Food for Thought
Over the past 60-plus years since World War II, we have become the throwaway society. Our landscape is littered with plastic and paper wrappers, bags, bottles, containers, etc., and our garbage dumps are filled to the brim with the same. Californians use 50 million plastic bags every day, around 18 billion each year, which accounts for more than 60 percent of the state’s litter. Of course, the main reason plastic is used is its low cost as a packaging material for industry and retail stores, and there is no arguing with its convenience factor. However, plastic waste is responsible for a long list of costly environmental problems, including the clogging of water and waste systems and the death of wildlife. In addition, plastic is manufactured from oil, takes thousands of years to break down and much of it is not recyclable. At every step of the way from manufacture to end-of-use, plastic bags and containers constitute a major source of pollution.
The out-of-control litter from plastic materials is a worldwide problem and many countries, regions and cities are taking action in an attempt to reduce usage of plastic (and non-recyclable paper) bags that are used once, often for only a few seconds, and then cast away without any thought or concern for the environmental damage they cause. One solution that has worked is taxing plastic bags, as they have done in Ireland where there has been a marked decrease in litter and environmental damage. Some cities, San Francisco included, have banned them. Locally, San Jose and Sunnyvale are considering a similar ban, against formidable opposition from some trade organizations, such as the California Grocers Association.
This week, the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors decided to study the possibility of banning plastic bags in the unincorporated parts of the county in hopes that the county’s cities will be inspired to follow suit. While I applaud this effort to raise awareness of the problem, I have my doubts as to the effectiveness of an attempted ban at this level. Even if the ban goes county wide, what about the fact that the adjacent counties have no such regulation? What about people passing through tossing their litter out of their car windows on the freeways. Taking all of the many factors into consideration, isn’t this problem too big to attack at the county or city level?
What is needed, at the very least, is a statewide program that is part of a concerted national effort. We need to attack the root of the problem—the throwaway society. To stop this worsening situation, we need to change the collective state of mind that allows it to happen. In league with the rapid phasing out of unnecessary plastic products, we need to confront and alter the habits of the nation. Congress, schools and the media need to get involved, and through a combination of legislation, awareness and education, we can easily change over to reusable, biodegradable, fully-recyclable bags and containers made from materials that do not have anywhere near the ruinous environmental impact of plastic.
Why do so many people have this need for government to “alter the habits of the nation” as Jack and many other have stated?
Using the gov’t to control other people (even for a good cause) seems like a path to disaster.
Look at the issues we’ve heard about lately…
-What bags we use for groceries
-What kind of food we eat
-What trees are cut down
-Building restrictions
Imagine the list we could create if we took a deeper look.
I wish advocates of these causes would take it upon themselves to convince people to join them and donate the time/money/effort thats needed to make an impact….as opposed to lobbying for laws that force people to support their cause.
Joe #2
You are mis-stating what I said which is this:
Legislation alone, especially at the local level, would be ineffective. Education and awareness of the issue will also be necessary to alter the habits of Americans. We will solve this problem when the individuals in our society understand their contribution to the problem and take responsibility to act accordingly. In order to accomplish this, we need statewide and national programs with a three-part strategy. Make Americans aware of the environmental damage we are doing with our use of plastic, educate citizens as to the alternatives and to get us to stop our throwawy behavior, and legislate to stop production of harmful products that will no longer be necessary.
Jack,
How did I mis-state you?
Didn’t you just re-iterate that you want national education programs and legislation to alter people’s habits?
I guess if you’re proposing this without using the public’s money, or in the public school system, then I did. But I suspect that is not the case. Again, I support the cause, but certainly not the process.
There must be something in the air in California, or something about segments of its population, that causes such an incredible amount of litter in this state. From my travels over decades, California’s incredible litter problem is an anomaly.
