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HomeMy WebLinkAboutPlastic Shopping Bags Ban letter On Banning Plastic Shopping Bags RECEIVED By AUG 1 2 2014 William W. Schriever Southold Town Clerk When the environmentalists mounted a similar campaign to ban plastic shopping bags two years ago,the alternative then being considered were Kraft paper bags without handles about 17 inches high, 12 inches long, and 6.5 inches wide. I wrote a two-page document, "On Banning Plastic Shopping Bags" dated July 31, 2012, expressing my objections to banning plastic shopping bags and pointing out their many advantages both for the merchants and for the customers. The alternative now being considered are reusable cloth shopping bags with handles. In this document I will discuss the relative merits of these two alternatives in that order. The Benefits To The Customer Of Using Plastic Shopping Bags I am adamantly opposed to banning plastic shopping bags in the Village of Greenport, in the Town of Southold or in the County of Suffolk. I am almost 88 years old and when I walk I need to use a cane to avoid stumbling and falling. So I have only one hand available to carry my grocery bags. I need two arms to lift and to carry one paper grocery bag and yet I can carry two or more plastic grocery bags with one hand. These plastic grocery bags provide me with the handles that I need to live independently. My car is garaged a long way from my apartment. I use the handles of the plastic bags to hang the grocery bags on my electric wheelchair so that I can carry the groceries to my apartment by myself. With paper bags I must load the groceries into a push cart and then find someone to deliver it to my apartment. As I have said, the plastic bags are essential to allow me to live independently. As reported in the July 12, 2012, issue of The Suffolk Times, Ms. Van Buren said of the plastic bags, "You use it once and it's trash. The only good second use for the bags is picking up dog waste, she said." As reported in the July 24, 2014, issue of The Suffolk Times, Bill Toedter, president of the North Fork Environmental Council, said "the average lifespan of a single-use plastic bag is just twelve minutes, after which they are likely to break or tear and end up being discarded." Of course, neither of these statements of fact is true. These are the hyperbole that environmentalists use to shut off any discussion of the facts. I recycle and reuse all of my plastic grocery bags. After I remove the groceries, I hold each bag up to a bright light to determine whether the bag has any holes in it. Those that are without any holes I pack into one large storage bag, the others I tie in a knot to identify them and pack them into another large storage bag. Those without holes I use to line a plastic wastebasket that I maintain to collect and to dispose of my kitchen garbage. When it is full I put a plastic wrapper of some sort on top of the garbage and tie the handles of the plastic bag to package the garbage. A paper grocery bag would not resist the moisture from the garbage nor does it have the handles needed to tie it closed. Also I use these plastic bags to store produce in my refrigerator. The bags are relatively sanitary and they can be disposed of after I have used the contents so that I don't contaminate any new produce. I tie the handles to keep the contents from spilling in my car and in my refrigerator. August 12,2014 - I - William W.Schriever On Banning Plastic Shopping Bags By William W. Schriever The plastic grocery bags that have small holes in them I use to carry and to dispose of recycled bottles and cans. I also use them to tie up waste paper like discarded mail and magazines for recycling. When I need to flour meat or fish for-frying, I lay out a plastic bag on the counter to contain the flour and then I wrap up the soiled flour in the plastic bag for disposal in the garbage. Thus there is no need to use soap and water for the cleanup. I carry a plastic bag with me literally every time I leave the apartment. I use it like a brief case to carry my business papers, my reading glasses, my checkbook and anything else that I may need on my trip. The handles allow me to carry my things in one hand without dropping them. And I use the plastic bags to pick up my mail and to carry it back to my apartment. The Benefits To The Business Of Using Plastic Shopping Bags By far the largest economic impact of outlawing the use of plastic grocery bags would occur at the cash register at checkout. The plastic shopping bags are held in dispenser that opens and holds the plastic bags ready to receive the groceries. Kraft paper bags and reusable cloth bags must be picked up individually, opened and held upright to receive the groceries. I estimate that giving up the use of the dispensers would literally double the time at the register for everyone, customer and clerk alike. The merchants would need to increase the number of registers and to hire many more employees for the same volume of business and the cost would be passed along in higher food costs for everyone. Those depending on food stamps would receive even less to eat. One alternative to the plastic shopping bags are the Kraft paper bags. As reported in the July 24, 2014, issue of The Suffolk Times, Charles Reichert, owner of the Southold and Greenport IGA stores, "noted that the cost of the paper bags is almost eight times the cost of single-use plastic bags." Of course, costs will depend on the quality of the bags and the volume purchased. The paper bags used by the IGA are made of heavy-weight paper, perhaps a bit stronger than normal. Then there is the cost of shipping the bags to the grocery store and then trucking the waste to the landfill. I weighed the plastic shopping bags and the Kraft paper bags used by the IGA. The plastic bags weigh 0.20 oz. each, the paper bags weigh 2.3 oz. each, eleven times as much. An oz. is one-sixteenth of a pound or 28.35 grams. And the volume of waste ultimately sent to the landfill is probably eleven times as much since the densities of plastic and paper are comparable. The Benefits To The Environment Claimed By The Environmentalists The primary purpose of a law banning plastic shopping bags is to eliminate plastic bags from the environment. However, because the Kraft paper bags and the reusable cloth bags cannot