July 1st Vermont Law Makes New Hampshire Unique in all of New England (Again!) - Granite Grok

July 1st Vermont Law Makes New Hampshire Unique in all of New England (Again!)

Reusable Grocery bags have a larger carbon footprint than thin-film plastic bags, but Greens demand we switch. They also spread deadly diseases and bacteria from food (outside the current hysteria I’ve dubbed virus-socialism). All of which Vermont has decided to ignore.


Related: NH Dems Proposed NH Bag Ban Created 52 Million More Pounds of Less Environmentally Friendly Waste in California


The Green Mountain State passed a ban on single-use plastic bags that begins July 1st, and they mean to enforce it.

Vermont’s Agency of Natural Resources and Department of Environmental Conservation saw no need to change or postpone the ban on plastic bags, saying reusable bags can be used safely and are not any more of a risk than other surfaces customers and employees touch in retail transactions, said Secretary Julie Moore.

Maine passed a similar bag-ban but delayed enforcement until next January because of virus-socialism, but they all have the laws on the books so New Hampshire is the only point of sanity on this issue left in New England.

Assuming Governor Sununu does not flake out, (the left pushes plastic bag bans every year) another New Hampshire Advantage could rise. 

No Sales tax, cheaper sin-taxes, fewer bans on things, and you don’t have to carry your own bags everywhere when you shop. Bags that to quote researcher Charles Gerba represent “a serious threat to public health.” And as we’ve learned recently, Public Health Trumps everything. 

If that’s even half-true, the health risks from single-use bags alone far outweigh any imagined negatives for thin-film plastic.

The researchers, led by Ryan Sinclair of the Loma Linda University School of Public Health, sent shoppers into three California grocery stores carrying polypropylene plastic tote bags that had been sprayed with a harmless surrogate of a virus.

After the shoppers bought groceries and checked out, the researchers found sufficiently high traces of the surrogate to risk transmission on the hands of the shoppers and checkout clerks, as well as on many surfaces touched by the shoppers, including packaged food, unpackaged produce, shopping carts, checkout counters, and the touch screens used to pay for groceries.

People who get ill produce an even larger carbon-footprint for treating related illnesses.

Given the fearmongering over COVID-19, how could anyone that invented parrotted these fears put lives at risk with reusable bags?

Well, there is a solution to the contamination issue. It’s called frequent laundering. Sure, that uses energy, water (whose treatment uses energy), and laundry detergent (increased chemicals in the waste-water stream). All things that further expand the carbon footprint, but carbon no longer matters when it runs afoul of some other nutty act of virtue signaling.

As not above, the actual physical carbon footprint of “reusable bags” from production and disposal is monumentally higher, and it’s not the sort of monument you can just pull down and graffiti. It is huge. Some bags would need to be used for decades to produce less CO2 from manufacture and disposal to be less destructive (using Green rules) than using thin-film bags without adding int he necessary sanitation stressors on our fragile biosphere.

New Hampshire, one of the healthiest states in the NorthEast will be more so while holding back stupid leftism, optimizing cost and convenience, and helping you lower your carbon footprint every time you shop in the Granite State.

Now, if we could get them to stop saying recycling is better for the planet because it’s not.

Note: Many New England states still have reusable bag bans in place thanks to the virus socialism but would otherwise enforce their existing plastic shopping bag bans. 

>