I have visited a couple of dozen states, and there is virtually no litter as compared to California. For instance, two years running I landed in Charlotte airport and was driven to Pinehurst, a trip of about 90 minutes one way. On those four segments, I saw AT MOST 12 pieces of litter along the highway. Same thing from Myrtle Beach to Pawley’s Island, to Charlotte to Savannah. Same thing Albuquerque to Santa Fe to Taos. No frickin’ litter. What’s up with Californians? What a bunch of slobs we appear to be.
People in other states don’t litter like Californians do. I have no explanation for that phenomenon, but it’s clear to me that it exists.
Same thing in Western Europe—not much litter; and Costa Rica, and Argentina, and Chile, all of which I have visited within the last year.
The fact that the Bay Area is so litter-laden astounds me, in light of the fact that we seemingly have a very environmentally conscious community; well, part of the community, anyway. So, what’s with the rest of the folks who live here?
Jack #8,
I don’t necessarily disagree with you on the topic of plastic bags. What I find annoying is the leftist habit of choosing for the rest of us the causes that they think we should all have our government devote it’s attention to. There are plenty of areas in which I, John Galt, wish people would alter their behavior but it would be presumptuous to propose legislation to achieve my goals.
Jack, I sense that your objection to plastic bags is particularly strong partly because you see them as a symbol of the out-of-control-consumerism that is rampant in our society. Well, our City Government, with it’s unslakable thirst for more retail tax revenue, is the biggest promoter of that consumerism. So here we are again in the position of asking our Government to solve the very problem that it is creating.
I recently toured a state of the art recycling facility in Timaru, New Zealand and the the tourguide really emphasized the problematic nature of plastic bags. However, I don’t recall just why it is that they are difficult to recycle. Do you know?
Village Blacksmith, whenever Mrs. Galt and I are walking around one of our waterways, we go out of our way to retrieve stray pieces of monofilament. Once I waded in to undo a turtle that was tangled up and another time Mrs. Galt rescued a Lesser Grebe.
I’m not a fisherman. I don’t understand the pleasure that people get from fishing. But I would never seek a law banning the use of monofilament. The best way of attacking these problems is not from on high with bureaucracies, programs, and legislation. It is to attack them from the grass roots level with people talking to one another and exchanging ideas. Things might not happen as quickly as we’d like but eventually the right message will get through.
How about a new cabinet position “Secretary of Plastic Bags” to extricate us from this plastic bag quagmire that we find ourselves in?
Or would a Czar be enough to lead us from our darkest hour of plastic bags?
Plastic Bag Czar?
Lightbulb Czar?
Fast Food Czar?
Low Tire Pressure Czar?
Cigarette Czar?
Kid Spanking Czar?
Private Jet Czar?
One thing’s for certain, nothing less than the sparkling legislation that we’ve come to expect from our most wise and noble congress accompanied by a massive government program can solve these crisis.
Joe Average, I feel your pain. Trying to engage these lefties in a meaningful dialogue is an exercise in futility.
Suffice it to say that they truly do know what’s best for all of us and they don’t care to hear what you and I think.
Often I chock up their reticence to the possibility that they might not be looking at the posts, but in this case the guy you’re trying to reason with RUNS the site!
Go figure.
Well, Joe, how about this:
These are habits that need to be altered. There is absolutely no good reason for plastic bags to be in use. Please, give me ONE. They’re impossible to recycle and cost us to create. Pray tell, are you a plastic bag industry lobbyist? Is it impossible to see the damage that these bags and other unnecessary packaging create in our environment?
Perhaps you don’t care about the planet that you leave your kids (sounds like it, gee, how dare we think about the kind of trees we cut down – or where we build our buildings!), but the rest of us do. Jack is absolutely right in that we need to change our habits fast, and particularly stupid useless habits like using a flipping plastic bag to take goods from one place to another for a total time of a few minutes when a paper or better yet, cloth bag, will do just as well.
John Galt,
If you lived in a third world country, you’d no doubt understand the art of knowing how to catch a fish as a means of life support.
