Mexico City? Really? I had to follow the headline because it was so unexpected. “Mexico City Bans Stores From Distributing Plastic Shopping Bags.” It’s the kind of news one might expect to hear from our other continental neighbor. No surprise if an environmentally-savvy Canadian city like Vancouver, banned plastic bags to help the environment (but they haven't). In the U.S., San Francisco passed such a law in 2007. The bags are second only to cigarette butts as litter. Well, the things we don’t know about our neighbors are bound to surprise. So high-five Mexico City! That’s one solution.
I’m disappointed in the rest of us though, but not because we don’t have more bag laws. Rather, I’m feeling piqued because individually, we are the cause of so many bags still blowing around. Who’s doing that littering with the butts and bags? Not to name names, but we can pretty much point at smokers for tossing the butts along the roadsides, not the cigarette manufacturers.
Ah. Now I get it. Like the gun debate, it’s not the gun manufacturers that kill; it’s the gun buyers who shoot. In the case of butts, it’s the smokers. With plastic bags, it’s the shoppers that are the littering perps. True, while it’s unlikely that a cigarette drops unnoticed from the smoker’s mouth, bag litters are usually oblivious. Well that makes us all suspects in the line-up.
Now for the interrogation:
Do you accept plastic bags for your purchases?
What did you do with the bag after you brought it home?
Did you ever use it again?
Did anyone see it blow off the table at the picnic?
Which child did you ask to retrieve it?
Did he?
What did he do with it?
Did he throw it into the trash?
Are you sure it didn’t blow out of the trash can when the truck emptied it?
Something that seemed so insignificant at the time, like what you did with the bag at the picnic, can become a life and death issue. Bags choke marine and bird wild life. They fly up off the road to block the radiator grills of cars causing engines to overheat. They can blow onto a motorcycle helmet. Seriously, bags have a deadly side. They also make the neighborhood and roadside look crummy and leach chemicals into soil.
I’m just saying, you still have freedom to carry a plastic bag, so know that if you’re going to tote one, it’s safer when loaded. Don’t let it go off accidentally.
I’m disappointed in the rest of us though, but not because we don’t have more bag laws. Rather, I’m feeling piqued because individually, we are the cause of so many bags still blowing around. Who’s doing that littering with the butts and bags? Not to name names, but we can pretty much point at smokers for tossing the butts along the roadsides, not the cigarette manufacturers.
Ah. Now I get it. Like the gun debate, it’s not the gun manufacturers that kill; it’s the gun buyers who shoot. In the case of butts, it’s the smokers. With plastic bags, it’s the shoppers that are the littering perps. True, while it’s unlikely that a cigarette drops unnoticed from the smoker’s mouth, bag litters are usually oblivious. Well that makes us all suspects in the line-up.
Now for the interrogation:
Do you accept plastic bags for your purchases?
What did you do with the bag after you brought it home?
Did you ever use it again?
Did anyone see it blow off the table at the picnic?
Which child did you ask to retrieve it?
Did he?
What did he do with it?
Did he throw it into the trash?
Are you sure it didn’t blow out of the trash can when the truck emptied it?
Something that seemed so insignificant at the time, like what you did with the bag at the picnic, can become a life and death issue. Bags choke marine and bird wild life. They fly up off the road to block the radiator grills of cars causing engines to overheat. They can blow onto a motorcycle helmet. Seriously, bags have a deadly side. They also make the neighborhood and roadside look crummy and leach chemicals into soil.
I’m just saying, you still have freedom to carry a plastic bag, so know that if you’re going to tote one, it’s safer when loaded. Don’t let it go off accidentally.
