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Ridgewood NJ, the American Forest & Paper Association (AF&PA) President and CEO Heidi Brock released the following statement in response to renewed discussions on the harm caused by New Jersey’s paper bag ban:
Continue reading Paper Bags Are a Sustainable Choice for New Jersey
Ridgewood NJ, Village of Ridgewood Mayor Ramon Hache statement on
the ordinance to ban single-use plastic bags :
“Two weeks ago, we introduced an ordinance to ban single-use plastic bags in the Village. This is a very important step in protecting the environment and would not have been possible without the collaboration between the Village Council, the Ridgewood Environmental Advisory Committee and Green Team. A special thank you to Councilman Sedon as Council liaison to these committees.
Although the ban will be adopted this summer, it will not go into effect until January 1, 2020. Over the next 6 months, we will have an educational and public awareness campaign to engage with our community and educate residents.”
There are plenty of reasons not to pass this stupid law https://www.allaboutbags.ca/papervplastic.html
Fiction: Many believe that paper bags are more environmentally friendly than plastic bags because they are made from a renewable resource, can biodegrade, and are recyclable.
Fact: Plastic shopping bags outperform paper bags environmentally – on manufacturing, on reuse, and on solid waste volume and generation.
The Facts
The belief that paper is better than plastic is not based on science or fact. It is based on misconceptions about how plastic bags are made, how landfills work, the incidence of plastic litter, and that non-biodegrading products are bad for the planet.
Numerous life cycle assessments demonstrate that conventional plastic bags are better for the environment than paper bags.
On resource use: plastic bags play an important role in the conservation of the natural gas resource. Plastic bags are made from clean energy natural gas in Canada, specifically from are a piece of natural gas – ethane that is often burned off in the natural gas refining process so that the gas will not burn too hot when used to heat our homes.
On manufacturing: paper bag manufacture is much more resource-intensive than plastic bag manufacture.
On reuse: it is difficult to reuse paper bags because they tend to tear.
On solid waste: paper bags have much greater mass and weigh five to seven times more than plastic bags so they add five to seven times more tonnage to the waste stream for municipalities to manage. This in turn results in a fivefold to sevenfold increase in greenhouse gas emissions.
Putting aside all of the time wasted on pseudo-science feel good social engineering (bike path to nowhere, garbage tree, gay flag week, Bee City, village wide 25mph speed limit to name a few…)
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and putting aside the obvious irony of a move to ban plastic bags (which have little to no impact in Ridgewood) to save the earth while supporting other large impact projects (like the Ginormous Garage and Multi-unit Low Income Housing) which will greatly impact Ridgewood environmentally (and otherwise)
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it is telling that the REAC to show support for their proposed plastic bag ban quoted a Wired magazine article who’s Title is:
“Banning Plastic Bags Is Great for the World, Right? Not So Fast”
Link: https://www.wired.com/2016/06/banning-plastic-bags-great-world-right-not-fast/
This article concludes that “The larger takeaway is that no bag is free of environmental impact… stating that paper, plastic and even reusable bags all have pros and cons as it relates to the environment.
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Wired ALSO ran another article which was PRO plastic bag “Throwing This Out Here: Plastic Bags Are Amazing and You Should Appreciate Them More”
Link: https://www.wired.com/2016/01/plastic-bags/
This article concluded that “In the grand scheme of environmental problems, ubiquitous plastic bags do not rank that high…” and “Plastic bags may be symbolic of everything bad in our consumerist culture,…”
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SO… it looks like (AGAIN) that the REAC and the increasingly disappointing and useless Village Council is trafficking in feel good social engineering which will only harm and inconvenience Ridgewood residents while making no positive contribution to society other than having yet another hashtag cause to trumpet on social media