some of us DUers were born into a world without plastic - really!

[ensho]

it hadn't been invented yet. nor was any air condition to be found. no TVs, really, no TVs.

think on that awhile.

and now plastic has polluted the world and the subject of plastic store bags is Important.


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/24/us/24bags.html?_r=1


Many Plans to Curtail Use of Plastic Bags, but Not Much Action


Last summer, city officials here became the first in the nation to approve a fee on paper and plastic shopping bags in many retail stores. The 20-cent charge was intended to reduce pollution by encouraging reusable bags.

But a petition drive financed by the plastic-bag industry delayed the plan. Now a far broader segment of Seattle’s bag carriers — its voters — will decide the matter in an election in August.

Even in a city that likes to be environmentally conscious, the outcome is uncertain.

“You have to be really tone-deaf to what’s going on to think that the economic climate is not going to affect people,” said Rob Gala, a legislative aide to the city councilman who first sponsored the bill for the 20-cent fee.

-snip-

Momentum for imposing fees or bans has expanded from a few, often affluent, liberal cities on the West Coast — San Francisco was the first big city to ban plastic bags, in 2007 — to dozens of legislative proposals in states like Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, Texas and Virginia.

-snip-

In New York City, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is proposing a 5-cent fee on plastic bags. The measure would require approval by the State Legislature.

In Connecticut, a bill that would put a 5-cent fee on most paper and plastic bags is being promoted as potentially raising as much as $10 million a year for the depleted budget of the Environmental Protection Department.
-snip-
----------------------------


scientists studied and reported that ocean waves crashing on rocks, sand, breaks up plastic to minute pieces that are inhaled. the scientist wonder if the plastic will build up in our bodies and cause trouble. I wonder too.

[ananda]

1. I guess that some of us could wax nostalgic..

.. about wax paper and percolator
coffee pots and china cups.

Lol

[ensho]

11. I still use wax paper :) and carried a paper bag lunch all 12 yrs.

of school. with sandwich wrapped in wax paper.

and wrapped garbage in newspaper to go into the outdoor metal trash can.

egads

[marybourg]

16. I still use a percolator and wax paper (2 kinds). nt.

[Lost in CT]

2. I like the idea of an outright ban as long as they sell

a substitute for pet owners. (Those bags are very helpful for picking up waste.)

[laylah]

5. so are paper bags...

just sayin'

[dysfunctional press]

6. they already do...

http://www.dogpoopbags.com

[yy4me]

13. I thought all the bags for "pet waste" were biodegradable.

The ones I but at Dollar tree(the best value) say biodegradable on the box. I agree on the use of plastic as a general way of packaging and bagging. All of the packaging could probably be changed to a renewable product. I get especially annoyed if I but cookies or something else that comes sectioned off in plastic compartments. It all ads up to a huge mound of plastic for the recycle to pick up.

I am alone and do not spend a lot on anything any still find myself with a surprising amount of plastic junk, even though I try to be good about avoiding whatever plastic I can.

[Common Sense Party]

3. I want to say one word to you...one word...Are you listening?

Plastics.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSxihhBzCjk

There's a great future in plastics.

[Journeyman]

17. "Well, that sounds like a half-baked idea." . . .

"Oh, no, sir. It's fully baked."

[tosh]

4. Those $.99 reuseable totes were the greatest idea ever.

Fees on plastic bags should be instituted nationwide.

Now, if we can do something about packaging.:think:

[Marrah_G]

7. I use the cheap reusable tote bags

They are WAY stonger and easier to deal with.

Best thing supermarkets have done in a long time.

I also get one paper bag a week to put the paper recycling into.

[Winterblues]

22. At our local Fred Meyers (Kroger) they give refunds for using our own bags

I believe it is a nickle a bag that gets subtracted from the receipt. It is amazing how many people I see now with those green canvas bags.

[dysfunctional press]

8. you can have my plastic shopping bags when you pry them from my cold dead hands...

those things have lots of uses. i always double-bag everything at the checkout so that i get more of them.

[FarCenter]

9. Plastics have been around for about 150 years.

Christian Friedrich Schönbein invented nitrocellulose in 1845. This was the first nitrogenated hydrocarbon, and led to the development of high explosives and plastics.

Alexander Parkes then invented celluloid in 1856.

[ContinentalOp]

23. Haha, I was gonna say. Hmm, doesn't sound right -nt-

[BobRossi]

10. Born before 1862?

Wow!

[Common Sense Party]

27. They just take lots of anti-oxidants and use great moisturizer.

They don't look a say over 100!