Be realistic. This world is changing. The way we are headed, there may not be any species to sustain us in the event of a catastrofic situation.
I’ve taught my children the art of being self sufficient. One week a year I’d take them to Lower Klamath / Tule Lake to hunt ducks and geese in the dead of winter. They made snow men out side the old tent with a shepherder’s stove and there we cooked up some fine food. Gathering field onions and Tule Lake potatos. Now they too want their children to experience and learn the ways of our ancesters.
Once you learn the ways of our wild life, you will work that much harder to ensure that the species live and multiply.
Safeway may be there for you and your wife, but what about the next generation who may not have Safeway convienently near by. Remember that, that is your responcibility as a parent.
Jack is right on in expressing his feeling about the way we are headed. The same people that polute and recklessly litter our water ways are the same people that live and work in our communities.
Join Ducks Unlimited, donate to Sempervirens Fund, volenteer with Friends of the Guadalupe. Get involved. I spent 20 years with Sempervirens Fund as a board member, Why? Buying habitat for Steelhead and Salmon, Marble Murelets. Saving the forest for my great great great grand children to walk amounst these magnificent living monuments and be enchanted with what God gave to us to love and understand.
Have great week end. See your out on the trail!
The Village Black Smith
But plastic bags are SO USEFUL.
Seriously—best invention EVER.
I’m going to put my money on technology. Either a way to collect/recycle/destroy the existing technology, or replace existing plastic bags with something that does biodegrade reasonably, predictably, and in a stable fashion. And this, of course, goes for all packaging. There are some science fiction stories that address this—microscopic nanobots that eat plastic based on how old it is, etc.
John #5
When will you be supplying your part of the “meaningful dialogue” that you want to “engage” in? If your (and Joe’s) idea of “reasoning” with “lefties” is simply asserting that government shouldn’t partcipate in solving this problem, then OK, we get it. You would rather see plastic stacked up to the moon. What else is there to say?
#10
There are plenty of areas in which I, John Galt, wish people would alter their behavior but it would be presumptuous to propose legislation to achieve my goals.
If someone’s behavior is negatively affecting society then it is the obligation of government to alter, or stop, that behavior.
I am fed up with the conservative BS that constantly whines about some non-existent right of people to be able to do whatever they want irrespective of its affects on others.
Fill your house with all the plastic bags you desire, but once they leave your property then they are negatively affecting everyone else.
Jane and Jack,
I was attempting to have a pleasant, meaningful dialogue. Again, I agree that plastic bags are not good for our environment, just disagreed with your process. (and Jack still thinks he was mis-stated…huh?)
So now you’re outraged that I want “plastic bags stacked to the moon” or that I “don’t care about the planet we leave our kids.”
Who’s being derogatory and irrational here? Is this a joke? Am I on some internet candid camera?
Surely, If we are going to the moon, these days. We can have some hitech national corporation design an edible/ wearable biodegradable grocery/shopping bag!
Who would have thought that corn tortillas would become fuel for our cars! Some things were sacred! My friend Romeo drove a mercedes that ran on used cooking oil. One day it was french fries and other days the exhaust smelled like calamare. My favorite was the smell of onion rings.
Me I use plastic bags as decoys, when I’m out in the wheat fields thinking of what it feels like to be alive and laying on my back in a cold rainy day, thinking about what some clown is not doing about the earth’s envionment. When I’m done meditating, I take all of the plastic bags back to WalMart.
With out our abundant wild life as seen thru my eyes, life would not be worth living.
If you really want to see destruction of our wild creatures go to a popular stream and see the monofilament fishing lines that ediots leave behind. Birds and animals get tangled and die because many of these folks just don’t care.
The real harm comes with encrouchment of wild lands by humanity. The clearcutting of our National Forests. Yes they are logging in Berkley these day as well.
It takes us being in our present pridicament nationally to realize we are not the stewarts of this country. They are!
