{"id":15503,"date":"2012-06-15T12:40:56","date_gmt":"2012-06-15T17:40:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=15503"},"modified":"2012-06-15T12:40:56","modified_gmt":"2012-06-15T17:40:56","slug":"the-horrific-environmental-scourge-of-the-plastic-bag","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2012\/06\/15\/the-horrific-environmental-scourge-of-the-plastic-bag\/","title":{"rendered":"The horrific environmental scourge of the plastic bag"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/opinion.financialpost.com\/2012\/06\/13\/junk-science-week-save-the-plastic-bag\/\" target=\"_blank\">Terence Corcoran<\/a> on Toronto City Council&#8217;s most recent brainfart &mdash; banning plastic bags &mdash; and the actual environmental impact of same:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Meantime, most Canadians, through the media, would be relying on green activists and demagogic politicians who have been promoting plastic bags as a local and national environmental scourge for more than a decade. There\u2019s not enough space here to review the mindset of politicians, including the inhabitants of Toronto city council, who last week voted 27-17 to ban plastic bags by 2013. Most of the bylaw\u2019s backers would be getting their information from professionals, including Dr. Rick Smith, head of Environmental Defense.<\/p>\n<p>[. . .]<\/p>\n<p>Canadians who answer polls should know that Mr. Smith holds a PhD in green bull. He said Canadians know at a \u201cgut level\u201d that plastic bags are a \u201cnot terribly complicated environmental issue.\u201d Well, here are three complications:<\/p>\n<p><strong>Litter <\/strong>The last city of Toronto audit of litter across the city, in 2006, found six plastic bags out of 4,341 items. That\u2019s 0.14% by item. By weight, the percentage would be less.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Waste <\/strong>The 450 million plastic bags Mr. Smith mentions is a 2008 number. The city says the current number of bags is now estimated at about 215 million (the science of calculating this is something else). But even the 450 million-bag total, at about six grams per bag, works out to 2,600 tonnes. As a percentage of the city\u2019s estimated 800,000 tonnes of waste, plastic bags would account for 0.3%. If all plastic bags were eliminated \u2014 an impossibility given their necessity as garbage-bin liners and other uses \u2014 Toronto\u2019s waste stream would be essentially unchanged. Not a penny will be saved, and costs would likely go up under complications brought on by the ban.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Environment <\/strong>Numerous comprehensive studies by people who are as green or greener than Mr. Smith suggest plastic bags are better than the alternatives \u2014 whether paper or cloth. Plastic is less polluting and toxic than paper and cotton, according to a 2011 U.K. Environment Agency report. As for global warming, a cloth bag would have to be reused 327 times, and a paper bag nine times, to match the low warming impact of a high-density polyethylene bag that\u2019s reused as a garbage-bin liner.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Terence Corcoran on Toronto City Council&#8217;s most recent brainfart &mdash; banning plastic bags &mdash; and the actual environmental impact of same: Meantime, most Canadians, through the media, would be relying on green activists and demagogic politicians who have been promoting plastic bags as a local and national environmental scourge for more than a decade. There\u2019s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,25,65,84],"tags":[52,39,207],"class_list":["post-15503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-economics","category-environment","category-government","tag-absurd","tag-junkscience","tag-toronto"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-423","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15503"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15503\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15504,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15503\/revisions\/15504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}