be used to collect and package the garbage or to store produce in the refrigerator, the customer will purchase additional plastic bags to replace the plastic shopping bags that would have been recycled for those uses. The purchased bags are made of heavier-weight and more durable plastic so they will retain their strength much longer if released into the environment. For August 12,2014 - 2 - William W.Schriever On Banning Plastic Shopping Bags By William W. Schriever example, a one-gallon Ziplock storage bag weighs 0.35 oz. and yet a plastic shopping bag of even greater capacity weighs only 0.20 oz. Thus a law banning plastic shopping bags not only will fail to achieve its objective of removing plastic bags from the environment, but it will add substantially to the waste ultimately sent to the landfill. As reported in the July 24, 2014, issue of The Suffolk Times, Bill Toedter, president of the North Fork Environmental Council, said "once disposed of, plastic bags take anywhere from 20 to 1,000 years to break down." The environmentalists want us to believe that once these plastic bags are released into the environment they will be there forever. But that is not true. The plastic loses its strength rapidly when it is exposed to the ultraviolet rays of the sun so any bags loose in the environment will soon disintegrate. Keeping plastic bags out of the environment is no different than keeping any other trash out of the environment. This is more of the hyperbole that environmentalists use to shut off any discussion of the facts. As reported in the July 29, 2014, issue of Newsday, Dieter von Lehsten, co-chairman of the Sustainable Southampton Green Advisory Committee, said "the problem is that these bags never leave the environment. They only break down into smaller particles." Although he doesn't say so, the implication is that paper bags disappear when they biodegrade. Apparently the environmentalists want to rewrite the laws of physics, too. In any physical, chemical or biological process, the total mass remains constant— we say "mass is conserved"— except in the conversion of mass to energy in the nuclear fusion that powers the sun and the nuclear fission that powers the nuclear reactors in our power plants. The Harm To The Environment Ignored By The Environmentalists One environmental impact of the banning of plastic shopping bags would be the additional cost of the fuel needed to ship the much heavier paper bags to the stores and to truck the heavier kitchen waste to the landfill. The burning of this additional fuel would increase the discharge of carbon dioxide, CO2, a greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere which the environmentalists argue is the cause global warming. When the paper bags in the landfill biodegrade, methane, CH4, a much more potent greenhouse gas, is released. As reported by the EPA on their website, "Pound for pound, the comparative impact of CH4 on climate change is over 20 times greater than CO2 over a 100-year period." Methane is considered to be such a serious pollutant that the operator of a landfill is required to cap the landfill and to collect the methane from under the cap. This methane can be burned as a fuel or simply burned directly in the atmosphere to convert it to carbon dioxide. When paper bags biodegrade they pollute the atmosphere with greenhouse gases that environmentalists consider to be harmful to the environment. On a short-term basis, the fact that the paper bags are biodegradable should be considered a liability, not an asset. Nor are there any long-term benefits to using shopping bags that are biodegradable. When a customer who is given paper shopping bags returns home with her groceries, she transfers the August 12,2014 - 3 - William W.Schriever On Banning Plastic Shopping Bags By William W. Schriever fresh meat and produce into new plastic bags and places them in the refrigerator. At that point she has two choices: (1) Fold the paper bags carefully and place them in the recycle bin; (2) Discard the paper bags in the trash with the garbage. In the first instance, only fresh, clean paper can be recycled. The fact that the bags are biodegradable is of no consequence. In the second instance, because "mass is conserved" in the landfill, the weight and volume of the paper bags remains essentially undiminished as it biodegrades. For all practical purposes the landfill does not shrink as it ages although it may settle a little if it compacts under its own weight. Plastic shopping bags are actually better for the environment because they take up less space in the landfill and because they do not biodegrade and release methane, a potent greenhouse gas. The Risks That Reusable Cloth Shopping Bags Pose To Our Health Environmentalists are recommending passage of a law banning plastic shopping bags and perhaps including other incentives such as charging for paper bags in the expectation that grocery shoppers will bring their own reusable cloth shopping bags to the store to be filled by the clerk at the register. Imagine the number of cloth bags that would be needed to pack and carry a shopping cart full of food. The clerk at the register must select each bag from the pile on the checkout counter, unfold it, open it up, hold it open with one hand and fill the bag with the other hand. Previously, I estimated that giving up the use of the dispensers that open and hold the plastic bags ready to receive the groceries would literally double the time at the register for everyone, customer and clerk alike. The merchants would need to increase the number of registers and to hire many more employees for the same volume of business and the cost would be passed along in higher food costs for everyone. That is especially true for the reusable cloth shopping bags. These cloth shopping bags are not sanitary like the plastic and paper shopping bags. Mold will have been growing on the food particles and stains that remain in the bags from the previous use. The outside of the bags may be contaminated with bacteria and viruses. And insects that like to hide in the dark like cockroaches and bed bugs may have crawled into the bags to await another meal. Reviewing the scenario above, note that the cloth bags were carried all over the store in the shopping cart, contaminating the shopping cart and all of the food that the customer handled