Do You Think Municipal Governments Should Ban Single Use Plastic Grocery Bags?

Woo, ABC News put-words-in-your-mouth polls again!

I like them because I can use them again as car garbage bags, they are a perfect fit for bathroom waste baskets, and they help transport things. I get tons of uses out of these things. Plus, if I have too many, most grocery stores have a recycling program for them.

Environmentally harmful or not, the local government should not be in the business of trying to use local law to force people to do ethically correct things like stop wasting plastic grocery bags when it is not necessary.

Alternatives to reducing pollution by governmental regulation should be thoroughly explored first before anyone jumps into asking such a question.

Enough with the "let's fix every problem with quick and easy governmental intervention" mentality already--the government is not the deus ex machina of the real world ...

We would be years behind several European countries. Markets should start charging for bags --5 cents each

Those of you who voted yes should tell me, on what authority do propose that municipalities enact such a ban?

they are harmful, but I don't like getting govt involved....just that no one has a good alternative to them.

I don't think that we need any more government people banning things. Instead, people should think of ways to reuse them. We reuse them a lot. And for those who don't, there should be a better recycling campaign. I think that if recycling were more accessible, many people would do it.

They ARE reusable.

Exactly. Just because people are too stupid and lazy to use them again doesn't mean they aren't reusable.

They are not intended for re-use, they are too flimsy for more than a couple of re-uses (I can't count the number of times that a handle has torn out on the first use).

I guess I could understand your statement if these things all decayed in 50 years. But come back in a million or so years and dig where we had a landfill, and you'd still find millions upon millions of these bags torn and weathered - but still with virtually every bit of plastic still remaining. The environmental cost is too great for the amount of use we get out of them, even if everyone used them as many times as they continued to hold together.

Granted. My 're-usage' of them is for trash-bags.

So long as it is incumbent upon the municipal governments to find suitable waste depositories, they should be able to ban items that are going to fill up those repositories and not decay for a few hundred million years.

The vast majority of the time I choose not to use them...not so much for environmental reasons but because they are flimsy crap really. I prefer to use my cloth and hessian reusable ones..they're larger and sturdier. I just don’t like the government dictating to me what I can and cannot transport my groceries home in.

But you are not the one who is required to find disposal sites for these things that will not decay for a few million years. So long as the municipal governments shoulder the responsibility of providing landfills for their citizens, they should have some regulatory power as to what types of items should and should not be used.

Destruction of the planet is not just a US issue. It impacts the whole world. We need to do more to save the planet because really, if we don't save the planet, consumer rights don't mean diddly squat.

Well what are you doing sitting around on a computer get your butt out there and start picking up some of those bags. Get a group together and work ten miles at a time. Talk is cheap. I worked about 50 years so being a senior I am retired still recycle use the cloth bags, turn in my used motor oil to fill stations, turn in hazardous material to the Hazard station, use a lot of green products including a green hard drive on my computer. So never mind sitting here get out there and do something like my 60's generation did.
Whatever you do don't get the Government involved they would screw up a sunset.

The only thing I want the government to ban is government it's self.

Because government matters when we're buried in a pile of trash.

If I wanted to live in the frigging USSR , I would move to the USSR, I am sick and tired of every level of government thinking they need to baby sit me

This is not about you. This is about the planet. Is your pride really more important than the well-being of humanity?

while you are to young to know about the story of plastic bags, the reason we have them is because the same people wanting to get rid of them are the ones that forced us into them and away from paper- and they did it"for the planet" then also.

As you get older, you will discover every few years there is a new calamity about to destroy civilization, and within a period of a few years, what once was hurting us, starts helping us, and then goes back to hurting us- it is all a cycle designed to keep people giving up their freedoms, and handing over money to environmentalist groups at the tax payers expense

IT IS A SCAM

Notice "global warming" is now "climate change", because THE PLANET IS COOLING, and they need to keep people hooked. Guess What- the climate has been changing since the beginning of time, and will continue long after mankind has disappeared- We can not control the only constant- the sun.

But what bothers me most about your response is your willingness to give up your personal liberties and freedoms so easily- and all for the "greater good"- If you want to know what giving away your freedoms for the greater good is like- look to Cuba and N Korea, you are too young to know much about the USSR and E Germany, but if you ever meet anyone that lived in these nations, ask them what it was really like. You will be surprised to learn their bed of roses was nothing more than the thorny stalks, the few elites got all the soft petals

Actually single use grocery bags are not really single use, they work great as bathroom trash bags, wrapping material for packing and storing items and multiple other uses.

One more area the Government has no business. Bet they never thought of the fact that banning bags is killing jobs. Someone has to make them!

It would make more jobs by getting more people to make paper bags.

I never minded them either, it's a rare place that even has paper anymore.

No because they for the most part are incompetent! The city of Santa Monica just banned them but get this! They still have to have a Environmental Study to see if it is appropriate! Talk about waste!

I think most people will have an issue with not being able to choose for themselves.

Should people get a choice when the planet is at stake?

I think that most people know that it is a little too late at this point.
Nonetheless, I think if people are given the choice they may be more likely to do the right thing in the end : )

People should be allowed to make their own choices without the government banning every single thing. Plastic is all I use and they are NEVER single use. Once I bring my groceries home I put them under the sink and use them for trash bags in all my little garbage cans and in my car

I can respect the spirit behind the thought, but, it is just simply not pragmatic.

yes

Probably a good idea to require shoppers to bring with them a bag of some kind, maybe a "gunny sack" or cloth bag as their grandma found useful. Today I did a bit of shopping and came home with twelve plastic bags, most containing only one or two items. I have already put the cloth bags I bought a long time ago in the front seat so as to not be forgotten again.

Why do we need them? We have technology that can make decomposable bags.

Yeah, ban it and put millions out of work. Sounds great.

Your job, or the planet? Hard choice isn't it?

Prove that plastic bags are destroying the planet and then we'll talk.

I know. I spoke illogically. No proof. I wanted to delete my comments, but really, then i just look like i'm trying to hide my ignorance.

...
Okay then.