Pin It
mailmanIn Dan Veaner's editorial, 'The Coming Bag Ban (Bad)', the second paragraph starts, "If you take environmental issues out of the mix..."

Bingo! The environmental issues involved ARE the entire point of the ban. Single-use, thin-film plastic shopping bags use huge amounts of fossil fuels, fracked gas in particular, to manufacture and distribute contributing to the global burden of greenhouse gases as well as plastic bags being the largest source of plastic pollution globally.

The University of Arizona and Loma Linda University studies cited by Mr. Veaner are classic junk science articles that were funded by the American Chemistry Council, a trade organization that represents several large plastic bag manufacturers, to specifically discourage the use of reuseable shopping bags. Of course, reuseable shopping bags need to be maintained in a clean state, like any other household item used over and over again. Nice thing is that most reusable bags are themselvs made of plastic and they are easy to wash out and they dry quickly.

It is time for the neigh sayers to step into the 21st century. Google 'Plastic Oceans' to learn how bad the plastic pollution problem really is.

Tom Shelley
Ithaca, NY
v15i46
Pin It