the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgwood NJ, Even The New York Times knows plastic bag bans only make people feel good, they don’t help anything. The Brits ran a real study and found:
“The study found that an avid shopper would have to reuse his or her cotton bag 131 timesbefore it had a smaller global warming impact than a lightweight plastic bag used only once. And, depending on the make, more durable plastic bags would have to be used at least 4 to 11 times before they made up for their heftier upfront climate costs.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/29/climate/plastic-paper-shopping-bags.html
And yet Village Councilman Mike Sedon spoke enthusiastically from the dais about the ban and then a new tax on bags. The facts don’t match the rhetoric or emotions behind the “ban bags” push. New taxes on Ridgewood’s’ already overtaxed residents make no sense either!
Stop the madness at Village Hall, more taxes and more bans on this and that aren’t doing anything. Leave us alone.
I like the brown paper bags.
I always keep one in my car if I have to lower my standards at bar closing
plastic bags supposedly end up in the ocean and clog the ocean and fish and other wildlife eat them and get sick on them. NYC and another state banned them; let’s get on board. We live on a live planet that needs care. Let’s be good stewards.
Without plastic bags, I’ll just leave my dog’s crap all over town.
I was happy with paper bags. Then they put handles on them and I was happier. Then, ‘they’ said that WE WERE destroying the rainforests and plastic bags became the rage – despite their lack of support. Then, supermarkets and Whole Foods-esque places asked ‘paper or plastic?’. Now, it’s plastic bad, paper better, reusable best. Oh, and we’ll tax/charge you to use the first 2 options. I don’t mind being charged by the market for bags, like Ikea would do, I’m not a fan of taxing. It’s just another money grab. Taxing bags is another in a year-long tax-a-thon – bags, rain, salons, signs, leaves (oh, that’s a fine, my bad) gas…on top of the $.23 that Christie adopted, weed. And the list goes on.
Oh, Hell No.
This is virtue signaling, par excellence.
Mike Sedon’s a good guy. But he’s dead wrong here.
Bulky paper bags were largely replaced by plastic bags decades ago because of the incredible percentage the paper bags took up of the total volume of landfill space and the fact that as soon as they were covered over with dirt or additonal garbage, they did not degrade at all but were found to be perfectly archeologically preserved, decade after decade. This is due to the total absence of oxygen or sunlight within the landfill heap. From that discovery it was a perfectly logical step to take to replace paper bags with the gossamer-thin plastic bags which, by comparison, now take up a vanishingly small percentage of the total volume of space in modern landfill heaps.
Ours is not a third world country, from which 95 percent of the plastic that pollutes the world’s oceans originates. We handle our garbage, trash and other refuse responsibly. Don’t let the SJWs/NPCs persuade you otherwise with their emotional appeals. The decision to switch from paper to plastic was a sound one at the time, and remains the superior choice now.
To advocate a new ban plastic bags is therefore the true luddite position. A decision to vote in favor of such a ban at this juncture is necessarily based on emotion unreachable by historical facts and important practical and scientific considerations, plus a penchant proudly to parade past the populace one’s pretty politically progressive peacock plumage.
WOW
This town sucks more and more every day.
.
How far Ridgewood has fallen from its once lofty perch.
.
Really… why would anyone want to move here today?
All of the value and prestige is gone.
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From Today’s NYTimes on the topic. WHAT you eat; most important for planet health. That part is at last paragraph or so:
Brad Plumer
By Brad Plumer
March 29, 2019
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WASHINGTON — The decision by New York State to ban single-use plastic bags from retail stores makes it a good time to revisit everyone’s favorite environmental quandary: paper or plastic?
Unfortunately, there’s not a simple answer on whether paper or plastic bags are better for the environment. They both have downsides, but there are a few broad lessons to keep in mind when you’re hitting the grocery store.
Plastic bags, which often take centuries to decompose, can create a dreadful waste problem even though they’re far from the largest source of plastic waste in America — about 12 percent of the total.
On the other hand, paper bags typically require more energy and greenhouse gas emissions to produce, which isn’t great from a global warming standpoint.
Reusable bags can be a decent compromise, provided you hold onto them and use them often. Ultimately, though, what you put inside the bag, particularly your food choices, will most likely matter a lot more for the environment than what type of bag you use.
The trouble with plastic bags: litter
American shoppers use more than 100 billion lightweight polyethylene plastic bags each year, and only a small portion are ever recycled. Most recycling centers can’t deal with them — they just clog up the machinery — and so the majority of plastic bags end up in landfills, where they can take up to 1,000 years to degrade.
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To be fair, a plastic bag doesn’t cause too much harm sitting in a landfill. The bigger problem arises when people don’t dispose of their bags properly, and the plastic ends up fluttering around in the wild, clogging up waterways and threatening wildlife.
San Jose, Calif., for instance, found that plastic bags made up about 12 percent of the litter in its creeks before implementing a local bag ban in 2012. And, just last week, a dead sperm whale washed ashore in Indonesia with two dozen plastic bags in its gut, along with other trash.
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So, even though plastic bags are only a small fraction of America’s overall plastic trash, they’ve become a highly visible sign of waste.
