Do You Think Plastic Bags Should be Banned?

Question

I saw this article post about plastic bags from grocery stores and the harm they do to the environment. San Francisco has already banned plastic bags at grocery stores. Do you think it is time to go back to paper only?

http://geniusoflove.blogspot.com/2007/06/plastic-bag-revolt-this-is-war.html

Answer 1

As someone who has been manufacturing plastic bags for the past 20 years, I would have to say no. The answer that most people have already put on here is correct---recycle. Plastic is cheaper, and easier on the environment than paper. It is also easier to recycle. Over 25% of the bags my company produces contain recycled material. We are currently manufactureing bio-degradeable trash bags that'll decompose in the enviorment. Overall, the most important thing to push is recycleing.

Answer 2

Banning plastic bags is probably going to be counter productive, because they do have their uses. However, plastic is currently seeing serious abuse. Recycling programs don't work because people won't even put the plastic in the trash let alone separating them for recycling purposes.

If people in the U.S. would purchase fabric carrying bags, which they re-use each time they visit the supermarket, we'd be on par with our European cousins who currently have to bring their own bags to the supermarket, because stores do not hand out bags. And we could save the lives of more whales, seals and other marine life.

Answer 3

i think plastic bags ought to be banned actual. i'm in Australia and that they have got been speaking approximately it for a pair of years now yet not something has been carried out. My reason is that, in the event that they are positioned into landfll, they are going to take continuously to interrupt down and, human beings being human beings, they finally end up interior the sea and rivers etc and might kill the creatures there in a sluggish and terrible dying. We by no skill had them years in the past so, previous the financial reason, they isn't any genuine clarification why we want them immediately...

Answer 4

Plastic is a necessary evil.
Paper isn't much better, but at least bags can be made out of a percentage of recycled material and they decompose faster than plastic.

Some positive solutions:
1. encourage people to re-use their plastic/paper bags by offering a discount at the check-out line;
2. encourage people to use cloth shopping bags;
3. charge a premium when people don't bring their own bags.

In addition to the bag waste, take a look at all the waste in packaging of products!
There oughta be a law!

Answer 5

Leave it to the supposed Eco friendly to ban plastic bags. So now what will you put your groceries in? Paper bags? Now you got the tree lovers to deal with.

Put a refundable deposit on them and someone will be on the side of the road picking them up. They use to pick up bottles until there was no more refundable deposit. How do you think we still have enough aluminum for cans? Someone picks them up from the side of the road and cashes them in.

Answer 6

It wouldn't be quite as bad if everyone would recycle them. Grocery stores in my area have large containers for deposit of our used plastic bags. If paper bags were made from quick growing plants such as bamboo, I'd say yes go to all paper.

Answer 7

it takes more energy, pollutes more of the atmosphere, and wastes more natural resources to make paper bags than it does to make plastic bags

we should, to actually make a dramatic difference, legalize hemp and use it to make paper and then we would have cheaper bags, cleaner air, and more trees
(the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution are both made of hemp)

Answer 8

If everyone would just recycle the plastic bags when they are done we wouldn't have this problem

Answer 9

Yes. We're drowning in a sea of plastic garbage and its got to stop.
I think the soft drink companies ought to go back to refillable glass bottles, too.

Answer 10

Yes, they are a suffocation hazard and an environmental disaster.