Donate today tohelp keep Grists site and newsletters free. Cities and states across the country are banning plastic bags, but those bans may be having unintended consequences. ETHAN: Specifically, well be talking about grocery bags. Thats right, I said it. The instinct to favor reusable bags springs from an understandable urge to reduce our chronic overconsumption, but the bags we use are not the big problem. [wrong buzz, rewind] Cracker? All that said, paper is made from trees, meaning paper bags contribute to deforestation. Climate change, they say, isnt the only form of environmental degradation to worry about. Monthly or one-time, donate now when all donations will be matched by a generous group of donors. Twitter, Follow us on When we got rid of the carry out bags, people had to start purchasing garbage bags. Banning Plastic Bags Is Great for the World, Right? What I found was a net benefit, we were still reducing more plastic than this rebound effect. In a rational model. Our best hope the next time Earth is in the crosshairs? Not So Fast" by Ben Adler focuses on the states attempting to end giving out plastic bags for free hoping to reduce plastic waste. Paper bags do have some pros over plastic theyre biodegradable, recyclable, compostable, reusable, all the fun -ables. ETHAN: Clips today came from 23 ABC News. The Australian study concluded that the best option appears to be a reusable bag, but one made from recycled plastic. (Cindy) Works Cited. And so whats really interesting is just adding a small price to each, each bag, you know, five cents, we see really large behavioral changes just with that small price. document.getElementById( "ak_js_2" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Like cigarettes, plastic bags have recently gone from a tolerated nuisance to a widely despised and discouraged vice. What do they think this is, a Ritz quick scheme? High costs for cleanup 8. The ideal city bag policy would probably involve charging for paper and plastic single-use bags, as New York City has decided to do, while giving out reusable recycled-plastic bags to those who need them, especially to low-income communities and seniors. But for UPROSE, that concern is outweighed by the negative impacts of plastic bags on disadvantaged communities. Wait, sorry, wrong kind of cracker. So the unintended consequences. Theres no easy answer, says Eric Goldstein, New York City environment director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, which backed NYCs bag fee. If your chief concern is climate change, things get even muddier. Does it get recycled? Even then, the question remains as to whether single-use bags are necessarily always worse than reusable ones. And now theyre using a thicker product with more packaging. In a queer vacation hot spot on Cape Cod, an ad hoc community proved that Americans can stifle large outbreaksif they want to. It honestly sounds like a superhero, doesnt it? Many supermarkets have experimented with bag bonuses trying to get people to reuse their either bags by giving them five cents, and they havent found them to be particularly effective. READ MORE. Whereas the small taxes are very effective. To revist this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. You can learn more at pbs.org/perilandpromise. And beyond that, ethylene itself is a dangerous pollutant. Washington, DCs government estimates that its 5-cent bag tax has led to a 60 percent reduction in the number of these bags being used, although that figure is contested by other sources. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); A nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. In fact, they may even feel too awkward to ask for one. One reason plastic bags should be banned is that they hurt the environment. Plastic bag bans havent fixed the entire problem where theyve been implemented. ETHAN: When something causes as many issues as plastic bags, it may seem tempting to ban it. All donations doubled for a limited time. Were trying to get these deep dives a little bit shorter so you can listen to the whole thing during your commute or workout or walking your grandpa or what have you, and also make it a little bit more manageable for our team. The court has given itself a deadline extension until late Friday night to decide whether mifepristone should remain legal. As longtime plastic bag adversary Ian Frazier recently reported in The New Yorker, In 2014, plastic grocery bags were the seventh most common item collected during the Ocean Conservancys International Coastal Cleanup, behind smaller debris such as cigarette butts, plastic straws, and bottle caps. The New York City Sanitation Department collects more than 1,700 tons of single-use carry-out bags every week, and has to spend $12.5 million a year to dispose of them. In Staten Island, perhaps? Not So Fast" by Ben Adler and the essay "Choking The Oceans With Plastic" by Charles J. Moore they both pose a connection and an area of disagreement. I collected data from supermarkets, on the types of bags people were using at checkout, both before and after the policy went into effect. A tweak could let quantum possibilities increase as space expands. Nakuru, Kenya In the open-air Wakulima Market thin plastic shopping bags have disappeared, banished by Kenya's national bag ban. And so I think, and subsidies can be quite expensive for governments to run or source to run. And so because of that bands have been more popular. Choking the oceans with Plastics. ETHAN: After we drill and frack and insert other PG13 sounding term here, we have to actually turn our fossil fuels into polyethylene. Come on, why have we not tried this yet? But studies conducted in Australia or Europe have limited applicability in the US, particularly when youre considering climate impact, because every country has a different energy mix. I guess the name does make sense. They were reusing their carry out bags as garbage bags. They increase their