No surprise that California is the source of this Nanny State story. AB 1998 would ban plastic single use bags from grocery stores and make the markets charge customers for paper bags if they forgot their reusable bags. You can read a lot more about it here
This is the Nanny State mentality on Hyper-drive. It is bad enough to ban plastic bags but to implement a charge for paper is the state playing favorites in a battle that should be fought in the marketplace.
Here are a few facts that sensible people could use to defeat the plastic bag ban:
- Reusable bags are unhygienic. What was spilled in them before you put them on the checkout conveyor. You wouldn’t reuse ziplock bags
- Charging for papers bags is a tax on the convenience shopper. It will unfairly impact the poor who tend to be less organized.
- What will we use to pick up dog poop and scoop cat litter if there are no more plastic bags?
- The bags that consumers use represent less than 10% of the total packaging that end up in landfills. The rest is boxes, cartons and plastic liners etc.
Note to Nanny State Legislators; “Government is a blunt instrument. Don’t use it to micromanage people behavior.”