[strategery blunder]

12. Another tax on poor people.

I would go along with it IF AND ONLY IF those living in or near poverty were provided with tote bags as a replacement. Perhaps revenue from the fees could be used to reimburse the government for this up-front expense.

Otherwise it is just another way of squeezing blood from a turnip. There is a reason why most taxing entities either exempt food from sales tax or tax it as a much lower rate--the same logic should apply to the containers used to carry the food home.

[HillWilliam]

29. Well, no, not really

I get those nice, sturdy canvas ones from my grocery store for under $4 apiece. So what if they have a logo on them? So what if they're otherwise dowdy, plain, white sailcloth? It's not like I have to carry groceries in a designer hamper for dogssake. And nobody says you have to get them all at once.

Over the last 15 years, I've built up a collection that suits my needs. I've still got the first one I bought 15 years ago and I can't tell you how many zillion trips to the market and back it's made. When they get funky, you throw them in the washer.

Tax, schmax, that's a total non-argument. The hidden costs of recycling those plastic baggies is enormous, considering that they're sent to China by way of boat at the cost of how many zillion gallons of diesel to be remanufactured and sent back. That cost is wrapped right back into your grocery cost.

Now that is a tax on the poor. One removes that tax by removing the mechanism for it -- bringing and using your own bags.

[strategery blunder]

30. A poor person does not necessarily have $4.

That $4 expenditure on canvas bags to appease the do-gooder environmentalists could very well mean the difference between the kid eating a semi-nutritious dinner with meat and canned vegetables, or eating ramen noodles, for dinner the next two or three days until payday.

Your argument about "hidden taxes" would only work if stores were altruistic enough to reduce their prices by the amount of this alleged hidden recycling tax once plastic bags are no longer necessary. Somehow I doubt this would ever be the case...the stores would rather pocket the difference, methinks.

As I said, I could support this if and only if canvas bags for the poor and indigent were subsidized. Something tells me you don't want YOUR taxes raised so single mothers with $4 to their name, no food in the cabinet, and four days until payday can have those canvas bags that would save them from another regressive tax they can ill afford. Hey, you've already got yours, right?

[HillWilliam]

32. Gee, you presume to know an awful lot about me

You have no idea what my financial situation is (I'm the sole provider in the household with a disabled dependent) who has struggled his family up from homelessness to something a little better. We still live from paycheck to paycheck, often not that far.

But we manage. And we manage to be responsible.

Being poor doesn't mean one has to be slovenly or slovenly with the environment, either. I still manage a time or two a year to bust off $4 to be responsible. Every tiny action helps. Having the canvas bags helps me in not having to either store them or deal with them or take up MY precious space or resources, either. Those recycled plastic bags you seem to be so fond of only drive costs up -- that IS a hidden tax on the poor, whether you like to admit it or not. So you're welcome to put a cork in your snippishness "do gooder" remarks anytime. Your personal attack was unwarranted and not appreciated.

[strategery blunder]

33. I am not fond of plastic bags. I use canvas myself.

HOWEVER I know that taxing plastic bags is still a regressive tax, whether you admit it or not.

I do not believe for a second that if plastic bags vanished tomorrow and magically all 300 million people in America had canvas bags to use, that grocery prices would decline by the amount of "they're sent to China by way of boat at the cost of how many zillion gallons of diesel to be remanufactured and sent back."

Therefore, the hidden tax that you imply would continue to exist regardless of whether or not actual use of the plastic bags continued.

Your attitude of "I managed to meet this expenditure, therefore every poor person in this country should do it" is very, very typical of Republicans. Perhaps poor people without the extra couple of bucks in their pocket for the canvas bags should just be made to make several return trips to carry their groceries home individually without benefit of a container at all?

[HillWilliam]

34. Nonsense. Nowhere did I state or did I imply that

"every poor person in this country should do it". OTOH, your defense of slovenliness in defense of the oil industry and their perpetuation of hidden taxation through invasive and pervasive "use it once and throw it out -- we'll bury the cost of manufacture and cleanup in your food and services" is equally if not purely Republican.

Four bucks a year you can't break off to live a cleaner life? Says something about you.

[strategery blunder]

36. Your "hidden tax of plastic bags" would not be removed

if use of plastic bags stopped tomorrow.

Stores would merely pocket the difference and leave food prices unchanged. What is so hard for you to understand about that concept?

Apparently you missed the part of my last post where I specifically said I personally do NOT use plastic bags. If a plastic bag tax is enacted, I merely want subsidies to give indigent people canvas bags so that they will not be subjected to the otherwise regressive plastic bag tax.

