Is banning plastic bags really Necessary and if so, why?
We introduced a tax (15c) on plastic bags in Ireland in 2002. the wording of the law was such that shops could not cover the cost for their customer. Since then the number of bags being used has being reduced by 90%. the tax was raised last year in response to a slight increase. Nobody really complained and everyone got on with using cloth bags. This means 90% less bags in the ditches, floating on city streets and ultimately filling landfill and not decomposing. Using a cloth bag is one of the many very small sacrifice which results in a huge net gain for everybodies environment. It should also be noted that money raised by the tax was used in environmental clean up projects.
Banning plastic bags is ridiculous. Have you seen some of the filthy cloth bags people bring into the grocery store? If I were a grocery bagger, I wouldn't want to touch those nasty things. And what about cross contamination? Chicken and meat juices are absorbed in the cloth, requiring frequent washing - thereby using more water and more electricity. Plus, if you are doing a large shopping that week, one would need a large number of those bags, so those inexpensive bags, end up being not so inexpensive when one needs to purchase large quantities. Paper bags may be biodegradable, but how many more trees will we lose to produce more paper? And how many times has a paper bag broken while carrying in your groceries, breaking glass containers and spilling stuff all over the place? Boxes are big and cumbersome - think Costco! I purchase four little items and I get this gigantic box to carry them home in. Let's think this through, people! Plastic bags are recyclable and people DO recycle them. Just check out the drop boxes at the grocery stores. Plastic bags have multiple uses that the other bags do not, as Randall pointed out earllier. We are over banning in this country. You may think you are doing the environmentally and politically correct thing, but try looking at the large picture. We are losing more of our freedoms every day. Just look all the NO signs when you go to the beach! We want to keep our little recyclable plastic bags and if you see them in the water or on the ground, instead of complaining and yelling ban them, pick them up! I seldom see them, but when I do, I pick them up, as I do with soda cans and bottles (not biodegradable, either), paper trash (tons of that!) Get a grip - get real!
If only people would not throw things here and there.....plastic bags are cheap, clean and disposable....how can we do without them.....and no one foresaw the problem would grow into an environmental issue of this magnitude.....any body has seen any solution on the horizon
Most bags are bio-degradable and will decompose in about 2-3 years. Its just another excuse for these power drunk twerps to cause us even more inconvenience. LONG LIVE PLASTIC BAGS
Half a dozen of one side, six on the other. Yeah, this is a tough thing to think about. On one hand you have plastic bags, which are by far the cheapest to make and cost the least for the store. On the other hand you have paper bags, usually made out of recycled paper, but still from a wood source. But there is an alternative: (if you have a third hand...) ;-) Some stores are offering cloth bags that you can reuse, yes, you have to pay for the bag and yes, you have to bring them back to the store to put your stuff in, but they are reusable. Some grocery stores also offer cardboard totes that you can reuse over and over again, we use them quite a bit. I don't know if banning is the answer, providing alternatives would do about the same...
