How many people today grab a takeaway coffee cup from the local cafe to drink on the go? We don’t know, but the number must be enormous.. Most every one of the above have a plastic top that will last 100s of years. Some cafes still use plastic cups that last a similar time. Is 10 minutes of coffee worth 100s of years of trash?
These items can be seen littering our gutters and on our streets all over the place. If they were all cardboard, they would still be littered, but they would, at least, be gone in a short time.
They do not need to be made of plastic.
On the way home from the gym last week, a distance of about 1 km (1/2 mile), I counted the items of plastic litter on the curb as I walked. In that short distance I counted 63 pieces of plastic litter. Plastic drink bottles, bottle tops, candy wrappers, plastic film, polystyrene fragments etc. That seemed to be a lot to me. I guess it is a generational thing. Our parents would have been horrified to see that amount, whereas it seems to go unnoticed by our youth of today. In another 20 years how many pieces will there be on this stretch, -- 200? What will today’s youth think of that new amount then when they are older? Will their children be so readily accepting of a higher amount of litter? NY governor proposes plastic bag ban – USA
Posted on April 27, 2018 by DrRossH in Plastic Limiting RegulationsPlastic isn’t so fantastic after all, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has decided.
The governor, facing a left-wing challenge in September’s New York Democratic primary, unveiled legislation that would ban plastic carry-out bags at stores statewide starting in January. The decision comes more than a year after he signed a bill canceling a New York City law that would have implemented a 5-cent surcharge on disposable shopping bags, a municipal measure he called “deeply flawed.”
His statement in an April 23 news release accompanying the announcement echoed the arguments of New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and City Council members who passed the fee: bags crowd landfills, strangle wildlife and accumulate in waterways.
“The blight of plastic bags takes a devastating toll on our streets, our water and our natural resources, and we need to take action to protect our environment,” Cuomo said. “As the old proverb goes: ‘We did not inherit the earth, we are merely borrowing it from our children,’ and with this action we are helping to leave a stronger, cleaner and greener New York for all.”
The ban will not apply to the clear plastic bags used to wrap meat, fish, vegetables or bulk items, nor to synthetic reusable bags. Unlike the city law, it does not deal with paper pouches, so even if it passes, it might not go very far toward getting shoppers to bring reusable bags to the store.
Brooklyn City Councilman Brad Lander, who championed the city’s bag-fee legislation, reacted hopefully but skeptically to the governor’s proposal.
“If Gov. Cuomo has actually gotten serious about reducing the billions of plastic bags that New Yorkers send to landfills each month, it would be great news,” Lander tweeted. “But his announcement today looks like — gasp — election year Earth Day politics.”
The state bill Cuomo signed in 2017 was largely the handiwork of Brooklyn state Sen. Simcha Felder, a conservative Democrat who caucuses with Republicans and provides the margin of their one-seat majority in the upper chamber of the Legislature. The Democratic-dominated Assembly, following the lead of Staten Island Assemblyman Michael Cusick, also passed the anti-fee bill.
The lower house had previously pressured the city to delay implementation of the impost with the threat of legislative action.
The state legislation struck down the city’s law but allowed the city to pass another one in a year’s time. But the council has not advanced such a measure.
Cuomo is being challenged by actress Cynthia Nixon in the Democratic primary.
Get the politics out of and just ban those bags. it has to happen. There are just too many people using far to many bags. The toll on the environment and wildlife is far far greater than the 20 mins of convenience to shoppers who can’t do a simple thing like remembering to carry a reusable bag with them into a store
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