This ugly thing is about to join cigarettes and the medical practice of bloodletting in the museum of ubiquitous threats to health and safety.If Washington State legislators have their way, the nation's first statewide ban on plastic grocery bags will take effect this year. Actually, "ban" is the wrong word, since the Seattle Times reports that:
Senate Bill 5780 and House Bill 1877 are similar. Both bills would allow plastic bags for fresh meat, fruits, vegetables, nuts or other bulk items, dairy products, ice and cooked foods.
Besides endangering marine wildlife and polluting the landscape, these nasty, non-biodegradable things symbolize the prodigal waste and careless excesses of a mindlessly materialistic society.
The Washington cities of Edmonds and Bellingham have already de-bagged, and a ban in Seattle will be enforced starting in July.
Henceforth, shoppers will need to carry their own bags to the store, which requires summoning a monumental effort that the perennial victims of eco-terrorism are sure to howl about, or pay a nickel for a paper sack.
1 comment:
Those things sure have a lot of uses for me. I eat a lot of fruits and vegetables and paper doesn't do the job. The individual wrapping of the plastic protects the stuff from bruising when transporting it on the bike. They limit the mess from liquid-leaking food, too. The entangling nature of the bags keeps the load much more stable on the bike. I take my regular plastic bags back to the store and reuse them. I never just throw empty bags away. We also have a store nearby that accepts them for recycling.
Then too, the trash collector doesn't like loose trash in customer cans. Trash should be bagged first. I recycle everything possible and compost.
I use plastic bags for so much that it would not be a big exaggeration to say that not having them would cause a huge drag on my daily life.
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