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Huntington Beach - Surf City Citizens Make Leaders Obey

 
 
 
OMG this changes everything except it doesn't really because who cares?

If this is the biggest issue of freedom facing us, I guess we are a nation of whiney shitheads.
 
fast said:
What's with the paper bag fee?
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That was basically a payoff - that worked.

I favor reusable bags for multiple reasons, unsightly litter being just one. But honestly, if you're going to go full orgasm and ban these bags what about all the plastic water bottles and other shit that's everywhere? It's a start but not really effective. I pick up a lot of trash along highways because our company and another organization I belong to have adopted sections of highway. Reusable bags are insignificant compared to all the other shit we clean up. The number one thing is beverage containers, plastic and glass.
 
It is only a matter of time until...

[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8LV1S2q2GA[/YOUTUBE]
 
All too often the"common citizen"is an uninformed moron.
Sorry.if you are to stupid or lazy to get reusable bags,than fuck you.Common good is more important.
 
Austin has a "bag ban", been in effect a couple of years now. We bring our reusables with us to the store, or do without a bag if there's just one or two items. No problem, easy to do, easy to adjust to. Wouldn't want to go back to the old way myself. I really don't see why anyone would think it was that big of a deal or inconvenience.
 
Mageth said:
Austin has a "bag ban", been in effect a couple of years now. We bring our reusables with us to the store, or do without a bag if there's just one or two items. No problem, easy to do, easy to adjust to. Wouldn't want to go back to the old way myself. I really don't see why anyone would think it was that big of a deal or inconvenience.
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It is a big deal if the government takes away your right to be stupid!
 
bleubird said:
Mageth said:
Austin has a "bag ban", been in effect a couple of years now. We bring our reusables with us to the store, or do without a bag if there's just one or two items. No problem, easy to do, easy to adjust to. Wouldn't want to go back to the old way myself. I really don't see why anyone would think it was that big of a deal or inconvenience.
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It is a big deal if the government takes away your right to be stupid!
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I'm from Texas. We elect stupid.
 
It worth noting the council's rationale behind the appeal. They give 2 reasons:
1. They view the goal of the ban as solely to reduce already illegal littering, and have no regard for the environmental impact of producing the bags or the impact of so many bags being put into landfills. They don't deny any such impacts, they just don't care about them, only about littering and they argue littering is already illegal.
2. They are idiots who say "We have no verifiable proof that our local bag ban has done anything to reduce locally sourced and discarded single-use plastic bags." The lack of "proof" is because no one studied it, and no one needs to because it is a logical certainty not in need of empirical verification. People cannot litter something that they do not have access to. If they don't have access to plastic bags they got locally, then they cannot throw them in the street, park, beach, etc.. Thus, it is beyond any rational doubt that the ban reduced the number of locally obtain bags that were then littered. Pointing to lack of "proof" due to lack of an empirical study is moronic excuse making.
 
Bleubird: It is a big deal if the government takes away your right to be stupid!

PMZiprHead: Used plastic bags are pervasive in the environment. Nasty stuff.

Mageth: Austin has a "bag ban", been in effect a couple of years now. We bring our reusables with us to the store, or do without a bag if there's just one or two items. No problem, easy to do, easy to adjust to. Wouldn't want to go back to the old way myself. I really don't see why anyone would think it was that big of a deal or inconvenience.

Bleubird: All too often the"common citizen"is an uninformed moron.
Sorry.if you are to stupid or lazy to get reusable bags,than fuck you.Common good is more important.

The only apparent "stupidity" and lazyness in this issue the knee-jerk assumption that this eco-fad is grounded in a serious reality, and that the mere desire to ban something just because it offends a person's conscious is somehow a self-evident justification . Such local fad bans are almost always ineffective 'solutions' in search of some non-existent (or very trival) problem - more useful to supporters as a public expression of childish penance than anything else.

The 'plastic bag crisis' has been debunked many times, yet folks seem to enjoy pretending otherwise. Real Clear Science, for example, has an article exploding many of the myths, and showing the costs, of such bans.

Among the facts noted:

...The Times of London addressed this very issue in 2008, even quoting a Greenpeace biologist saying, “It’s very unlikely that many animals are killed by plastic bags. The evidence shows just the opposite. We are not going to solve the problem of waste by focusing on plastic bags.”

One of the most commonly heard claims is that plastic bags, and other plastic, have created the “Pacific Garbage Patch.” Some claim it is twice the size of Texas. This is simply false. Last year, Oregon State University reported that the actual amount is less than one percent the size of Texas. Oceanography professor Angel White sent out a release last year saying, “There is no doubt that the amount of plastic in the world’s oceans is troubling, but this kind of exaggeration undermines the credibility of scientists.”

Additionally, White notes that the amount of plastic in the ocean hasn’t been increasing. For example, the Wood’s Hole Oceanographic Institute found the amount of plastic in the Atlantic Ocean hasn’t increased since the 1980s.

The most significant environmental risk from banning plastic bags is the increase in energy use. Plastic bags are the most energy-efficient form of grocery bag. The U.K. Environment Agency compared energy use for plastic, paper and re-usable bags. It found the “global warming potential” of plastic grocery bags is one-fourth that of paper bags and 1/173rd that of a reusable cotton bag. In other words, consumers would have to use a reusable cotton bag 173 times before they broke even from an energy standpoint. Thus, even if consumers switched to reusable bags, it is not clear there would be a reduced environmental impact.
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And:

The U.K. Environment Agency study is echoed by other research as well, and the reason is simple – grocery stores began using plastic bags in part because they are cheaper to produce, in part because they use less energy to manufacture.

