of waste otherwise sent to landfills. Just imagine if this caught on in other major cities…
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/03/27/environment.baggs.reut/index.html
Like the article says, it’s not at all uncommon practice in other countries to ban or at least discourage the use of plastic bags by charging for them. When I spent a semester in Ireland, this was just the case. Rather than shell out extra money for plastic bags, I brought along my hiking pack and carried my groceries the mile to my dorm on my back each week. It was a good arrangement for both parties–it provided extra exercise for an otherwise Guinness-imbibing student, and cut back on a wasteful and largely useless product. (Unless you consider the good they can do when placed securely over the heads of idiots. Hmm, shouldn’t have said that…)
Entry Filed under: awareness, conservation, consumerism, ecology, energy, environment, food, global warming. .
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1.
adkgirl06 | April 13, 2007 at 1:51 am
Count_Brass, Toronto, Canada; March 28 7:31pm:
How about a giant garbage bag? http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2007/03/72913 I hate having grocery bags lying around – I don’t generate enough garbage to use them up as garbage bags, so I try to reuse them at the stores when possible.
2.
adkgirl06 | April 13, 2007 at 1:51 am
DasG11b, Norcross, Georgia, United States; March 28 7:46pm:
Eek. More media environmentalism.
Personally, I use every plastic grocery bag I get as a trash bag… and I save a bundle on Glad products (also petrol based). If I didn’t have them, I’d just end up buying more Glad bags, which will end up in landfills… and given that Glad bags hold more but are generally of a greater thickness, the same (or more) petroleum is going to go to waste and end up in the landfill. It’s just going to cost me money to do it, instead of using the bags I get for free.
Vote for me, I have great environmental ideas… if you don’t think about them too much.
3.
adkgirl06 | April 13, 2007 at 1:52 am
indybritt12, Indianapolis, Indiana, United States; March 28 7:50pm:
This is great. Hopefully this will spread. Around here in Indiana a lot of stores have plastic bag recycling at their stores. Thanks for posting this.
4.
adkgirl06 | April 13, 2007 at 1:53 am
Did_I_do_that, Dayton, Ohio, United States; March 28 8:01pm:
Locally… Kroger cut down on the plastic content of the packaging on many of their products. Some have switched to aluminum foil. I’m still curious about the environmental cost of recycling aluminum vs. recycling plastic.
More news.. A Ford truck plant in Michigan uses the fumes from the paint process to produce 55kW/hr. of electricity.
5.
adkgirl06 | April 13, 2007 at 1:53 am
DasG11b, Norcross, Georgia, United States; March 28 8:01pm:
Also, anyone worried about oil consumption should definitely check into all the OTHER things we use it for. It’s not just at the gas pump…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum_product
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic#Price.2C_environment.2C_and_the_future
6.
adkgirl06 | April 13, 2007 at 1:53 am
March 28 8:34pm:
The grocery bags for garbage bags is an idea of pure brilliance–my grandma does it too. (I’ll also admit I use ‘em to line my desk trash bin)
7.
adkgirl06 | April 13, 2007 at 1:54 am
gdnpty,Charlotte, North Carolina, United States; March 28 8:39pm:
Man, just last night I was at walmart buying a jug of decent water and I decided to pick up a little pocket hand sanitizer at the checkout because I’m susceptible to impulse buys and before I had even noticed the checkout lady had put it in a plastic bag with a capacity certainally exceeding one hundred times the volume of this little sqeeze bottle. What the christ, the thing is going straight into my pocket, do you really need to give me this extra piece of trash that I am going to simply ball up and throw out at first opportunity? I also run into this grocery shopping when I’m on my bike — everything is going straight into my backpack but half the time it gets packaged in thin plastic bags first…especially at the asian market where they don’t understand much english and they bag everything like well-calibrated bagging machines. Also they’re more paranoid about me stealing stuff since (oh noes!) I have a backpack on in their store. Heedless waste just isn’t my bag. Oh wow that was bad.