Do environmentalist care about the environment

Plastic waste is not a problem that was “regulated into existence”. It is a problem that exists, and mostly because those plastic bags are dirt cheap to produce. Publix trains their employees to push you toward plastic (is plastic ok sir?). They do this because the plastic costs them $.01 per bag instead of $.05. That’s it. I’m sure many grocers and convenience stores use those film bags for the same economic reason. No difference from many other types of environmental degradation. Why do some shady contractors illegally drop their waste on a vacant rural lots? Why have factories dumped their industrial waste in rivers? Because that’s the cheapest option…for them. Doesn’t mean the best public policy is to let it happen. Esp where the public incurs the burdens of the cleanup/health costs.

The original CA law made it worse by having this ill conceived idea of “excepting” a thicker bag under the plastic grocery bag ban, under the pretense it would be used as a re-usable bag. Sounds like a similar number of those thicker bags ended up in landfills and in waterways anyway, which is why the original law “backfired”. Sounds like the new law ends that and pushes everyone toward paper. The “unintended consequence” might be inability of paper suppliers to keep up. Guess we’ll see, given the fiasco with those “thicker” bags one can’t assume they’ve figured that out. I think the focus should be more on encouraging people to use re-usable bags or just avoid using bags where it’s not necessary (I.e. baggers that put literally 1 item in a plastic bag).

 

Finally, somebody who gets it.

 

If there is a criticism to be made of this law and others like it is that it places the burden of reducing plastic consumption on the consumer, when the reasons for it are the ones you sort of get to. No doubt plastic straws and bags produce a lot of waste, but my guess is it pales to the sorts of plastic waste generated by various other industries. Like lots of things in America, the fear of regulations is actually what generates things like this!. We dont want to regulate industries and their waste, so we take the easy way out and just ban visible every day products. If done right, there is probably some positive effect, but not enough to actually make a dent in the problem and it annoys ordinary people who probably dont generate a crazy amount of garbage and recycle when they can. Like we are still going to have plastic islands in the oceans unless they do something about fishing nets, and other non-biodegradable waste generated by a capitalist society built on production and consumption. We almost always take the easy way out, because its easy, then feel good about doing something. Of course conservatives and their allies take the wrong lesson, and say "its better to do nothing and actually produce even more garbage."

 

Is it dawning on you yet? You self owned in the OP. It’s a right wing tradition.

 

I hope you have a license for all that weed you're toking...

(It ain't legal yet).

 

He doesn't give a rat's ass about the environment, thinks it's OK to dump whatever you want in the air, oceans, lakes/rivers and land with no harmful consequences and, in the event he is wrong, it will be his grandkids' problems.

 

We don’t have “reusable” plastic bags in Fairfax, but they added a $0.05 tax to each plastic bag in 2022.

There is a lot of political bickering about its effectiveness, mainly because you have to get numbers from entities staunchly opposed (the providers and users of the bags.)

But anecdotally I can report two things for certain. One, I never used my own bags before, now it is 100%. I keep the bags in the car now so I have them even for unplanned stops.

And two, I plainly see it at checkout. In the self-checkouts at the stores I go to most there were like six racks of plastic bags before. Now there is one, and it is generally half-full. When I go through the regular lanes I would guess 75% are using their own bags.

It’s not the cost. After all, I can get twenty bags for $1.00. It’s more the awareness. While I do find it nonsensical to pay even a nickel more than I need to, it’s really just being aware and making an effort. It’s even more nonsensical to unnecessarily destroy the world, so I am happy to do something as simple as reuse a few personal bags.

And I have never paid for one. Free bags are all over the place, from local initiatives to promotions at basically every store that offers plastic bags. I gave a bunch of branded ones away because I was just taking them anytime they were offered. Pretty soon I was worried that I was on the verge of polluting the world with cloth.

So while I agree that 5-10 cents doesn’t motivate anyone financially, it’s definitely a “top of mind” thing.

And the money here goes to causes that you have to DoTooMuch to be mad about, like cleaning those very bags out of rivers and other public places or expanding recycling centers (and I am not even much of a recycler as I find it inefficient and often just plain fraudulent, but also not a demon to slay; and in at least one case it was to add glass recycling, which I actually DO make an effort to support.)

Retailers keep 2/5 cents although that will go to 1/5 cents after the “transition” period, which I believe ends this year.

The biggest “complaint” you hear is how it is regressive, hitting low income people who “can’t afford” it. But never once has a person that told me that been in that population. And as I said, I could have probably supplied 1000 people myself if I ever felt it was necessary just by taking and redistributing bags being perpetually handed to me. So I suspect that is some Facebook Science.

When it first started they gave 10000 bags away in various Fairfax stores, paid for by that very tax. I now have a collection of bags with weird branding, like MGM Casino (there is a massive one here in DC), DC United, Draft Kings, and Ultra cornhole (they are one of my sponsors.) The bags become conversation pieces.

Now that I’ve lived with it I believe this should be standard all over.

But I will also agree with wgb that an open secret here is that the vast majority of plastic pollution isn’t driven by consumers. Much like I am constantly told to not run the water while I brush my teeth. OK, I am fine with that, that’s a burden I can handle. But also, people who do that aren’t even a blip on the water wasting radar. That would be agriculture and industry. It really is NOT a household problem to fix. All the plastic being dumped into the ocean is also not truly zealous grocery shoppers. I have never once thrown a plastic bag into a river and I see no logical path toward that in the future. But again, it’s also not an imposition and I’ll do my (negligible) part.

 

Democrats want to save our environment by pushing our population to 500 million and beyond. Are they really dumb in some respects or is it mostly mental illness?

 

I think the only response that would make sense to them is: "Does a bear sh!t in the woods?"

 

I stumbled upon this - it is pretty informative as to sources of plastic

from what I remember

- about 70% of plastics ocean garbage patch is from fishing industry but this is a very small part of the overall plastics pollution problem

- personal use pollution, or littering is a small part of the issue. Much bigger is poor management of waste.

- tires are one of the biggest sources of plastic pollution, somewhere around 10% of plastic pollution.

- an even potentially bigger source that is hard to measure is from paints.