Having convinced the gullible "geen&sustainable" Portland City Council to enact a city-wide ban on horrible "plastic" bags, the eco-nazis hope to do the same in suburban Beaverton, Tigard, and Lake Oswego. They're also shooting for Bend, in central Oregon. Like all good nazis, they don't want the issue to go to a vote of the citizens - they want the various city councils to preemptively enact a bag ban. It worked really well in Portland; why bother with letting the plebes have a say?
I find it interesting that the professional environmeddlists initially hailed "plastic" bags as environmentally friendly and the ultimate in recyclability: the bags are made from a waste product derived from natural gas drilling, and can be recycled at most grocery stores. The recycled bags are turned into decking, benches, and other useful items.
They also require 70% less energy to manufacture than paper bags, and 96% less water. Paper bags are also heavier and bulkier; it requires seven trucks to deliver the same number of paper bags that one truck delivers in "plastic bags". Moreover, some 90% of Americans reuse "plastic" bags.
Oh, and those "reuseable" cloth bags are imported by ship. It's far more energy-efficient to manufacture and transport "plastic" bags in the USA.
Oddly, folks favoring banning such bags have resorted to claiming that they're made from petrochemicals, in China - both claims are patently false. The "reuseable" cloth bags that they advocate, by contrast, are made in China, shipped here by freighter - and unlike "plastic" bags, are not recyclable.
So, the plastic bags that do-gooders so hate are produced from waste, are generally reused by American consumers, and can be conveniently recycled into other useful products. Why do they hate recycling and energy-efficiency so much?
Even worse, "plastic" bag bans apear to result in an increase in shoplifting:
On Friday, New Jersey Democratic operative James Devine was arrested for attempting to snatch $22 worth of merchandise from a local ShopRite pharmacy. Devine tried to smuggle lettuce, shampoo and protein powder out of the store, perhaps trying to hide the fact that he was about to make the world’s most disgusting salad. To avoid detection, he stashed the goods in a reusable grocery bag.
What seems to be just another edition of Democrats doing dumb deeds actually represents a nationwide problem. Thanks to laws in several major cities banning the use of plastic carryout bags in retail stores, there has been a spike in shoplifting incidents over the past couple years, a trend that business owners, law enforcement officials and customers have duly noted.
“Moving consumers away from plastic bags only pushes people to less environmentally friendly options such as paper bags, which require more energy to produce and transport, and reusable bags, which are not recyclable,” environmental policy expert Mark Daniels said in a 2011 New York Times interview.
