Posted by: johnny_a
in MyBlog on Sep 22, 2009
Had
savetheplasticbag.com put forth only reasonable and provable arguments in support of plastic shopping bags, the site would be more helpful to those that wish to make good decisions in the "paper vs. plastic" debate. But then, we'd be deprived of the tragi-comic relief that it provides us with through its faulty logic and incomplete assumptions. That the nature of the site is based solely on the "paper vs. plastic" issue leads us to question whether it is built on ignorance, distraction, or both.
The problem with the question of "paper or plastic" is that it's a
false dilemma; the assumption that one must choose from two alternatives, when in fact there are other viable options. In their
Table of Advantages page, the exclusion of reusable shopping bags as a choice renders the comparisons practically unusable. Of course savetheplasticbag.com has an agenda, as do we. But it's intellectually dishonest to dismiss in full the reusable bag. And no, stating that plastic shopping bags are reusable doesn't count!
In future posts, we'll analyze the Table of Advantages line-by-line, including the reusable bag alternative.
Posted by: johnny_a
in MyBlog on Aug 19, 2009
Strike up another victory for the plastic bag lobby. The city of Seattle was to begin a 20 cent fee per non-reusable plastic or paper bag distributed at the checkout counter beginning January 1. The deep-pocketed Progressive Bag Affiliates, which "promotes the responsible use, reuse, recycling and disposal of pastic bags" (huh?), pumped $1.4 million into a campaign to bring the issue to a referendum. The law was voted down by the people today.
Progressive Bag Affiliates and savetheplasticbag dotcom (I won't link to them here) have been chasing down proposed "plasti-taxes" and bag bans across the country, helping to get many of them overturned. "Save the Plastic Bag" has launched a strange-logic campaign based on comparisons between plastic and paper bags, with little or no mention of reusable bags in their analyses.
