September 28,2017
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, at last nights Village Council Meeting the Ridgewood Environmental Advisory Committee or REAC, for short proposed a Village wise ban on plastic bags . A seemingly noble cause if their ever was one .
According to Wire magazine , “The adverse impacts of plastic bags are undeniable: When they’re not piling up in landfills, they’re blocking storm drains, littering streets, getting stuck in trees, and contaminating oceans, where fish, seabirds, and other marine animals eat them or get tangled up in them. As longtime plastic bag adversary Ian Frazier recently reported in The New Yorker, “In 2014, plastic grocery bags were the seventh most common item collected during the Ocean Conservancy’s International Coastal Cleanup, behind smaller debris such as cigarette butts, plastic straws, and bottle caps.” The New York City Sanitation Department collects more than 1,700 tons of single-use carry-out bags every week, and has to spend $12.5 million a year to dispose of them.”https://www.wired.com/2016/06/banning-plastic-bags-great-world-right-not-fast/
But here is the rub, according again to Wire ,”advocates of these laws and journalists who cover the issue often neglect to ask what will replace plastic bags and what the environmental impact of that replacement will be. People still need bags to bring home their groceries. And the most common substitute, paper bags, may be just as bad or worse, depending on the environmental problem you’re most concerned about.”
So we are going to replace plastic bags with reusable bags , made from plastic ? Not really sure that is a good long term trade off ? And what about recycled plastic ,does it work?
Brandon Kuczenski lays out the obvious case : “It depends on what you mean by helping. And what you mean by recycling. In some cases there is a clear benefit. With metals, it almost always makes sense to recycle because mining and benefication of primary metals is energy intensive. For instance, making primary aluminum from bauxite requires tremendous electricity consumption.. the energy savings from using recycled aluminum is a factor of 10-15. slam dunk. Steel is very easy to recycle and is very commonly recycled throughout the world. Copper is in increasingly high demand for recycling because worldwide copper mining yields are bottoming out and as a result, copper mining is very expensive.
Plastics are a bit more uncertain, but that is largely because of the sloppy way Americans handle their plastics than any technical limitations. Recycling HDPE (milk gallons) or PET (soda / water bottles) is well-established and mature, and there are modest energy savings to using recycled over primary materials in both cases (yes, even when including the impacts from “driving all those trucks around”). However, other plastics- even HDPE and PET from non-bottle product systems- are not presently recycled in a meaningful sense. They may be made into park benches or doorstops or things of that nature, but it is much harder to argue convincingly that they provide benefits. The reason for this is that different plastics have different chemical compositions, so plastics recycling requires a pure material stream. People who might otherwise make money from recycling plastic have decided that the waste stream generated by American consumers is too contaminated to be of value. In places where recyclables are handled more carefully, sorted by the consumer and cleaned of other materials, this may not be the case.” https://www.quora.com/Does-recycling-really-help-the-environment.
The REAC looking to conduct a study as to the impact to the Village . The Political Correct environment allows little or no dissent or questioning the status quo wisdom. But will it really impact the environment in the Village?
Councilmen Jeff Voigt was on board no questions asked. Councilmen Hach was a big concerned on the impact on merchants. The Mayor was concerned , and the REAC ladies continued to voice support for a ban .
A lot of unanswered question and a lot of unintended consequences seem just over the horizon with a bag ban . The blog would prefer the ladies at the REAC stick to more pressing local issues , like the ecological disaster a turf field presents especially when its placed in a flood zone . While obviously we need to balance recreational time and logistics perhaps more thoughtful long term solutions can be found minimizing the down side .
Yeah, the turf field; should use grass. REAC ladies? Aren’t men in REAC?
VC Pave a street a week..stop playing around in the feel good other people’s business..there are few local issues at stop shop kings and Acme
most residents reuse these bags in houses for small refuse containers..
By banning plastic bags, will the dealers in front of Kings Plaza sell merch in paper bags?
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
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Picking up dog poop with a paper bag doesn’t cut it
I use mine to clean the cat box
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.
Yeah what is the village going to do with the plastic bags in the CBD garbage cans. Those new can,s so ugly , Who came up with that idea, big deal so they can see what’s in there yeah I like it I will garbage that’s in there. Security my ass
guess you do not travel much and have never been to NYC
This VC brings a new idiotic idea on a consistent basis. I never ever imagined this mediocre bunch to be so clueless about what’s in the interest of the residents and how to manage the village they all are supposed to know so well. How did I end up being so enthusiastic about them?
Now is the time for all good resident to come to the aid of their Village. Our elected officials have have to do a better job understanding their job and the attendant priorities. This town is drowning in high taxes providing mediocre services and the flight that goes with such a combination. Do we have time for this? I think it is time for a revolution.
I ” second” the revolution idea! How do we get started? Politicians from the federal to local levels are in it solely for themselves.
They should be using biodegradable. Will consummate plastic bags should be biodegradable in the stores, so they break down. The worst thing for garbage dumps is Styrofoam , nobody wants it worth anything
Another big problem is people used to pick up dog poop and then they throw the bag with the poop in it in the woods in the drainage ditches In the plastic to break down. Thanks Jimmy