Unless, of course, you don't want your taxes raised... *shrug*

[Tesha]

41. Re-usable bags at Trader Joe's sell for $0.99.

My local supermarket then gives you $0.05 every time you use a
re-usable bag so we average at least $0.25 off on every trip to the
store.

So for every four trips to the store, we can pay off our investment
in one re-usable bag.

Given those finances, only an idiot would keep using disposable bags.

Tesha

[JitterbugPerfume]

14. I use the reusable totes

and I still get weird looks up here in fundy land.


I was back door complimented by an old friend (so old I overlook her fundy-ism) She said I have more of a true christatn attitude than some of her church buddies and yes, she knows I am an athiest.

I told her it is a Democratic attitude . She just shook her head! LOL


I love all of my friends


It was a simpler time back in the 40s and 50s but it was far from all good especially for women and girls. It makes me older than dirt to admit that I remember it

[JitterbugPerfume]

20. maybe that is why I pay for a water filter

who knew that it isn't needed!

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

15. Who Cares?

Once upon a time there was no electricity either. Hell, no clean water even. Times where there wasn't almost anything.

Hey, hey, hey, know what? How bout we just go back to living in caves! That's the ticket!

:dunce:

[marybourg]

18. No clean water? Really? nt.

[bahrbearian]

39. It wasn't until the Britta Water filter was invented , that there was ever any clean water.

[marybourg]

42. Ain't technology wonderful!! nt.

[Gormy Cuss]

19. Plastic was invented in the 19th century. Some of you are very, very old.

I'm old enough to remember before groceries and other store purchases were piled into plastic bags. IMHO the square bottomed paper bag has always been a better way to pack groceries, but I digress.

I think bag surcharges are the wrong way to curb plastic bag use --banning the use of flimsy plastic bags is easier. In addition, voluntary measures by retailers such as reusable bag rebates and cheap or free woven bags can go a long way to changing behavior.

[JitterbugPerfume]

21. Gormy! I told you

that I am older than dirt


but I ain't THAT old!:hi:

[Gormy Cuss]

26. I should hope not!

Plastic was invented in the 1860s. ;-)

:hi:

[Johonny]

24. The discount stores give me for bringing my own bag

is more than enough incentive to remember to bring them. Why do we always need to "punish" people to make them act the way we want them to act?

[Gormy Cuss]

25. And why assume that people who don't bring in reusable bags are bad or lazy?

That's what a surcharge does. I too dislike the presumption that punishing people is the only way to effect change.

The two stores where I do most of my shopping have reusable bag incentives. One is Trader Joe's where the incentives are fairly weak -- they sell cheap but graphically interesting bags and issue raffle tickets for each bag used in lieu of one of their own (the weekly prize is some dollar amount of free groceries.) Their cashiers thank customers for using reusables.

In spite of the fact that they offer paper and plastic bags too, I've noticed that there are more and more customers toting reusables. I've seen some people drop as many as a dozen bags on the counter.

[ensho]

28. just remembered - during WWII they invented margerine and it came

in a thick transparent plastic bag. it was white with an orange dye capsule in it that you squeezed thru the plastic to spread the color around before opening the bag and putting the stuff in a container.

butter was rationed and you could only buy so much each mo.

[madokie]

31. I was four when they erected the powerlines into the community where I was raised

I remember it well. Brother and I were going along right behind them picking up the wire they used to detonate the dynamite blasting the holes in the rocks for the poles. There were no backhoes back then either. The work was for the most part was all done by men, everything except standing the pole itself in the hole. For that they had a machine. Before then we had a true to goodness icebox too.

[merh]

35. I use the cloth shopping bags, the clerks look at me funny

but they are stronger than the plastic bags and hold more. When you have to walk up a flight of stairs to bring your groceries in, you want to carry as much as you can in one bag and as many bags as possible at one time.

[Kalyke]

37. They could do away with everything but diapers.

I'm sorry - I tried the cloth diapers and they're apt to allow the child to soil EVERYTHING.

I don't know which is worse - clogging the landfills with poopy diapies or washing 8,000 loads of clothes and diapers.

[ZombieHorde]

38. People should just eat their food in the store like a normal person. nt

[Tesha]

40. We have a DUer who's 102 years old???

Bakelite was invented in 1907; arguably it is the first true "plastic" (artificial resin).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakelite

And if you accept celluloid as a plastic, *THAT* dates back to 1856.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celluloid

Tesha