03-03-2013, 09:14 AM
We are all paying the price for the bag ban. Virtually every community that has enacted them has seen spikes in shoplifting (some over 20%). Merchants don't "absorb" this cost they pass it on. Also, people buy less stuff (they only buy as much stuff as will fit in their bags) and when sales go down, prices go up. Then when a person gets home they remember "ah, I forgot to buy toilet paper because I was only thinking of stuff that would fit into my stupid reuseable bags" so they make a special trip to the store for it, consuming as much energy to make that one trip than it would have taken to produce and recycle 2,000 plastic bags.
http://www.komonews.com/news/local/Plast...71981.html
Years from now when we're using biodegradable plastic bags we'll look back at this as just as silly as trying to save gasoline by lowering the speed limit to 55. We would have saved a lot more gas by enforcing proper tire inflation and avoided absorbing the collective costs of goods and services spending millions of more hours on the road.
Oh... and then there are the arguments about the energy consumed 1) washing and drying reusable bags and 2) treating the illnesses caused by people putting their produce into the same bag that was absorbing raw chicken juices the day before.
http://www.komonews.com/news/local/Plast...71981.html
Years from now when we're using biodegradable plastic bags we'll look back at this as just as silly as trying to save gasoline by lowering the speed limit to 55. We would have saved a lot more gas by enforcing proper tire inflation and avoided absorbing the collective costs of goods and services spending millions of more hours on the road.
Oh... and then there are the arguments about the energy consumed 1) washing and drying reusable bags and 2) treating the illnesses caused by people putting their produce into the same bag that was absorbing raw chicken juices the day before.