Finally, it should be noted that the benefit of banning plastic bags is mitigated by the fact that half of the bags are used for other purposes, like for garbage bags or for picking up after pets. Grocery shoppers will still have to buy other bags, likely plastic, for those purposes.
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http://www.realclearscience.com/art...tic_bag_bans_just_another_eco-fad_106336.html
 
maxparrish said:
Mageth said:
Meh. We do without them just fine.
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I'm glad to hear one person in America can do without them. Perhaps you are suggesting that anything you don't find useful should be banned?
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More like @ 1 million, the population of Austin, my collective "we". We've lived with the "ban" for a while now, and we're doing just fine without them. And it's not that I "don't find [them] useful", it's that once a community does away with them and makes a few adjustments, you realize they're not at all necessary. Personally, I don't care if they're banned or not; I don't need them, and wouldn't use them at the store if they weren't banned.

Actually, more like @300 million, the population of the USA. We could all do without the damn things. As I said, they're simply not necessary. My experience as an individual, and Austin's as a community, clearly demonstrates that.

As it turns out, the disposable plastic bags that groceries around here used to use are simply not necessary, max. We (the people of Austin) have adapted to the ban with no problems, in spite of Chicken Little nonsense coming from nay-sayers. And it's one less source of plastic going into our landfills. It's a win. They're not necessary, and we can, and do, do without them.

Even without the ban, we'd all be better off if everyone just took their own reusable bags to the store with them. It's a simple thing, and one we all could (and should) strive to do.

BTW, I think getting one's panties all up in a wad over the notion that banning plastic bags from groceries in some way or another deprives someone of something of significance is total nonsense.
 
BTW, using the reusable bags actually makes things easier for us on big shopping days in many ways. Instead of having to haul a dozen or so little flimsy plastic bags, each with just a few items in it, out to the car, into the trunk, and then into the house (after retrieving all the jars and what-not that rolled out of the bags in transit), with danger of rips/busts and spillage every time you pick them up, it's three or four nice-sized, very sturdy bags. Including an insulated one for our cold things.
 
The bag ban happened in my city. Am totally always unprepared. I go into the store with one sturdy bag and end up having to buy 5 extra bags because I found more to buy than I could fit in one bag.

Stores are not going to be happy if a person walks into their store, already carrying several items from another store, sees something they like, but has to walk out because they have no bag to carry the additional item they want to buy. They just lost impulse buying. And who's to stop people from shoplifting on their way out of shops? Especially if someone is carrying a load of things unbagged in their hands? Is someone stopping them to check their receipts?
 
credoconsolans said:
The bag ban happened in my city. Am totally always unprepared. I go into the store with one sturdy bag and end up having to buy 5 extra bags because I found more to buy than I could fit in one bag.

Stores are not going to be happy if a person walks into their store, already carrying several items from another store, sees something they like, but has to walk out because they have no bag to carry the additional item they want to buy. They just lost impulse buying. And who's to stop people from shoplifting on their way out of shops? Especially if someone is carrying a load of things unbagged in their hands? Is someone stopping them to check their receipts?
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I've had or heard of no such problems at all with general, shop-to-shop (e.g., mall) shopping. In Austin, regular shops and stores can still provide you with free bags (paper, or more durable, reusable plastic bags), if they wish and if you want. I decline if I can carry it myself, or already have a bag I can stick whatever else I buy in. The "ban" is principally applied at grocery stores, WalMarts and the like.

So, is there any evidence at all that any of those supposed problems are actually problems (other than some people's problems with a little planning ahead)? For example, do you really think that not having store-supplied disposable plastic bags makes shoplifting easier? That one in particular makes no sense at all.
 
credoconsolans said:
The bag ban happened in my city. Am totally always unprepared. I go into the store with one sturdy bag and end up having to buy 5 extra bags because I found more to buy than I could fit in one bag.

Stores are not going to be happy if a person walks into their store, already carrying several items from another store, sees something they like, but has to walk out because they have no bag to carry the additional item they want to buy. They just lost impulse buying. And who's to stop people from shoplifting on their way out of shops? Especially if someone is carrying a load of things unbagged in their hands? Is someone stopping them to check their receipts?
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Mageth seems to feel if he can do without, SO CAN YOU! Like so many who enjoy imposing government edicts about what people can and cannot do (and against products that offend their sensibilities) YOUR particular wants or needs are irrelevant. That it is none of his (or her?) business what you and the retailer desire is not an impediment.

I have been in the same situation many times - having to pay for paper bags because I didn't have cloth bags in the car. It's particularly annoying because I live in an area where city boundaries intersect (or I commute) so I have to remember where the "free trade" zone is and the "plastic bag ist verbotten and big soda tax " zones are. On the other hand, being semi-retired, I am thinking about making some money off this fad. I figure I can sell disposable bags at 5 cents each in the shopping center parking lot, 1/2 the price of the grocery stores. Given that traffic into some stores are pretty heavy, I should make a mint hawking them to shoppers who don't want to pay the store 10 cents (or more) paper bag cost.

Besides, it might be fun way of protesting.
 
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