Yet again, I stumbled across a fabulous post from The Nic’s “News: New York’s Plastic Bag Ban.” I am surprised New York has yet to enact the plastic bag ban SB 270 because California has been enacting the legislation on the ban since 2014. In contrast with the common name given to the legislation, the plastic bag ban is not the ban on the distribution of plastic bags in totality. The ban is the enforcement of the $0.10 purchase for every plastic bag given to customers to store their grocery items.
The ban is meant to encourage consumers to rely less on plastic bags and to use a more environment-friendly paper bag or reusable bags. I admit that prior to the enforcement of the ban, I had creative use with the free plastic bags after a day of grocery shopping. I would use the bags as trash containers because this method was cheaper than buying trash bags. The $0.10 bag enforcement indeed provided an incentive for me to find an alternative to plastic bags such as paper bags or my own fabric bag. This enabled me to go shopping for trash bags for the first time in my life. There were many varieties of trash bags, so I had a hard time choosing which brands to follow. Ironically, most of the affordable trash bags available in the market were made of plastics. I knew that plastics are made from fossil fuel and could remain in the oceans and the landfill for a long period of time without degrading. However, an alternative to plastic bags would be paper trash bags and bagless trash. There were problems with these alternatives. The plastic trash bags would rip too easily and would leak when there are liquid solutions in the bag. The bagless trash would be too smelly for the house and would attract all sorts of unwanted insects to the house. In addition, a bagless trash encouraged the reproduction of insects because without the barrier of the plastic to the trash, the insects could easily access the materials within the bag. If the materials were food, then bacteria, mold, and yeast would grow inside the trash bin. This would make cleaning the bin very tedious. Another alternative to plastic trash bags was the 100% recycled plastic bags. This greener alternative to the plastic bags may be more favorable to the ecosystem; however, these bags tended to be more expensive than the regular plastic trash bags.
I know that the sea turtles and other sea creatures are dying due to the pollution of humans, especially plastic wastes. However, there must be more effort to promote green behaviors than to just place a $0.10 fee on the plastic bags. Corporation and businesses should find a cheaper way to manufacture plastic-free bags or alternatives to plastic bags. By doing this, companies could sell their products for a cheaper price without losing too much profits. I believe people would be more motivated to pursue the green behavior if they can afford following the behavior.
by Naive Health Lady Lu March 1, 2020
Naive Healthy Lady Lu 