Uplifting News
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That's on the whole probably good news, though I'm having trouble finding immediate satisfaction. Banning plastic bags doesn't necessarily mean less of an impact on the environment. Not without a behavior change, as well.
Plastic bags have the lowest carbon footprint to produce and distribute compared to paper, polypropylene, or cotton. In many places plastic bags (including small produce bags) can be recycled at the grocery store (two near me do but it's easy to miss). I also found plastic very easy to reuse. It's a bit annoying to have to buy trashbags when my reused grocery bags worked fine and were made of less material.
Reusable totes are only as eco friendly as they are reused (about 130 times to equal plastic). Forgetting them and amassing a huge collection is not progress nor is using paper bags once and then recycling them. source
Happy to see attention on the issue but as I haven't always appreciated the nuances or been wary of the green washing in the past, I thought this was worth sharing. Progress is rarely as simple as a new regulation or new product, as strong capitalist forces would want us to believe. If we want meaningful progress we need to foster a culture that consumes less and reuses more.
Why do people only ever talk about the carbon footprint when plastic bans are discussed?
Plastic waste is lying around everywhere, microplastics have been found in placentas and brain stems, the great pacific garbage patch is larger than some micro states.
The environment consists of more than just the atmosphere and we should reduce both greenhouse gases and plastic waste.
Also
That may be so but many people do not recycle or reuse their plastic bags. I would assume this measure is aimed more at them then at you.
To remind people they pollute in multiple ways, and reducing one way might increase the other way.
However I’ve never seen a good comparison of the relative severity, only opinion. Is the apple worse for the environment , or the orange?
As I've said before, why not try to reduce both?
And let's be honest: Whenever someone post a sarcastic 'good thing we banned plastic straws' under a topic about CO2 emissions, they're not doing it as a good faith argument that one pollution might avoid the other.