Until things change, use you own cloth bags, or return your plastic to Safeway. I will now be using paper bags for decoys. That will be so much better for my meditation since I will only be able to hunt when it is not raining. Set’em up barkeep, looks like rain a comming this way!
Some of you are wondering why does this dummy use bags? When I was much younger, I could lug 150 decoys out a half mile in the dead of night to my blind. Now I carry 150 decoys in my vest pocket and I’m not sweating like a black smith pounding iron.
Neccesity is the mother of inventions. I just got this great idea. I’ll make a wearable costume that looks like a Canadian Honker, surly a 200 pound Honker would attract alot of attention out in the field, although they may not let me belly up to the bar at O’Flaherty’s dressed like that! Oh well! I’m sure Henry’s has a dress code that embraces individuality.
Let’s clean up our planet Earth and have fun doing so.
The Village Black Smith
Joe #14
I apologize if I misunderstood you. I felt you were focusing on the government part and ignoring the crux of my suggested solution which is that once they are made aware of it and know how to fix it, citizens are going to have to take responsible action as individuals to rid the country of this problem. That being said, I don’t see any way anything will happen without a mechanism that is put in place by government on the state and national levels. A program for the unincorporated portion of our county put in place by the board of supervisors is a waste of time and resources and will have no real effect in my view.
You obviously think the problem can be solved without government action. So how would we do that?
Jack,
John already laid out the idea. Start in your own community, talk to people, organize events to raise awareness, get your neighbors involved and show people the effect they can have.
Talk to the grocers and find out why they use them. Most companies and their employees will do whatever they can to improve the communities they do business in. Find out what we can do to help them with the transition away from plastic bags. Maybe we can find a solution to help with their lost cost savings from the plastic bags.
Don’t just force laws down their throat, and take money from people to get lost in some bureaucratic boondoggle. Maybe some people want to use plastic bags even though they are tough on the environment (I am not one). After all, people still drink out of plastic bottles, use plastic diapers, drive cars, have barbeques, build fires in winter, etc…all of which have some effect on our environment. Why should we support this cause? I would like to, but explain to me why this cause over others?
The problem I have is that you want to use the gov’t to force people to support you, as opposed to you having to sell the idea yourself. Go out and find like-minded people who believe in the cause, raise money and spend the time it takes to change the behavior of your community, then move on to bigger areas.
I’d say you’re off to a pretty bad start. The instant dismissal and negative comments toward me and others (who clearly supported your cause from the beginning) as being anti-environment, destroying the planet for my kids type zealots has shown me that your intent was not the plastic bag issue, or you (and others) wouldn’t have been so dismissive and condescending.
You (and others) were dismissive and derogatory because what you really want has little to do with plastic bags…
Joe #16
What I “really want has little to do with plastic bags?” Is that your idea of a positive, non-dismissive, non-derogatory and non-condescending comment? I already apologized if I misunderstood you and I am sorry if I seemed condescending as I did not mean to be. There is a high instance of misunderstanding in blogging, unfortunately, that usually would not happen with a face-to-face conversation. We have each explained further and I get where you are coming from now. Let’s move on and have a conversation or forget it and do something else entirely. Life is too short as it is.
I am not advocating this issue above others and my column isn’t an attack on consumerism as such, even though who could deny the proliferation of plastic bags and containers is a symptom of consumerism. However, it is but a small part of the long list of environmental problems created by our society which we should be addressing.
Everything you suggest would certainly be part of the process, but I still don’t see how we can be successful without the direct participation of state and federal government. This is exactly the kind of thing we should be able to utilize our government for (although given the last 40+ years I can see how anyone would be skeptical).
TJWFM #13 opined:“If someone’s behavior is negatively affecting society then it is the obligation of government to alter, or stop, that behavior.”
Whoa! That’s WAY too Big Brother for me, Dude.
The idea that government must take responsibility for everything is what got us into this budget mess that we face nationwide, not just in Caleeephoneeyah.
