What happens on the coasts often happens in Kansas — only much, much, much later. Given local leaders’ disinterest in recycling or even lowering trash bills, and their cool response to a proposal last year to reduce their own governments’ greenhouse gas emissions, any bets on how long it might be before Kansas and especially Wichita follow San Francisco’s lead on banning nonbiodegradable plastic grocery bags? Grocers are opposed, in part because corn-based plastic bags are still costly and untested. Environmentalists warn of loss of more trees to make paper bags. But many who’ve seen Wal-Mart bags flying over the interstate or tangled in trees have guessed this day would come.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
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22 Comments
Actually a nice canvas bag which is reusable is nice. If you go grocery shopping and shop for a lot of groceries, the problem is more complex.
European shoppers often use their own carts, smaller…but effective. They also bring their own containers boxes or bags. I see a new market here on innovative ideas to be more ecologically and environmentally friendly.
For shopping purposes, BYOB works well. You bought too much, or too lazy to bring your own bag, then you may as well pay for the extra plastic bags. Maybe then Wal-Mart will invest in stronger bags that can be reused many times.
I’d be thrilled with biodegradeable plastic bags. But what would I use in my trashcans?
That’s how I recycle- I use my shopping bags in my bathroom trashcans.
Dear political mom,
That’s not recycling, that’s just using them twice before you throw them away.
Hank
p-mom – I would guess you would still use the same bag – it don’t biodegrade overnight.
“biodegradable plastic”
Isn’t that an oxymoron?
GS, it is when one is referring to the plastic made from petroleum products. However, as pointed out above, there are plastics which may be manufactured from corn, e.g., which are biodegradable, albeit slowly if they are to stand up to normal use.
I have seen the corn-based replacements for styrofoam peanuts – they are edible but very bland
Good thing is, if you toss them out in the back yard they disintegrate, dissolve in the rain, and become part of the soil.
Exactly, Ben; however, if these “plastics” are subject to disintegration in the presence of water, then putting cold substances with accompanying condensation in a bag made of this substance could result in the unwanted failure of the bag. So, something would need to be incorporated with these “natural” substances to avoid this, to my way of thinking, which would perforce make the same biodegradable, but more slowly.
Watching those “peanuts” dissolve is really interesting, at the least; and, as you point out, they can become a part of the soil in a positive way.
Good point about the bags. Even if the degradation is slow I would think it would speed up if the bags are shredded. As happens on roadsides when a mower goes over them.
Just type reusable shopping bags in google and you can find all sorts of alternatives.
People talk Green, but seldom do they do anything about it.
I don’t buy the objection to paper bags that it “destroys trees”. Trees are a crop that can be grown. Granted, they don’t mature every year like wheat or corn, but they are a crop that can be planted, harvested and planted again. Anyone who has spent any time in the Pacific Northwest can attest to the replanting of trees on a very, very large scale.
Paper bags decompose, unlike plastic. Commercial logging is not inherently a “bad thing”. It is professional management of a resource that can and is regrown over and over and over.
Raptor –When the pilgrims first came to America there were walnuts trees five to six feet in diameter, 150 + feet tall, they were all over the place, then they were cut down to make furniture over the years now today there are no more of them mega size walnut trees.Anyone from the Atlantic Northeast can tell you that one.
Wiseman..
I am not doubting that there has been a lack of conservation of mega trees in the past. That cannot be changed, and it is unlikely to be repeated since the giants still standing (Muir Woods, Sequoia National Forest, etc) are federally protected.
But…commercially grown trees used for things like lumber for housing and the resultant chips used for paper are regrown all the time. Banning paper bags because a commercial crop is used to make them doesn’t make much sense to me. That would be like saying we can’t harvest corn.
Corn-based plastic bags, I am not to sure about it being a good thing.It might raise the cost of other thing such as cattle feed, chicken feed and etc. thus raising the cost of food.Industrial Hemp would be the better choice; you can grow more with more cycles of growth per the year, disease free and with very little water.
Wiseman,
Which brings us right back to why hemp was outlawed. Does the name Dupont ring any bells?
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) lumps low-THC hemp with marijuana. As a result, although the United States permits trade in nonviable hemp seed, oil, and fiber, it is the only major industrialized nation that prohibits the growing and processing of hemp.Hemp has a long history in America, from the first plantings in Jamestown, where growing hemp was mandatory, to the hemp sails of 19th-century clipper ships and the hemp canvas covers of pioneer wagons, to World War II’s massive “Hemp for Victory” program. Hemp is a major part of humanity’s agricultural and commercial heritage, having been used extensively for millennia in cultures around the world.Beginning with the passage of the “Marihuana Tax Act” of 1937 and continuing after the World War II “Hemp for Victory” program, misplaced fears that industrial hemp is marijuana and harassment by law enforcement discouraged farmers from growing hemp. The last crop was grown in Wisconsin in 1958, and the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) of 1970 formally prohibited cultivation.
It is that DEA ruling that is keeping us from utilizing hemp as a crop for industrial proposes.
No argument, just a question. Where does the hemp for Hemp ropes come from? And whee has it come from in the past. As a younger man, I bought plenty of hemp rope.
Soon Hemp will be the only thing that can be grown in Western Kansas. It will be so dry, so little water, that and prarie grass… Now if only they could make gas from prarie grass…
When settlers first came to Kansas there were very few trees from the North East to the South West portion of the state. re: renewable resources.
If one reads the Lewis and Clark Expedition notes, they had a hard time finding enough wood to burn for their fires.
Republican,
As I mentioned some time ago, there were no trees along the Ninnescah 125+ years ago. Cottonwood seedlings were brought by wagon from Winfield or Ark City and planted along the river.
I like the German way. Just make people pay extra (perhaps quite a bit) for bags. The money goes to recycling/waste disposal. If you don’t want to pay, then bring your own bag, or put the stuff in the trunk of your car “loose,” right from the cart. But this is such a SMALL point in a world of BIG problems, let’s move on!