sales by almost 120%. Again, Im not referring to carbon emissions, Im talking nitrous oxide, particulate matter, carbon monoxide, smog, Sagittariuses, really bad stuff. Facebook, Follow us on Take two minutes, help out the show, and get a shoutout at the end of the show by leaving a five star rating and a review on Apple or Podcast Addict OR join our Patreon at patreon.com/thesweatypenguin. TAYLOR: Yeah, I would love to see the conversation, sort of move more. How do we do that? I asked Dr. Taylor how we can account for the cost of alternatives when we create policies to address plastic bags. TAYLOR: Yeah, well, Ill circle back to the three Rs. I know youve done some comparisons on different strategies and looked at this more holistically. Lets start with paper: the only kind of bag that is, in the most literal tense, tearible. Not good places to be adding more polluting facilities. All three counties are majority minority, the first two are over a third low income, and according to data from Texas Rising, if you rank all 254 counties in Texas for the overall environmental and social burdens they face, these three counties come in at #3, #8, and #53. Put all that together, and National Geographic estimates that a paper bag would need to be used anywhere from 3 to 43 times in order to neutralize its environmental impact as compared to plastic. I hardly know her! I mean, throw some Dijon on there and youve got lunch! YouTube, Follow us on How many plastic bags are replaced by one cotton tote bag? And the most common substitute, paper bags, may be just as bad or worse, depending on the environmental problem youre most concerned about. the Massachusetts State Senate passed a measure that would ban plastic bags from being dispensed by many retail businesses and require a charge of 10 cents or more for a recycled paper or reusable bag. Even studies conducted with the purest of intentions depend on any number of assumptions. To support our nonprofit environmental journalism, please consider disabling your ad-blocker to allow ads on Grist. 2- From a retailer's perspective, the thin plastic bags are the most economical of all. But not just anywhere. Problematic degradation 4. Im really proud of this one and I hope you enjoy it! Advocates for plastic bag bans often neglect to ask what will replace plastic bags and what the environmental impact of that replacement will be. In fact, eight states have gone so far as to ban single-use plastic bags, and over 200 counties and municipalities have enacted ordinances either imposing a fee on plastic bags or banning them. The Massachusetts proposal may not become law this year, but it's the latest sign that the plastic bag industry is losing this war. Yeet that wheat. As such, many people suggest accompanying measures to distribute free reusable bags, and the tax could even be used to raise the money to make that happen. A lot of the waste ends up in our communities, says Elizabeth Yeampierre, executive director of UPROSE, an environmental and social justice-oriented community organization in Brooklyn. Thats the percentage the Massachusetts Sierra Club has advocated for at the state level and when lobbying for municipal bag rules. LASZLO: Am I? Its like when your boss bans YouTube at work, so everyone jumps to Discord. One of the most comprehensive research papers on the environmental impact of bags, published in 2007 by anAustralian state government agency, found that paper bags have a higher carbon footprint than plastic. Ad Choices, Banning Plastic Bags Is Great for the World, Right? Recently, many politicians were in such a hurry to ban plastic bags. So paper bag usage did increase quite a bit. Microsoft quietly supported legislation to make it easier to fix devices. TAYLOR: When I put my economist hat, the sort of first tool that I really think that policymakers should consider is a small fee, or a tax on all the different types of carry out bags. If youre singularly focused on eliminating plastic bags, theres a level of convenience from a policymaker standpoint thats tempting. Not So Fast. Thats primarily because more energy is required to produce and transport paper bags. I mean, I know it loves to hang at the cracker plants and all but wouldnt it have more fun hanging out with other creatures of the night? As far as I know, nobody has done the definitive analysis, which would necessarily need to have a large number of caveats and qualifications. And then if when those you know are no longer possible, can we recycle them? If they were going to use a slur for white people, why not name it Karen or Wonderbread? Both authors of these essays specifically speak about how the use of plastic can be harmful for the mother-nature, and have introduced ways to compensate this loss. Facebook, Follow us on Thats leading to a split in the anti-bag movement. ETHAN: Does this mean bag bans are bad or bag alternatives are bad? People still need bags to bring home their groceries. So I wont rehash it all today, but if you listen to our episodes on fracking or the Permian Basin or the Haynesville Shale, youll learn a little bit about the villain origin story of plastic bags, and some of the many issues to which they contribute. Thats leading to a split in the anti-bag movement. Microplastics can be ingested by anyone from seabirds to fish to even humans through our food and water, and can cause health issues, reduce appetites, and even increase the risk of mortality. And so my recommendation is to use as few bags as you can reuse the ones that you do purchase and purchase your bags, make it an active decision. And I think thats the topic I dont know enough about. What if instead of making the plastic from fossil fuels, we made it out of plants? In fact, eight states have gone so far as to ban single-use plastic bags, and over 200 counties and municipalities have enacted ordinances either imposing a fee on plastic bags or.
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