I really don’t feel like getting on my soapbox because I really have a lot to do today and want to get on it. But Ms. Zanotti’s analysis of the grocery bag situations in Los Angeles and Seattle, inspires a thought I’d like to just toss out there. That thought is this:

Does it seem to anyone else like, at the very moment in which there is supposedly the greatest intensity of widespread concern about a given issue, that is precisely when we put something in motion likely to exacerbate that problem in the service of something else? I’m referring here to the expected difficulty of the poor to be able to buy food…although the phenomenon seems to me to be a larger one, dealing more with human nature than with any one specific problem.

In the past few days, the city councils in Los Angeles and Seattle (two of my favorite cities in the world, by the way) both passed ordinances regarding the usage of plastic grocery bags within the city. They are trying to reduce the very large usage of plastic bags in these two cities because they are not biodegradable. That’s a noble goal.

Getting into the fine print of these ordinances, though, one discovers things that aren’t so great.

In Los Angeles, it requires people to buy the cloth reusable grocery bags, which run $1/bag, (or, if a superseding California state law passes, pay a surcharge of $.25 for each plastic bag used), or use paper bags, which while being more biodegradable, are also less sturdy. Essentially, then, it’s a form of tax on people, and that is something that I can’t agree with. Knowing from experience (I lived in Los Angeles for three years, and have visited Seattle several times), there are a lot of people who live in these cities who are poor. Forcing them to spend extra money for the bags to put their groceries in (which are getting expensive enough as is with the economoic crunch) is simply the wrong way to approach this problem.
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As for Seattle’s ordinance, which takes effect sooner than L.A.’s (Jan. 1, 2009), they plan to give citizens a couple of free cloth bags and launch an “education effort” to get people to remember their bags, but if they don’t, they have to pay $.20 per plastic or paper bag used. They also banned plastic foam cups and food trays. This one goes even further into the realm of the overly intrusive, and worse so, with such a small timeline involved, will make it difficult for grocery stores. Meat and seafood departments use these trays to put their product in, and because of sanitary issues, there isn’t much in the way of alternatives.

Ah, Seattle, I knew it well. T.Y.N.S. (Thank You, Nanny State)!

One thing with which I must take issue, or at the very least, question…

One of the features of California is recycling centers. They are privately run, and available all over the place. Adding plastic grocery bags to the list of recyclable material is probably the best way to handle the problem. These centers already handle the majority of bottle and can returns in the state, and so adding plastic bags to the accepted material list would help immensely.

We don’t have that many where I live, and the ones that are here aren’t open for very long.

Whenever I’m done spending my half-hour waiting in line, being the impatient, numerically-obsessed curmudgeon I am, I run the numbers to “prove” (in the mathematical sense) that recycling is just something a lot of people talk about a lot, but that very few people actually do. In the greater area, there are millions of people living here; hundreds of thousands of households. The few recycling centers we have are open six days a week, between six and eight hours a day. The lines move v-e-r-y slowly, and even when you follow all the rules you’re going to be turned back half the time just as your car is pulling up because they are full.

At that point, you can go back home or you can drive to the next center, six miles away, or even farther. With Saturday morning traffic, God knows what kind of time commitment that is, or if you’ll find a different situation once you’ve made that unexpected journey. No way to call ahead and find out.

This just isn’t the kind of production scheme that would support the recycling needs of this area. Just set aside any of the arguments that could be made about how it could be more convenient to the recycling consumer — that is not the point I wish to make here — and instead, look at the number of empty containers that must become available in this area versus what could be run through the system under the most favorable circumstances. It’s like sipping away at Folsom Lake through a krazy-straw. The numbers simply aren’t there. People aren’t doing it. They pitch the bottles and cans in the trash and then they talk a big game about how they replaced their light bulbs, and isn’t Al Gore a wonderful guy. All pile into the air-conditioned Tundra, we’re outta cat food.

And back to the original subject, what about those poor people buying their food? Princess is right. We pay the issue the requisite lip-service, aw gee, a gallon of 2% milk is $3.68, whatta they gonna do. And then wham-bam, we make ‘em pay 25 cents for each plastic bag, without batting an eye. I mean, sure there’s other options for them. But it seems there’s a certain “pecking order” to these issues, and the environmentally-concerned ones never seem to take a back seat to anything. That seems a little odd to me because I can’t help noticing the long term cause-and-effect of environmental initiatives are notoriously difficult to predict.

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