Heather Timmons of the NYT recently went to a plastics convention in India and came away with some choice words from the people whose livelihood depends on the market for plastic shopping bags.
“Politicians have gone overboard. Our industry is facing a problem and we have to fight.” – Arvind M. Mehta, president of the Plastindia Foundation
The plastics industry is fighting back against efforts to reduce or eliminate the use of plastic shopping bags. Lobbyists have managed to convince various levels of government in the US and elsewhere to table bag bans and bag taxes. They also want to influence public opinion. PlasticsIndustry.org has a page devoted to dispelling what it terms as myths related to plastic bags. I am going to devote one blog post to each of the ten myth-busting efforts.
I don’t have that much to say about this one. The wording of the myth is kinda silly. As far as the facts go, compostable plastic is a completely different substance. I think you can essentially call San Francisco’s law a ban on plastic bags. Sources like AP, the NYT and MSNBC call it a ban.
I will hand it to the plastics industry, their arguments are effectively spurring many government into inaction.
March 7th, 2009 at 9:39 pm
Isn’t it funny how the plastics industry only makes comparisons based on the “paper vs. plastic” issue? Not a word about the real solution- neither. Sure, paper requires more energy to transport, but way more tonnage of paper bags get recycled. Most municipalities don’t even have recycling programs for LDPE bags.
I also seem to recall that the paper bags were way easier to save, and that when I was a kid, most people used to save and reuse them because they held up much better. We used to make them into book covers when school came around, thus reusing them again.
March 7th, 2009 at 10:17 pm
The argument that the industry makes has managed to sway politicians. They see the math that makes paper bags look worse than plastic, they listen when they are told that most consumers will go for convenience rather than reusable bags.
Colorado politicians recently voted down a bill. One legislator who voted against a plastic bag ban told the paper that his family uses canvas bags.