Democrats everywhere have a list of things. Once elected, appointed, or hired into the bureaucracy, the job is to check the boxes even if they make no sense or contradict the stated policy goal. And none of them make any sense, and all of them contradict the advertised outcome.
The actual objective is always the opposite of the stated objective.
One example we’ve visited on these pages from time to time is so-called single-use plastics. The Left’s political theater is great fun, but their science is all backward, and this has come to a head in Canada, where the nation banned single-use plastics (bags, straws, etc.) at the end of 2022. Cities like Portsmouth, New Hampshire, are constantly looking for a way to do this locally, so we’ve covered the subject at length.
Up there in the Great White North, environmentalists who likely lobbied for the Canadian law are sounding an alarm we’ve rung for years. You can’t just replace single-use plastics with single-use paper. Why? A bigger carbon footprint: and single-use paper is worse for the environment. But there’s nowhere else to go.
- To make exponentially more pulp for paper and paperboard products, you’ll need to cut more timber.
- Fewer trees impact CO2 absorption and oxygen generation.
- “The Netherlands-based and UN-backed Institute for Water Education says it can take anywhere from two to 13 liters (3.4Gal) of water to make a standard piece of paper.”
- “When paper, or any organic material, ends up in our landfill and decomposes, methane is released, which is so much worse for the environment.”
Issues we’ve noted on these pages in the past include,
- 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 for paper or paperboard replacements.
- They weigh about 80% less than 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.).
And,
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.
Recycling itself has been called a bad idea that contradicts the stated goals.
It’s been documented and reported for close to two decades. Look it up. The energy wasted to clean recyclables before you ‘recycle them?’ The energy needed to recycle into a reusable form for glass, cardboard, paper, and metal is carbon intensive. Trucks, facilities, power, people, and process all consume more energy than just burying the stuff in the ground. Which is where it came from, if not in that form.
All that plastic pouring into the oceans in Asia is a product of the movement (and offshoring recycling) itself, whose virtue signal has led activists and policymakers to reach back into the past for a more energy intense, environmentally unfriendly alternative. Paper. But paper isn’t better for the environment.
Banning single-use plastic is a stupid idea, but it is one of those checkboxes I mentioned. Environmental science doesn’t matter. Nor does the cost. A mad, broad move to paper will not just make the packaging cost more (and the stuff in it), it will impact the timber market and everything that relies on it, passed down to consumers. The economics will force you to have and do less, and that’s where Canada is headed.
We could thank them for the lesson, but Libs don’t learn lessons like that because the actual objective is always the opposite of the stated objective. If you need another example, take an honest look at wind, solar, EVs, and net zero.
Exit Question: Shouldn’t these new containers bear a warning label”? “This product created more CO2 to make than plastic, will require more CO2 to recycle than plastic, and will release significant amounts of methane if composted or placed in the waste stream.”
HT | CTV News
