Plastic bags – New Jersey

Posted on September 2, 2012 by DrRossH in Plastic Limiting Regulations

Plastic bags | Courier-Post | courierpostonline.com.

The commenter below is obviously missing the point.   Too many times people get sidetracked by thinking a new law is a loss of their freedom.   But we get new laws all the time.   we have speed limits we obey and don’t question.  Why because it costs us money to get fined.   We stop at read lights without question.   Why because again we risk paying a fee or worse get injured.   So preventing pollution for the earth, which is our environment is the same.  If we prevent pollution (at a cost to our current way of thinking) we get the betterment of a more healthy environment.  A healthier environment is a more healthy us, good wise and social wise with more beauty to behold.

Ireland dropped their bag use by 95% in a fee months by a small per bag fee.  And unlike the person below infers, their businesses did not go out of business, consumers simply changed their habits to save a few cents.  Just because we have a habit now doesn’t mean it is the only way things can be done.  Habits are like the lowest form of energy to get something down.  Changing a habit takes a bit of energy to get into a new habit which then becomes the new norm.  And the new norm could well be a lower energy state or easier to do than the last habit.

Restricting  plastic bags at the checkout counter is the best solution, we just don’t need them.   Those people who are would rather complain than change a habit will soon learn and change their habit to carry a reusable bag and quickly move on to something else to complain about.

The bag ban can be a mandatory ban by the local government or a voluntary ban where by a fee is imposed and those that don’t want to pay a fee will not take a bag.  It is amazing how a little fee causes a substantial drop in bag consumption.  This shows how little people value bags (therefore why recycling is so low) and how they will change their habits with such a small incentive.  Plus as the author states any bags that are then sold need to be landfill-biodegradable, not degradable as that simply makes a worse mess for the environment.  Compostable bag have the potential to be an option but until the infrastructure is put in place to give compostable bags the special treatment they need to get sorted out of other plastics and taken to a commercial compost facility, then composting is not a viable option at the moment either.

On an aside note, the world is a complex biological system.  For eons it was a balanced system with ebbs and flows but essentially staying the same unless some external catastrophe came along to upset the balance then over a few million years a new balance was formed.  Our evolutionary evolvement was based on the conditions we were in.  However in the last 60 years or so human consumption has started to change this balance.  Many of the manufacturing decisions that are still being used today were made back in the 60 and 70s when we viewed the earth as a source of unlimited resources and an everlasting healthy environment.  However we know better now, we do have limited resources, the planet is not a infinite landfill.  Increasing air pollution, water pollution, use of chemicals in our food supply to maximise production in crops and animals is starting to show cracks in those decisions from the 60 and 70s.  The loss of biodiversity is alarming.  As we lose biodiversity we lose the balance in the earth’s biological system.  and the our quality of life goes down with decreasing food options to choose from and less environments to live in.  Yes a new balance will be forming but it will be a world with conditions that humans did not evolve in.  That will compromise our physical well being and our psyche.