The Democrat mantra is, hey, let’s force you to behave the way we demand and then claim it will make the world better. What if it actually made things worse? What if the regulatory demands they want for plastics actually exacerbate the problem they claim they will fix?
Related: Proposed Plastic Bans – When the ‘Solution’ is Worse Than the “Problem”
They say they want to remove single-use plastics from the waste stream. Save the oceans. Blah, Blah, Blah.
Much like their emissions reduction rants, their problem with plastic (and if we’re honest, there isn’t one) can only be “solved” if they move to China or India and get elected to regulate things there.
No such luck. Their goal is to do meaningless things that inconvenience us here, in New Hampshire, “with solutions that make matters worse.”
At the tip of the pointless spear, we have HB1472. It does not prohibit businesses from having plastic straws or providing them if requested, and it allows for self-serve dispensers. In other words, it does nothing except create a gateway bill.
Then there is HB1564, also passed by House Democrats. This would prohibit “the use of polystyrene foam in food service establishments.” A bill with several costs, none of them good.
“…the Department would have to hire additional staff to meet the obligations in the bill. The Department assumes it will need an additional Program Specialist III position at an annual cost of $44,000 to $48,000 beginning in fiscal year 2022. Because of a number of variables, the Department is unable to accurately calculate complete costs or impacts.
Wait! There’s more!
There may also be indeterminate costs to food service businesses, including those owned and operated by the State, associated with procuring alternative food service ware. The Department states it is not possible to estimate the impact to either county or local governments.”
It will add bureaucratic costs, and operating costs to businesses, all passed down to you, and then there is the biggest cost that is never mentioned.
- Plastics and styrene have much lower front and back-end carbon footprints (if that matters to you).
- They are easier to recycle, and recycling them has a lower carbon footprint.
- Non-recycled waste stream costs are lower than paper or paperboard replacements.
- And, they weigh about 80% less than the paper substitutes.
Why would that matter? Shipping and transportation “carbon costs” are higher. The amount of carbon emitted to move them from A to B to C.
We’ve written scores of articles about how bad the forced shift from plastic to paper is on GraniteGrok.com, but let’s look to the not-so-Conservatarian UK Guardian for more evidence. Emphasis, mine.
…when considered over the entire life of the packaging, paper and cardboard embody far more greenhouse gases than their plastic equivalents. Paper products take substantial amounts of energy to make. Crushing a tree down into small fibres, mixing the wood pulp into a slurry and then passing the wet mass through huge rollers cannot be done without use of enormous quantities of power. Making paper and cardboard is almost certainly the third-largest industrial use of energy on the planet. By contrast, plastic is light, durable and its manufacture is generally not particularly energy-intensive – at least by comparison to paper. A second concern is that many paper and cardboard products, probably including Riverford boxes, end up in local authority landfill, where they rot down anaerobically, creating the greenhouse gas methane in the process. Plastic, as is well known, doesn’t rot and sequesters its carbon for ever.
As I am so fond of noting, Democrats destroy everything they touch. Why would the planet be any different?