If I could summon the ghost of Theodore Roosevelt to ask his advice on plastic grocery bags, I would. First I’d have to explain “plastic,” but I’m sure the visionary Republican who deplored the despoiling of the environment and launched the National Park Service could offer some valuable guidance.
“Here in the United States,” he wrote, “we turn our rivers and streams into sewers and dumping grounds, we pollute the air, destroy forests … [and] vulgariz[e] charming landscapes.” His lament was published a century ago.
What would he think of plastic bags snagged in tree branches? The only thing charming about those is the name the Irish gave them: “witches’ knickers.”
Activists estimate that 1 million plastic bags are used per minute worldwide, but bags are hardly the only cause of environmental blight. Everything from bottles to utensils to ear swabs litter the land, comprise vast floating islands in our oceans and even turn up in the seafood we eat.
While scientists rush to figure out what all this portends for human health, some citizens operate on the principle that needless waste is just, well, stupid, and they avoid it. Other entities — stores, cities, entire nations — are beginning to regulate or ban “single-use plastics.”
This problem has my libertarian and conservative sides at war. The objective of every law is to address woeful human behavior, but how far should a government — or “we the people” — go to regulate non-biodegradable and possibly harmful substances?
It would be far better for us to take effective action without a government mandate. But we haven’t, or our scattered efforts aren’t enough, and this failure has become an invitation to government compulsion.
“Banned in Boston” used to apply to anything vulgar; as of December, it means plastic shopping bags, and any Beantown bag “with handles” carries a 5-cent charge. New York, Hawaii and California had already entered this territory, but Pennsylvania — no surprise here — has ping-ponged between two extremes.
In June 2017, the Legislature passed a bill prohibiting municipalities from banning or taxing plastic bags. Gov. Tom Wolf vetoed it. In April 2019, two Philadelphia lawmakers introduced a bill that would require businesses doing more than $1 million per year in sales to impose a 2-cent-per-bag fee.
Another fee, another bureaucracy: Should this even be necessary? You’d think grocery stores would want to stop spending money on these darn things. And it’s not as though we’re going to stop buying groceries in protest.
Because most of us reach stores in vehicles big enough to hold empty bags, or are strong enough to carry them with us on foot, buses and bikes, we should be able to figure this one out.
“Reduce, reuse, recycle” is the modern mantra, but recycling is in third place. It’s the least efficient of the three, and with global recycling markets in upheaval, Pittsburgh and many other cities have to pay to get rid of what conscientious citizens turn in.
Reducing makes more sense, but Canada offers a funny lesson in how that effort might go:
Last week, just as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a ban on single-use plastics by 2021, news emerged of a Vancouver store that undertook its own program and got very unexpected results. When a bag surcharge failed to dampen consumers’ use of plastic, owners of the East West Market printed up bags with embarrassing logos — for “wart ointment,” “weird adult videos,” a “colon care co-op” — that they thought customers would avoid. The tactic backfired — the bags are coveted collectibles, and people are clamoring for more.
That’s so perverse! — unless lucky customers are toting their wart-ointment bags over and over again.
Maybe the problem is we haven’t made environmentalism cool enough. We need a modern-day Teddy Roosevelt to persuade us we can pay now or we can pay later — and it always costs less when we pay up front.
First Published: June 16, 2019, 4:00 a.m.
