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.
Governor Sununu issues a tweet warning of an impending emergency order that bans shopping bags. No, not plastic bags like the left has been clamoring for – but reusable shopping bags.
When the Democrats took the majority in Concord, they crammed every far-left policy into the legislative hopper. One of their priorities, certainly not anyone else’s, was a ban on so-called single-use plastic bags.
As New Hampshire’s Lefty-Majority pushes to inconvenience everyone to satisfy their environmental virtue-signaling insecurities, Oklahoma is protecting small-business and consumer choice. Gov. Kevin Stitt just signed a bill that prohibits towns from bans or fees for single-use plastics.
With the New Hampshire Democrat-lead Legislature’s war on plastic well-underway, (straws here, bags here) the People Republic of Portsmouth is warming up their war on convenience. Plastic bag bans are a frequent flyer in Portsmouth but these were illegal efforts. With new permissions looming from State Democrats, Portsmouth is getting ready to ban plastic bags, straws, and foam containers.
The business of government in the hands of a Democrat majority is to legislate away convenient, affordable, useful, free-market solutions (among other things). If it works for you, it doesn’t work for them. Take plastic shopping bags.
“Our assumptions about what is environmentally friendly don’t always stand up to scrutiny.”
Recent research by the Ministry of Environment and Food in Denmark, published by the DEPA (Denmark Environmental Protection Agency), – Executive summary in English begins on page 13 – reinforces claims I’ve made here for years. The replacement for plastic shopping bags are worse for the environment.
Which is the carrier bag providing the lowest environmental impacts? In general, with regards to production and disposal, LDPE carrier bags, which are the bags that are always available for purchase in Danish supermarkets, are the carriers providing the overall lowest environmental impacts for most environmental indicators (Table III).
Monday we reported on an attempt by elements in the City of Portsmouth to advance another plastic bag ban. Yesterday, the Portsmouth City Council postponed a vote on the ban pending review by the City Manager.
It is unclear what the city manager can do. There is no legislative support or enabling legislation. Correspondent Kimberly Haas from the Union Leader adds that the city reached out to the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services and the Waste Management Division but could not get anyone to take a favorable position. The State attorney general’s office is not biting either.
No one is prepared to give Portsmouth a leg to stand on, but out-of-State interests won’t let that stop them.
Portsmouth has a Blue Ribbon Committee on Sustainable Practices, and like any good committee, it must forever practice things that sustain the committee. To that end, the busybodies have identified the next great environmental evil. Single-use plastic bags are bad for Portsmouth (and the world!).
If ever you needed proof that some celebrities are dopes then the recent effort by a cast of millionaire limousine liberals to help pass a state wide bag ban in California should serve. No, it’s not a bill to require plastic surgery, it would make the misnamed single use plastic grocery bag extinct across the left-coast utopia. But despite Hollywood has-been Bette Midler leading the charge the bill fell three-votes short in the state legislature.
Midler, who prefers the state force consumers to use the bacteria collecting, non-recyclable, foreign made “reusable” bags, was less than pleased by the result.
Thankfully no one was hurt but talk about an eye opener.
Fire Lt. Kenneth Vincent said with the increase in people using “green” cleaning products, the number of chemical combustion fires is on the rise.
Those are two words that should make any Birkenstock wearing, free-trade-latte-drinking-tree-hugging-Kashi-eating-granola junkie shudder – ‘chemical fire.’
That can’t be good for the environment, right?
What are the unidentified costs of banning disposable shopping bags? I’ve been speculating for months. In this video PERC Lone Mountain Fellow Jonathan Klick argues that the presence of harmful bacteria (in reusable grocery bags whose use is mandated after plastic bag bans are put in place) creates a health cost that has not been considered. (Hey…I know I’m just chopped liver but I considered it. a few months ago ‘What could go wrong- LA Set to Ban Paper and Plastic.’)
And here, and here, and here, and here…
Mr. Klick points out that about half the reusable bags of shoppers heading in for more groceries have some form of contamination, and that the human cost could be a doubling in the number of cases of food borne illness in humans and even death as a result.
McAllen Texas rests in the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas, right along the border with Mexico. And for now, at least, McAllen is not hopping on the plastic bag ban train to nowhere.
If you have not been following my recent (bizarre and persistent) interest in this annoy environmental stupidity, towns and cities all over the US are banning what are called “single use” plastic grocery bags (which my family re-uses for all kinds of things so single use is misleading). The Los Angels California bag ban was what caught my attention–and Lord knows if those moon-bats are on board with it something must be wrong; and there was, or actually is something very wrong. See “What could go wrong?“, ‘Reusable bags spread norovirus’, and “Reusable bags may be worse for the Environment.”
Unfortunately, most of the discussion about bag bans is one-sided. Or should I say left-sided.
Nothing says freedom like telling your citizens or local businesses what to do. But Seattle is not exactly a bastion of Freedom and liberty. And today is no different.
The Seattle City Council has voted to ban plastic grocery bags.
This is another win by so-called environmental groups that claim the bags fill up landfills or in the case of Seattle, also end up in the water and threaten wildlife. There is no concrete evidence that if the plastic gets in the water it does any actual harm, but nothing else about being an environmentalist is based on concrete anything (including concrete) so why let that deter the assumptions. It’s for everyone’s good, right?
Wrong.
Take electric cars. The process of making the batteries is such a strain on the environment that the average electric car would need to run well beyond its life expectancy for any perceived benefit to outweigh the environmental costs associated with its manufacture. Wind and Solar farms likewise have costs (and this was before Democrats wasted trillions on failing companies that failed anyway) that seriously challenge the so-called benefits. So is it any surprise that plastic shopping bag bans are no different?
This is almost a palate cleanser, but then it is not. Apparently, the LA plastic bag ban was motivated by celebrity goobers with green thumbs.
The Los Angeles city council voted 13-1 to ban plastic shopping bags in grocery stores. There is a lengthy review and implementation process to follow but if all goes to plan within about 10-12 months the ban will be in force. Paper bags will still be available for a ten cent fee. I like … Read more
Democrats don’t think things through. (Progressive Republicans are no different, to be fair.) They enact policies in response to the echo chamber of voices in their ideologically isolationist heads, all the things Edmund Burke warned us against centuries ago. The result is almost always bureaucratic nonsense, another small loss of freedom, massive expense with little or no gain, followed by a parade of newer and more expensive (and intrusive) policies to “correct” the first.
The progressive Darth Vader might say of such people, “The urge to meddle is strong with this one.”
So what could go wrong if the Los Angeles City Council decided to ban all paper and plastic bags from Supermarket checkouts?