paper or oil drilling?
Everything but the bananas are in plastic bags! They have plastic stickers on them. And all the products in the background are in plastic.
Last year the City of San Francisco passed a law aimed at banning plastic shopping bags from grocery stores and other large chain retailers. The people all voted for it and I felt good to be living in a progressive city that isn’t blind to the pollution these bags cause, from space in landfill to the use of petroleum to make them. So imagine my surprise when I went down to DeLano’s (the crazy Russian one) a few months later and they bagged up my english muffins with plastic. So I asked why.
“The law stated the bags we use must be made out of recycled fibers and at least 2.50 mm thick. These new bags meet those requirements,” the manager told me.
So the corporation went around the will of the people and used bags that contain more plastic – MORE PLASTIC – to get around the law aimed at banning plastic. Why? Plastic is cheaper than paper. That is why I feel like big business is out to kill me. They care about short term profit. Oggy Bleacher taught me to care about the long term of the planet.
And they have a nice place for you to throw your old plastic bags for recycling right at the front door. How toxic is that process? Why are we still so enamored with plastic? We know it doesn’t break down organically, it just gets really small and goes into the fish, the birds, the people that eat the fish and the birds, and messes with our health. So use paper. Invest in clean energy so the process of making it doesn’t rely on fossil fuels. And of course, I should have brought a cloth bag. Let’s get going people.
A few things come to mind:
Bring your own bag, plastic, paper, whatever. Here they charge 5 cents a bag, so there’s even more incentive. Re-using bags is going to make way more change than using paper or plastic. Again, REUSE your bags. Yes, bring some bags to the grocery store.
They are starting to make some plastics that break down organically, made from corn starch (no surprise there, with all the corn subsidies).
And the bags given away are mostly useless for recycling or reusing. They have very little weight (so you don’t get squat from recycling them) and they are so flimsy, they can’t be reused much. The paper give-away paper bags here aren’t much better for re-usability, so mostly we are using thick plastic ones (including my backpack).
By the way, those disposable bags are made from natural gas.
Also by the way, not that you’re likely to see a bag made from this, but rayon is actually made from oak, birch, or bamboo fibers (Google it), not petroleum or natural gas.
Comment by Belcat — June 14, 2010 @ 7:59 am
Thanks for the info. Where is it that you’re writing from?
Comment by Rolston — June 14, 2010 @ 8:49 am
Blade Runner and Mad Max are models of two very likely stages of civilization right now.
Waterworld and WALL-E aren’t implausible either.
I’m also pretty sure that our land fills will be mined for petroleum products in a few hundred years when reverse refinement becomes feasible, so while we burn dinosaur shit for fuel someone will burn our pollution for fuel. They’ll probably find a way to scrub the depleted ozone layer of CO2.
Comment by Oggy — June 14, 2010 @ 8:53 am
I hope Oggy is right. Someone make this equation a reality:
3CO2 + = 2O3 + diamonds (or clean coal) falling from the sky!
Sounds like the specification in the law was aimed at forcing the use of recycled materials, not paper. Maybe those lobbying for this change thought it was useful to market it as paper over plastic?
Lastly, go get a reusable grocery bag, hippie!
Comment by Lyle_s — June 14, 2010 @ 9:29 am
The more you buy the more trash you produce. If you want to save the world, grow your own shit, and take your shit and sprinkle it over your crops…………..Yum YuM
Comment by chickenshit — June 14, 2010 @ 1:48 pm