Plastic Bag Ban Bad? - No Reason to Think So!

Not even a few decades ago, it was normal to bring bags to a store instead of receiving plastic bags. Of course plastic bags are convenient, as pointed out in “Plastic Bag Ban Bad”, and the ones we received in stores are very cheap in production, but there is no denying that they are bad for the environment.

Obviously, the city has regulated the use of those thin and cheap plastic bags. It regulated the use of them as extreme as possible. The city of Austin banned the bags. In banning the bags they found a way to bring less plastic into circulation. The problem is that the regulation of plastic bag use and plastic bag recycling in our society hasn't worked so far, and there is no reason to believe that it will work any time soon. There are laws concerning these bags. One example is, that people are supposed to throw them into the trash or recycle them which often isn't happening. This is obvious if we just look at the garbage patches in the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean. In those patches, collections of plastic pollute big parts of the oceans. They fall into pieces, but don't disappear since plastic isn't compostable. This causes a huge problem for animals and plants.

Paper bags don't bring such a big issue to the environment as mentioned in “Plastic Bag Ban Bad”. To produce paper bags, no new trees are cut. They are made of recycled paper. Also if those are tossed into the ocean, they dissolve pretty easily, which of course doesn't mean that we should do that.

The whole purpose in cotton bags is to reuse them. So you buy two or however many you need for one shopping trip, and then you bring them back the next time you go shopping. That's a one time investment! And I cannot see the higher taxes to a one time investment.

The environment is killed more by plastic bags in the ocean, than by the production of recycled paper bags. To use those plastic bags for trash and other things, it is probably best to use plastic bags that can be composted.