The Star-news sounds off, via proxy, on one of my pet peeves

Reprinted from the Santa Cruz Sentinel is a broadside against plastic bags and a call for a ban. 

Another View: The scourge of plastic bags

The accumulation of plastic debris in the ocean cannot continue.

This means public policies will have to change regarding single-use plastic products, such as bags for carrying groceries and other items.

While efforts to ban plastic bags have been around for a while, consider the news this week about the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” – an ocean area 1,000 miles west of California that is said to be twice the size of Texas where plastic debris has been carried by currents.

Scientists from Project Kaisei, a 151-foot research ship that just returned from the garbage patch, said they were alarmed by the vast amounts of tiny, confetti-like pieces of plastic they found in the water along their journey. The closer they got to the patch, the more plastic debris they found.

One researcher described the trash as a “man-made epidemic.” In addition to the build-up of garbage, crews found the food chain is being contaminated by the bits of plastic that can contain toxic chemicals. They found tiny jellyfish have been eating the debris. The jellyfish are eaten by fish, which eventually become food for people.

Plastic bags are only part of the problem. But they also are a product that can be easily banned.

Americans throw away an estimated 100 billion plastic bags a year. Only about 2 percent are recycled. (Follow the link for the entire op ed piece.)

Now, I don’t doubt that there has been a huge impact on the oceans as a result of human disposal practices. (It wasn’t all that long ago that some of our cities hauled trash out to sea and just dumped it. And I understand that still may be the practice in some countries that border our oceans.) I also don’t want to dispute that we should be doing what we can to clean up the mess. 

I do have problems with a “research project” that presents no data, and really nothing more than a few people with an already established point of view and no scientific background or research experience telling us what they saw and what needs to be done to fix the problem. Visiting the Project Kasai web site, for example, will show that the organization’s leadership team consists of enthusiasts not scientists.  There’s a water sports enthusiast, a surfer, a yachter, a lifelong sailor, and some p.r. people. Their scientific team is led by an avid ocean enthusiast with a Ph.D. in molecular genetics, an avid swimmer, a SCUBA enthusiast working on her Ph.D. a geologist and a chemist. Again, their apochryphal information may be valid, but they do not make any attempt to link what they observed with what they are advocating. 

And there are scientific studies that contradict the notion that banning plastic bags will improve the environment.

A recent story in the Wall Street Journal outlined the arguments on both sides of the plastic bag issue:

Paper or Plastic? A New Look at the Bag Scourge

Improved Recycling Options Lessen Plastic’s Stigma, Even as Cities and States Consider Imposing Bans or Taxes

View Slideshow

China Photos/Getty Images

 When plastic grocery bags were introduced some 30 years ago, they were touted as light, long-lasting and cheap. They caught on so well that hundreds of billions are dispensed each year, creating a modern menace that often winds up nestled in trees, stuck in sewers and drifting in oceans.

Faced with the growing blight, countries from Ireland to China and cities from San Francisco to Washington, D.C., have moved to ban or tax their use. On Monday, a United Nations official called for outlawing them world-wide. Said Achim Steiner, executive director of the U.N. Environment Program: “There is simply zero justification for manufacturing them anymore, anywhere.”

But nothing is simple in the push to protect the planet. There is growing evidence that the production, use and disposal of plastic bags put less burden on natural resources than paper bags. Meanwhile, a knock against plastic bags — that they can’t be conveniently recycled — is becoming less persuasive as more cities start accepting plastic bags in curbside recycling programs.

That makes the cash-register question — paper or plastic? — more vexing than ever. “It depends on what environmental issues you see as being more important,” says Lisa Mastny, who directs the consumption project at the Worldwatch Institute, an environmental group. “The things you can see in your daily life tend to create more of an emotional response than the things that are in the background.”

The Journal goes on to discuss how paper bags contribute more significantly to climate change because manufacture of aper bags causes much more greenhouse gas (CO2) emissions. 

Other studies support the fact that, if you want to reduce greenhouse gas, it’s plastic not paper. In addition to lower manufacturing costs, factor in the greenhouse gas emitted to produce paper bags, the higher cost of shipping them, and the resultant additional CO2 emitted by the extra trucks needed to ship paper vs. plastic (which can be jammed by the millions into one truck), and that paper bags won’t be recycled any more efficiently than plastic. (In fact, some argue that plastic are reused at a much higher rate for lining trash cans, picking up after the dog, etc. than are paper bags.) 

Some findings that have resulted from research into plastic bag use, reuse and misuse: 

• In San Francisco (before their ban), plastic bags make up only a small fraction of street litter, less than chewing gum wrappers and cigarette butts.
• A 1995 Scottish study found that plastic bags are less environmentally impactful than paper bags. That study can be found at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/Doc/57346/0016899.pdf.
• Numerous studies have concluded that paper bags are less of a litter problem but use much more water and energy to produce, and result in significantly more pollution, including greenhouse gas emissions. 
• According to a plastic industry study, 90% of Americas reuse plastic grocery bags at least once. 

Personally, if I don’t get plastic bags at my local grocery store, I will have to buy something to pick up after my dogs when we take our daily morning walk, so I suppose I should declare a conflict of interest, of sorts. I’ll have to pay more to pic up my dogs’ poop in the morning. (And my two big dogs can fill a plastic bag pretty effectively, by the way.)

Finally, if only a small fraction of plastic bags are recycled, that is the result of a lack of facilities willing to recycle the bags. (Pasadena’s recycling company apparently does accept and recycle plastic bags, according to the city’s web site: http://ww2.cityofpasadena.net/publicworks/smiwmII/PDF/Recycling%20Guide%20Brochure.pdf)

Perhaps the appropriate solution is to require all municipal recycling facilities and contractors to recycle plastic bags. We do out best to remember to bring reusable bags to Trader Joes, but rely on the plastic ones from our other grocery stores for that dog duty.

What I think we really do need to see is real research into the impacts of plastic bags on the environment. Research, such as the Scotland study, that is not paid for by either the plastic industry or the environmental industry. 

Paul