Quick background: Seattle last year instituted a ban on plastic bags and mandated a charge for paper bags, on the grounds that doing so would force consumers to use recyclable bags. This is all ostensibly for improving the quality of life in Seattle:
“I think we’ve gotten to a place where it’s really going to work for the environment, businesses and the community in general,” Councilman Mike O’Brien said at the time.
So, how did it work?
- Environment: People keep stealing store’s hand-baskets – because they didn’t bring any bags – to bring their groceries home, then abandon the baskets. Yes, the last time I checked ‘increased littering’ counts as ‘negative impact on the environment.’ Or are hand baskets suddenly biodegradable? Do they magically disappear from the landfills?
- Business: Well, the stores are upset about all of those not-actually-all-that-cheap baskets that they keep losing. They’re even more upset over the shoplifting, which has skyrocketed since the ban took place. Oddly enough, it’s easier to steal small items when you’re not only allowed, but required to bring multiple storage devices along with you*.
- The community: …Well, one community is doing great; the E. coli community has never been more prominent in Seattle life and public health advisories. But, never fear: when asked about the minor detail that the new plastic bag ban has led to more bacterial outbreaks and deaths from food poisoning, the Seattle public health department responded by telling people to wash their bags**.
So, yeah, this is not exactly working out the way that people anticipated. And there’s one small remaining problem: which is to say, these are all problems that nobody is apparently planning to fix. Again, from the article:
Seattle’s push for reusable bags – and shoplifters who have plagued several Lake City businesses – leave [store owners] in a predicament. Asking customers to check reusable bags at the counter would be burdensome to customers and staff, and prohibiting reusable bags and backpacks likely wouldn’t work well in Seattle, which other business owners said is known for grand environmental ideas that can hinder small business efforts.
…Which is, of course, the problem right there. And the worst part? People are dying of food poisoning as a result of a policy that isn’t even doing anything helpful. Who the heck wants to get a bacterial infection for the sake of a flawed recycling initiative?
Moe Lane (crosspost)
*So, basically: one subset of people are not bringing bags, and stealing baskets to get their groceries home. Another subset of people are bringing bags, and using them to shoplift. A third subset of people are bringing bags, not shoplifting with them, and spreading disease with them. This is a heck of a way to run a railroad.
**Yes, thank you, Seattle public health department, that’s very helpful advice. I especially loved the tone of your spokesman James Apa: after all, I’m sure that the Oregonian girl’s soccer team that got sick via a food bag norovirus in 2010 so totally had it coming to them. Or does the ‘Oregonian’ bit make that irrelevant, somehow? – I’m not really all that familiar with the finer points of radical Green theology.
The energy required to wash all those bags effectively, in small lots, is much, much greater than that required to produce the disposable bags. Also, the amount of water required.
But plastic bags are produced by a corporation, and the evil of that can’t be washed out.
.
(My comment was snarky, dismissive, internally contradictory, and displayed large amounts of ignorance. I can’t help but think that some Green would actually employ it.)
And… Austin’s plastic bag ban goes into effect today. Luckily there’s a store just outside of city limits close to my office, so they’ll just lose tax revenues instead.
As far as “having it coming to them”; I have absolutely zero sympathy for any “Blue” area that suffers from these kinds of things. Be it New York, Massachusetts, Chicago, or the entire Left Coast. They have voted for these idiocies, and for the people who impose these idiocies, for literally generations. Let them get what they voted for, good and hard. I return the contempt that they have for the rest of us.
Ah, crap. That’s like saying we should have no sympathy for the 48 percent who “allowed” Barack Obama to be re-elected.
I live in Corvallis, where the City Council recently imposed a ban on plastic shopping bags. The ban is almost universally detestedd. Now it’s almost fun listening to “Progressives” putting up lame arguments as to why the issue shouldn’t be put on the ballot for a vote by the stupid proles. The poor bastards have false consciousness, you know, and have to be guided into the glorious future.
Corvallis? I hear that you guys have one hell of a pike squad.
And the funny pert is the assumption that plastic bags are used only once is a flawed assumption based on from what I can tell a total lack of data of any kind. We reuse plastic bags a lot, cleaning the kitty litter, putting out the mail( my wife sells on ebay), I also use them to prolong the life of a loaf of fresh bread and even to store things in groups in the freezer. The point is they made a flawed assumption never checked to see if said assumption had any validity and proceeded to start sickening and killing themselves. Enjoy the future the left is going to get it good and hard.
Also they make good cat toys mine like chewing the handles off the bags.