Workers removing plastic bags from clogged rollers at a recycling plant in Westborough, Mass.CreditCharles Krupa/Associated Press
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Workers removing plastic bags from clogged rollers at a recycling plant in Westborough, Mass.CreditCharles Krupa/Associated Press
The trouble with paper bags: carbon emissions
So does that mean paper bags, which degrade more easily, are a better option? Not necessarily. Climate change has become the biggest environmental issue of our time, so it’s worth looking at things from an emissions standpoint. And on that score, paper bags fare worse.
Even though paper bags are made from trees, which are, in theory, a renewable resource, it takes significantly more energy to create pulp and manufacture a paper bag than it does to make a single-use plastic bag from oil.
Back in 2011, Britain’s Environment Agency conducted a life-cycle assessment of various bag options, looking at every step of the production process. The conclusion? You’d have to reuse a paper bag at least three times before its environmental impact equaled that of a high-density polyethylene plastic bag used only once. And if plastic bags were reused repeatedly, they looked even better.
Paper bags can more easily be recycled or even composted, but the British study found that even these actions didn’t make a huge difference in the broader analysis. Unless you’re reusing your paper bags a lot, they look like a poorer option from a global warming standpoint.
Reusable bags are a decent option — if you actually reuse them
That same British analysis also looked into reusable options, like heavier, more durable plastic bags or cotton bags. And it found that these are only sustainable options if you use them very frequently.
Making a cotton shopping bag is hardly cost-free. Growing cotton requires a fair bit of energy, land, fertilizer and pesticides, which can have all sorts of environmental effects — from greenhouse gas emissions to nitrogen pollution in waterways.
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The study found that an avid shopper would have to reuse his or her cotton bag 131 times before it had a smaller global warming impact than a lightweight plastic bag used only once. And, depending on the make, more durable plastic bags would have to be used at least 4 to 11 times before they made up for their heftier upfront climate costs.
So if you’re going to opt for a reusable bag for environmental reasons, make sure you actually reuse it — often.
CreditDavid McNew/Getty Images
Image
CreditDavid McNew/Getty Images
What’s in the bag most likely matters more than the bag itself
It never hurts to think about bag choices. But keep in mind that if you’re going to the grocery store, the food you purchase and place in that bag probably has a vastly bigger effect on the environment than whatever you use to haul it home.
Our global food system, after all, is responsible for one-quarter of humanity’s planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions — with meat and dairy having a disproportionately large impact. By contrast, packaging makes up only about 5 percent of the food system’s footprint. Compared with, say, the effects of clearing away vast swaths of forest to grow feed or raise livestock, our bags are a much smaller deal.
Put another way, a pound of beef bought at the supermarket will have roughly 25 times the global warming impact as the disposable plastic bag it’s carried in. So if you’re looking for ways to slim down your personal carbon footprint, taking a closer look at your dietary choices isn’t a bad place to start.
For more news on climate and the environment, follow @NYTClimate on Twitter.
Brad Plumer is a reporter covering climate change, energy policy and other environmental issues for The Times’s climate team. @bradplumer
A version of this article appears in print on March 30, 2019, on Page A25 of the New York edition with the headline: Paper or Plastic? Your Choice of Bag Matters Less Than What’s Inside. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
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@bradplumer probably has an art history degree.
Minitrue is busy feeding us the most recent revisions of science and history.
Would everybody (including @bradplumer and Councilman Sedon) just go back and reread (or just read) Orwell’s 1984. Then, after the previously-scheduled “two minutes hate” against President Trump, we’ll reconvene.
The back seat of my car looks like a neat and clean garbage dump because I keep brown paper supermarket bags, plastic bags, and cloth tote bags there. When I go into a store or farmers market, I take one or more of the appropriate kind. Since these were already given to me, I use them until they’re ripped, which takes longer than one might think. The cloth ones should last for many years. (Kings refunds 4 cents per bag, if the cashier remembers, but that’s not the goal.) I also wash and reuse the thin plastic ones from produce–I won’t take new ones at the store. My efforts may be pointless, but doing this and refusing all new bags makes me feel better. If stores start charging for bags, I’ll make sure the bags I take into a given store are from a different store so that they won’t charge me for them!
To the anonymous who asks “who would want to move in Ridgewood today” the answer is tons of people from NYC. They are shallow and go by hype. Ask any new family moving into town and they say schools, there you go. They also post in local FB pages and guess what, they ask what’s the best way to get to the city?! Now who moves into a town, buys a house and doesn’t check about their commute beforehand and then start complaining about commute issues from parking to train delays?! They also happen to be liberals/leftists. I bet election over election RW goes blue by at least 10% more.
The town is on a quick decline because of its bad seed of local politicians but most importantly because voter base is totally clueless about what makes a village/town great and better than the place they moved from.
Good lord you people….on a quick decline?
NEWS FLASH
It’s long gone bro.
Yes, the newly minted assholes from the 5 Boro’s are on the march but their not that stupid and that’s reflected in the recent numbers. Don’t fool yourself. There isn’t tons of anything coming to Ridgewood let along the throngs from bed sty do or die.