I like Jack #15’s idea better:“once they are made aware of it and know how to fix it, citizens are going to have to take responsible action as individuals to rid the country of this problem.”
Ah, Jack #17, the evil “C-word”—consumerism. Consumerism drives our entire economy, Jack; something like 70% of it, if I recall correctly. What are we supposed to do in your view, spend our entire lives in tents in the wild with Gil? Even Gil takes the kids and grandkids just one week per year.
JohnMichael
Don’t get me wrong. I am as much a consumer as any American (I have a car, computer and TV and enjoy the comforts of home—-no tent for me!) and I am not even touching that subject here except to remark that the abundance of cheap plastic packaging is a byproduct of consumerist society. I don’t see the American version as evil, but it is excessive at times.
#18
TJWFM #13 opined:“If someone’s behavior is negatively affecting society then it is the obligation of government to alter, or stop, that behavior.”
Whoa! That’s WAY too Big Brother for me, Dude.
I agree with both statements. The issue is, how do we define behavior that is negatively affecting others?
I like the California legal definition for a nuisance, particularly in regard to a public nuisance. Apply this definition, fairly and equally, to an individual’s, or groups, behavior, and we can easily see where government needs to intervene. Especially, when the offending entity insists they have a non-existent right to engage in that behavior.
“3479. Anything which is injurious to health…”
http://www.techlawjournal.com/glossary/legal/nuisance.htm
Testesarone, testestarone, testesarone, It aint about you guys. It’s about the planet!
Are we that shallow that we will beat up on Jack and not give a s#it about Iraq, our young men dieing, the freaken morgage meltdown.
The Village Black Smith.
There’s a big difference between banning plastic bags, and banning fast food.
Banning plastic bags addresses an issue of public spaces: plastic bags in the water pose an entanglement risk for wildlife. The primary damage falls on the commons.
Banning fast food addresses an issue of personal space: cholesterol in the arteries. The primary damage falls on the individual.
Not at all the same, or even close.
If we ban plastic bags, won’t that mean a dramatic increase in the use of paper bags?
So it sounds like Jack, Jane, Thomas Jefferson Washington Franklin Madison the, and Greg are all in favor of clearcutting more forests?
#24
If we ban plastic bags, won’t that mean a dramatic increase in the use of paper bags?
Possibly.
On the other hand, paper is recyclable, so the paper bags can come from recycled newspapers, cardboard, etc. Plus a surcharge can be added for each paper bag used to encourage shoppers to bring their own reusable cloth bags to the grocery store.
At the end of the day, banning plastic bags will only affect the manufacturers of plastic bags. Of course, we can expect to hear whining from the business crowd of how we need those high-paying plastic bag jobs.
John-
Absolutely. Nothing is without cost.
Paper bags mean you cut down trees.
Plastic bags entangle birds and fish.
Even cloth bags have impacts. You have to make them, and they don’t last forever.
I don’t have good information on which is a greater environmental impact. But it’s reasonable to ask the question.
#9 – Necessity is the mother of invention? Maybe in the olden days. But in the modern world, PROFIT is the dominatrix of invention. If there’s a profitable way to replace plastic bags, it will be done. But it will only be done if corporate America deems it profit worthy. Altruism doesn’t feed the bottom line.
John,
No need to worry about trees, these guys have it all figured out. Kind of like chess grandmasters – they’re thinking several moves ahead.
It’s the newest big thing, they’re going to make the paper bags out of renewable sources like corn.
With corn as a, er what’s that? ethanol and then.. tortilla riots? … food shortages? aw rats. Nevermind.
#20: we don’t have enough cops to catch all the murderers, robbers, gang a**holes, and rapists. Where are we going to get enforcement for yet another silly feel good law?
Please confine all these nonsense laws that will never be enforced to Marin County, Berkeley & Santa Cruz.
This stuff ranks with the SJ proposal to ban new fast food restaurants. Lazy, fat people will not be deterred from overeating by some government mandate or the forced listing of all the bad ingredieants in fast food.