Plastic bag ban hurts many

In recent weeks, more towns have joined the more than 60 Massachusetts communities that have municipal taxes or bans on single-use plastic shopping bags. On Beacon Hill, a plastic bag ban bill is slowly working its way through the legislative process.

Advocates of the bans point to multitudes of the discarded bags strewn about on city streets, in trees, storm drains and in the oceans, where they threaten fish and birds. They talk about the bags being made from dirty crude oil.

Progressive elected officials in cities and towns will always vote for laws and ordinances that provide the euphoric fix a symbolic, green gesture will provide. We see the same true believers in grocery stores beaming with selfsatisfaction when handing their cloth bags over to the cashier.

However, there are a few things to think about before we pass another law that hurts small businesses and lowincome individuals as any plastic bag ban does.

There is no one alternative to plastic bags that is so ideal that it offsets the inconvenience.

The cloth reusable bags are hotbeds for salmonella or E. coli from food or other items. FoodSafety.Gov, a website run by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, tells us, “These germs could then crosscontaminate other food or items we carry in the reusable bag and make us sick.”

They instruct shoppers to “wash reusable grocery bags often.” Washing grocery bags “often” requires gallons of hot water and detergent and the soapy, micro-plastic-filled swill that is left over eventually heads out to sea for the fish to enjoy.

Plastic bags are recyclable. There are drop-off points everywhere and each year more Americans take advantage of this.

They are certainly reusable and are repurposed every day to pack a lunch or pick up dog waste.

Plastic bags made in the USA are made from natural gas, not oil.

There are between 25,000 and 30,000 people working in the plastic bag industry and to hastily threaten their livelihoods in the name of the environment while promoting other environmentally harmful products seems careless and even malicious.

There is no doubt that people litter and there are too many plastic bags floating around, but rather than legislate in a way that punishes the law-abiding majority, why don’t we focus on the minority of litterbugs out there who are causing the problem?