Some North American cities ban plastic bags.
A CBC story reports that San Francisco has become the first city in North America to ban the use of traditional plastic grocery bags. Passed Tuesday by the city's board of supervisors, the law prohibits large grocery stores and drugstores from using non-recyclable and non-biodegradable plastic bags made from petroleum products.
By cutting 100 million plastic bags a year the city of 740,000 will save 1.5 million litres of oil, and eliminate 4.2 million kilograms of carbon dioxide. It's estimated a traditional plastic bag takes 1,000 years to dissolve.
Meanwhile, next week, the tiny town of Leaf Rapids in northwestern Manitoba is set to become the first Canadian community to ban plastic bags. The bylaw prevents retailers from selling or distributing the single-use bags. Ignoring the ban could result in a $1,000-per-day fine. Officials will hand out cloth shopping bags to each of the town's roughly 550 residents.
The B.C. mountain town of Rossland is also considering a voluntary ban on single-use plastic bags.
Hmmm, a "voluntary" ban. That's an oxymoron, isn't?
Bali Blog
Salme Jormakka Pringle
We use cloth bags mostly, however we do accept plastic ones also, as we use them for garbage and our indoor pet droppings. We also utelize them at church to parcel products which we sell at various fund raisers such as plant sales.
Brian Ulriksen
What are they making the alternative bags out of? How much energy and material is being used to make the alternative sources?
George
I'm curious about the 4.2 million kilograms of CO2. I suspect that a plastic bag in a land fill will take near the top end of the 1,000 year estimate to degrade, so it won't release a significant amount of CO2 during the critical next 30 years. So it's main CO2 contribution would be from manufacturing and transport, much the same as a cotton bag.
If that's true then the embodied energy is more important from an end of oil perspective that from a global warming perspective.
And if the alternative is a paper bag, probably it will produce less air and water borne waste during production than the paper bag would.
Barbara
In Switzerland, up to the 1980s, grocery bags were largely unheard of. Shoppers brought their own grocery bag or cart, and packed their own groceries.
Non-recyclable plastics should be banned - period. They are a scourge on the environment and the landscape.
And recyclable plastics (bags, containers, etc.) should be improved and used moderately.
Andrea Careless
I think many people use their grocery bags for kitchen garbage and such -- rather than buying garbage bags. The grocery bags are thinner than the "official" bags -- so perhaps they're less polluting. So if we're going to ban grocery bags, what about the other ones?
Andrea
I am in much favour of using cotton, or alternative shopping bags. What concerns me is that all it would do is that people have to buy garbage bags which are made out of the same material. So what is the point other than using paper bags, which people cant really use because of their food waste. I think it should be more enforced to get completly rid of plastic bags and to recycle your food waste in your own backyard, provided you have one. And what would the alternative be if there is no backyard.
Andrea
I am in much favor of using cotton, or alternative shopping bags. What concerns me is that all it would do is that people have to buy garbage bags which are made out of the same material. So what is the point other than using paper bags, which people cant really use because of their food waste? I think it should be more enforced to get completely rid of plastic bags and to recycle your food waste in your own backyard, provided you have one. And what would the alternative be if there is no backyard?
Andrew Jacob Ban the Bag
I was impressed by San Franciscos ban of plastic bags and struck by the fact that nobody seems to have taken much notice of it in my own City of Toronto. If not now, when? If not me, who will take up the cause?
The petition below to ban plastic bags is self-explanatory.
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/BantheBag2007/
Please sign it, send it to others who care about the environment, and resolve not to use plastic bags.
Andrea
I use the recyclable garbage bags, but these are more expensive, at this point.