One of the most recent environmental arguments in California relates to the signing of a statewide plastic bag ban in grocery stores that’s drawn many challenges regarding its beneficial impacts and damages as well.
According to the new law, plastic bags at grocery stores will no longer be available starting in July of next year and for everywhere else as of the following year. Also, instead of offering free designated paper bags, customers are charged 10 cents per each paper bags for their shopping.
The idea has a measurable intention to define yet another concept of expanding environmental conservation with the process of developing industrialized consumer-products and overlooks more traditional customer service approaches in favor of better economy and item advantages.
This proposal has seen some opposing concerns from the public due to fear of job loss and having to pay more for bags at the grocery store. However, the crucial need for more effective and gradual improvements towards the easier and greener product transportation business will convince people about the positive market approach of transitioning to re-useable and paper bags.
Pretty much all of the grocery companies’ organizations and markets nationwide have served to offer plastic bags for many years. These plastic bags were cheap, very easy-to-grab, hands on and ultimately plenty in majority of places in our town.
We can find them in little boxes in our garage, in used factory machines, in schools, in restaurants and also all over the empty plastic machines in the street that identifies as easiest thing to carry our daily needs with it.
It proves why we always have to expect to see new changes and paying attention to the nature of any possible things happens around us. The idea to replace plastic with papers would bring essential improvement.
People might say paper is one of the most polluting industry according to natural resources methods, but permanently it would essentially conserve oil that appears to the cause infiltrating of gases into our air after when being produced in chemical engineering dispersants companies and oil petroleum factories.
According to Slate Magazine, plastic bags don’t biodegrade at all and we have to wait for UV Rays to destroy it, which would takes up to 1,000 years. Papers take much less weight to be destroyed and a shorter time to reproduce through the course of a year domestically and globally.
Paper bags are partially made of recycled paper or fiber. They contain 35 percent recycled materials and, once discarded, they can be recycled again or be torn into small pieces and fit into compost piles.
Papers are recyclable and they’re designed to decompose faster and easier than plastic which is beneficial in transportation and has diverse shape.
Overall, paper and reuse are much more purposeful than dirty plastics. Moreover, California’s ecosystem, air quality and economy are ready for a more purposeful and efficient future of a marketplace that does not sacrifice so much just to make or transport goods between stores and consumers.
It’s time now to start embracing changes in the day-to-day marketplace instead of fearing it and using that fear as an excuse to cling onto inefficient traditions.
Fu Bangnum • Nov 24, 2014 at 2:42 pm
These bans are a joke. You can use the banned bag. You just have to buy it by the box. You can buy a thicker plastic bag or a paper bag. You can use anything you want as long as you buy it. The reusable bag also comes with it’s own set of problems. It has to be used 131 to equal the footprint of one plastic bag. This doesn’t even include washing it, which most people admit to never doing. The reusable bags have to be remembered and they also pile up. I saw a blogger post a pic of a pile of reusable bags she was trying to give away. Those can’t even be recycled.
The bag banners tell you that Ireland when it passed the ban the store plastic bag decreased, but they don’t tell you that the sales of prepackaged plastic increased to replace the one that was given for free. The only green part of this is in your wallet.
Jack • Nov 19, 2014 at 11:24 am
The article repeats many myths from the Greenwashing community. Paper and Plastic bags buried in landfills do not decay. Paper bags are 11 times heavier so they increase landfill space dramatically. Plastic bags on the surface crumble into dust in a matter of weeks. Plastic bags are clean, inert, and safe. Paper bags require massive land, air, and water pollution to produce. California does not allow paper factory permits for that reason. Plastic bags are made from a waxy byproduct of gasoline production and waste natural gas. Whole barrels of oil are not used. Recycled paper bags still require trees to be cut down in vast areas of land to produce. Reusable bags require sweat shop labor to produce at the price they are sold for. Do Californians want to mandate crimes against humanity just to pursue a fraudulent Greenwashing campaign? Read a Scientific Environmental Impact Study. “Life Cycle Assessment of Supermarket Carrier Bags” published by the UK Environment Agency. It is amazing.