Reason: As states rush to lift, waive, or delay regulations that might impede their ability to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, plastic bag bans are being tossed aside.
On Tuesday, Maine’s legislature voted to put off enforcement of their state’s plastic bag prohibition—which was set to go into effect April 22—until next year. The day before, New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation agreed to delay any enforcement of that state’s bag ban until May 15.
The New York ban was supposed to go into effect on March 1. But because a lawsuit challenging the bag ban has been delayed over coronavirus, the state was forced to pull back until that case can resume.
The reusable bags these bans are supposed to encourage—and which were considered an unmitigated social good just a few weeks ago—have come under fresh scrutiny from a newly germophobic nation that fears they might aid the spread of COVID-19.
Businesses have been leading the way on this front. Starbucks suspended its policy of filling up customers’ reusable mugs in early March, and Dunkin Donuts and Tim Hortons (a Canadian coffee chain) have done the same.
“Until this pandemic passes, state and local officials should discourage shoppers from bringing their potentially virus-laden reusable bags out in public. Restore single-use bags, including the plastic kind,” wrote the Wall Street Journal‘s editorial board on Monday.
The mayor of a town in Maine has actually called for a ban on reusable bags. READ MORE
Reusable bags, straws, water bottles, etc. Petri dishes for bacteria.
There is absolutely nor reason, with the aid of scrubbers on emissions of incinerators that we should even have a new garbage dump in our country put into commissions in over the past 20-30 yearr, maybe even longer. Think what steel mills do re emissions.
Dems/environmentalists constantly change laws in order to attempt correcting their previous laws that crater.
No wonder they’re so damn screwed up in the head.
If it gets bad enough and it comes down to canabalism, remember to eat the vegans first. They are the closest thing to grass fed.
Bravo for the town in Maine.
Many of us have lived through times of enviro-weenies warning that the sky would fall if we did x y or z.
I still look back to the Christmas tree being some kind of endangered species, and we needed to buy plastic.
Just let the marketplace do the monitoring.
I hate reusable bags. I reuse the plastic ones quite efficiently, thank you very much. Better still, add paper bags to the options for shoppers. (you can’t find them here in Canada in any grocery store, no matter how sensible that would be – do you realize how many trees there are up here???)
@ Larrytheenlightenedlibersl (sic) – are you the fka “Larry the Liberal”?
And WTF does vegan cannibalism have to do with using reusable petri dish grocery bags?
Actually, that line of thinking is pretty indicative of LtL.
just think, if this thing lasts long enough even Larry the Lib will be hoping for Global Warming … ’cause that’s what’s gonna stop this Dempanic … warm weather!
The canvas bag crowds at Publix make every effort to cram all their stuff in those filthy bags. Meanwhile, we get double bagged plastic to offset the canvas bag nazi before us.
Years ago a young attorney in our office said when asked “paper or plastic” he would say, “whatever screws up the environment the most.”
😀
That jerkoff actress julia dryfuss started this madness:
https://variety.com/2012/biz/opinion/stars-turn-to-la-to-win-passage-of-plastic-bag-ban-36599/
Imagine that, yeah lefties there is a reason why disposable cups and plastic bags are used. I don’t go to Starbucks anyway but learning they actually have their clientele marching their dirty reusable cups that probably sit unwashed in their filthy cars would be another reason to never go into one again. Save the world from fantasy global warming or cause a pandemic that wipes out 1/3rd of wealth and jobs in 2 weeks. Tough one.
In a narrow sense the subject here is “single use bag vs. multi use bag” but in a broader sense the subject here is that the corona virus meltdown shows us that what passes for “conventional wisdom” held by the masses may be wrong. What follows may be judged as a hijack of the thread (in the narrow sense). But the following is not a hijack because it pertains this subject in the wider sense.
Remember the recent IOTW story from Canada where the guy filled 2 grocery carts with meat and reaped scorn. What if a rancher who raises beef put his entire steer (700 pounds of packaged steaks and burgers and roasts) in his own freezer rather than sell the beef live to a meat packing plant. Should the rancher reap scorn? Probably not. Why is that any different from a plumber who trades slices of his life (wages) for 2 grocery carts of beef from a store?