in the course of making her selection. At checkout, the reused cloth shopping bags are dragged all over the countertop at the register. Mold spores are scattered everywhere including all over the clerk's hands. When the cloth bags are opened, the cockroaches and bed bugs will be exposed to the light and they will flee to the nearest hiding place. The cockroaches may choose to hide in the food or under the counter but the bed bugs will prefer to jump on the customers nearby. When the clerk makes change, the money will be contaminated with the mold spores, bacteria and viruses brought into the store in the reusable cloth shopping bags. All of the customers will leave the store with their food contaminated with mold spores and their shopping bags covered with bacteria and viruses. A few of the customers may be carrying home cockroaches and bed bugs to wreak havoc with their lives. That seems to me like an enormous price to pay to save a few plastic shopping bags. I hope the merchants will have sense enough to refuse to participate in the reuse of the cloth shopping bags. August 12,2014 - 4 - William W.Schriever On Banning Plastic Shopping Bags By William W. Schriever Some Scientific Studies Done To Better Define The Risks As reported in the January 6, 2014, issue of USA Today, "A 2011 study from scientists at the University of Arizona and Loma Linda University found only 3% of shoppers with multi-use bags said they regularly washed them. The same study found bacteria in 99%of bags tested; half carried coliform bacteria while 8% carried E. coli, an indicator of fecal contamination. `I classify them as pretty dirty things, like the bottom of your shoes,' said Ryan Sinclair of Loma Linda University School of Public Health, a co-author of the study." "He is finalizing another study he hopes to publish soon looking at how pathogens spread through grocery stores with the help of reusable bags. The study, conducted at a central California grocery store in early 2013, involved spraying bags with a bacteria not harmful to humans but transported in a similar way to norovirus, a leading cause of gastrointestinal disease linked to more than 19 million illnesses each year in the United States. The tracer bacteria was detected in high concentrations on shopping carts, at the checkout counter and on food items shoppers had touched but kept on the shelf. Sinclair said the contamination cycle often began right after the shoppers entered the store and placed their bags in the bottom or the baby carrier of a shopping cart, two places notorious for germs. `The baby carrier portion of the grocery cart is the most contaminated public surface you ever come in contact with,' he said." "But Sinclair doesn't think habits about washing the bags are changing much in the years since the study he helped create was published. The researchers found that bacteria thrived and multiplied on bags stored in the trunks of cars and that machine or hand washing reduced bacteria on bags by more than 99.9%. A separate study published in 2012 traced a norovirus outbreak among a girls' soccer team from Oregon to a reusable bag stored in a hotel bathroom used by an ill team member." Protecting Wildlife From The Release Of Trash In The Environment I assume that the practice of disposing of municipal waste by dumping it from barges into the coastal waters is drawing to an end. And I believe that ships at sea now carry their waste ashore instead of dumping it overboard. Even if a plastic shopping bag is part of the waste it does not create a unique problem. The only solution is to ban the dumping of the waste into the ocean. It is true that plastic bottles and other plastic waste float on the surface of the water and eventually end up on a beach somewhere. But so do tree limbs and construction materials made of wood or foam or other materials that float. So the beaches will have to be cleaned in any case, whether or not there are a few plastic items among the debris. Plastic shopping bags do have one property that is unique; they have handles in which wildlife could become entangled. I believe it might be helpful to cut open or to cut off the handles or to tie the plastic shopping bags in a knot before disposing of them if there is any chance they will be released into the environment. August 12,2014 - 5 - William W.Schriever On Banning Plastic Shopping Bags By William W. Schriever Conclusion: Such A Law Will Produce No Benefits To The Environment A law banning plastic shopping bags will not achieve even its primary objective of removing plastic bags from the environment. Substituting Kraft paper bags as the alternative will pollute the atmosphere with greenhouse gasses which the environmentalists argue will increase global warming. Substituting reusable cloth shopping bags as the alternative will create a public health disaster by spreading mold spores, bacteria and viruses throughout the community. Also reusable cloth shopping bags can act as vectors to carry cockroaches and bed bugs from one home to another. What is really needed is a law banning the reuse of cloth shopping bags in grocery stores. The economic benefits of plastic shopping bags are substantial. Plastic shopping bags are the least expensive shopping bags to purchase. They can be loaded into a dispenser that opens and holds the bags ready to receive the groceries which speeds the checkout at the register. The handles allow the bags to be picked up and carried with one hand which is helpful for everyone but especially for the handicapped. Because plastic shopping bags weigh the least, they are the least expensive to ship to the grocery and to truck to the landfill and they take up the least room in the landfill. They are the most sanitary so they protect the health and the productivity of the family and minimize the expense of medical treatment. Why is the community even considering banning plastic shopping bags? Whatever the reason, whether it is true or not, it fades into insignificance when compared to the environmental and economic benefits of continuing to use the plastic shopping bags. They are the latest technology. They were developed to save money and natural resources and we cannot afford not to use them. August 12, 2014 9ftwi liam W. Schriever 1500 Brecknock Rd. #202 Greenport,NY 11944 631-477-9009 August 12,2014 - 6 - William W.Schriever