JT..

i did the same. I collected lots of bags.

i donated my extra bags to the food bank. they can use them…

then i got my envirosaxs.. they roll up and go right into my purse.. and they don’t add much weight. 2 carry all the groceries i buy at a time even if i buy lots of impulse purchases.

and if i plan to do a major grocery shopping. i put one of those nice big costco bags into the car and load it from my cart.. one pretty much contains a full cart.

they also are great for carrying yard waste.. or clothing to the be donated or containing plastic containers you want to give away or…

i don’t think i have found all their uses yet. And they wash out with a garden hose. great product!

it took me a while but i found a solution that worked for me.. and in the meantime someone else got free bags.. they didn’t go to waste.

If you read the material that went with the bag fee, it said very clearly that part of the money was to go to offset increased costs for plastic bag recycling to make an increase in garbage rates unnecessary.

If you read the insert that came in your garbage bill at about the same time, it explained why they were incurring increased costs for plastic bag recycling.. single bags jam the machine.. and people are not being conscientious and bagging them together.

I am not going to go back and look at the poll to verify who put it together… i don’t care enough.

and i am not going to go back to see if this organization has added to their position paper since i read it last. The bias was pretty obvious going in. They picked a position and defended the position instead of exploring the subject and coming to conclusions… and they had to stretch to do so.

of course people would prefer plastic bag collection sites at stores to paying a 20 cent fee…

and the question if they would prefer a 20 cent fee that they could avoid or an increase in garbage rates wasn’t asked.

the issues with plastic bags are clear and have been from the start.

free plastic shopping bags create a waste problem, a recycling problem when they are not bagged together and an environmental problem when they blow from our streets into the sound and marine animals try to ingest them. Not to mention the problem of chemical seepage from the bags in landfills.

I am not sure what part of that you actually refute.. but labeling the opposition condescending doesn’t really make much of an argument..

beachdrivegirl…

nor does the tactic of naming all the other environmental problems that could be addressed… and which will not change in the least if the bag fee is defeated.

***

so here is some of that condescending stuff…

Neither one of you are defending a position.. you are defending an argument.. and a poorly thought out one at that.

“They picked a position and defended the position instead of exploring the subject and coming to conclusions.”

NEPS provides 62 links under their references tab, including information from 6 countries and 3 other states.

This thread references a garbage bill insert.

I encourage people to research for themselves.

JT..

i referenced the garbage bill insert because it was educational material that was delivered to your home and therefore was information you had access to.

as was the “news” that the fee would partially offset garbage bills.

Defending this argument that way doesn’t become you.

I agree that the bag tax isn’t perfect. They should be banded completely. Sitting on our hands though and waiting for the magic bullet to all our problems will not get us any where, therefor I think the bag tax is a good idea. I spent some time in France and if you do not have your own grocery bag, you can buy one there. They had no disposable bags anywhere I went except for high end clothing stores.

I’ve heard what beachdrivegirl is talking about called cradle-to-grave, or sometimes (more in line with the concept of sustainability) cradle-to-cradle–the idea being that in order to figure out the real environmental impact of something, you have to look at its entire lifecycle, from raw materials to manufacture to transport to use to disposal.

The problem is that it’s very difficult to measure this; some of the information is out there but can be tricky to locate because (so far) there are no easily accessible information resources (at least, that I know of, and I’m a professional librarian) that consumers can use to determine the real impact of our choices.

I use reusable bags that I happen to have acquired at professional conferences; the bags we get at American Library Association meetings are beach bag-sized and durable, and I can carry my groceries over my shoulder and fit a week’s worth into a single bag.

It’s not actually a great environmental move, though, because to get those bags I fly across the country twice a year, and air travel is one of the most polluting things an individual can do.

I recycle plastic bags when I do get them. It’s not hard.