GTA puts a ban on plastic bags by 2013.

[Phil C. McNasty]

To Answer that is to pull the thread off-topic (plus I don't have time to make a list)

Just because something has been around for awhile, doesn't negate the product's harmful impact. (and bottled water has more than it's fair share of harmful impact

Thats fine!

Then we have to get ALL bottled water out of circulation, including Pepsi, Coca Cola, Mountain DEW....etc..etc.

Are you OK with that???!!

 

[LKD]

banned plastic bags? is that only at stores? can one still buy plastic bags at say walmart? why not just ban plastic bags everywhere?

 

[GG2]

I completely agree. It really upsets me to see the number of people toteing around their bottled water- buying cases of this crap while remaining totally ignorant by the negative impact it has on the environment.

Watch "Tapped" or "Blue Gold- world Water Wars" if you don't know why bottled water is bad for your health and bad for the environment...

When I'm out and about, I want to be able to buy bottled water when I'm thirsty. What are you saying? To go find a rancid drinking fountain or buy coca cola?

 

[dr tongue]

stories like this make me happy cuz it means that everything major is settled and now they can worry about the unimportant stuff. NY worrying about what people drink, toronto worrying about what people carry stuff in. it's a great feeling to know that we are in such good hands.

What will now happen is the wacky left wingers will complain that paper is depleting our forests and they'll want to start charging for paper bags. If you think I'm joking, next time you open a bottle of water ask yourself if anyone predicted that would become a billion dollar industry in countries where tap water is safe. Evian was the first. Spell it backwards.
In 2011, the United Kingdom’s Environment Agency released a study that evaluated nine categories of environmental impacts caused by different types of supermarket bags. The study found that paper bags have a worse effect on the environment than plastic bags in all nine impact categories, which include global warming potential, abiotic depletion, acidification, eutrophication, human toxicity, fresh water aquatic ecotoxicity, marine aquatic ecotoxicity, terrestrial ecotoxicity, and photochemical oxidation

 

[Moviefan-2]

In 2011, the United Kingdom’s Environment Agency released a study that evaluated nine categories of environmental impacts caused by different types of supermarket bags. The study found that paper bags have a worse effect on the environment than plastic bags in all nine impact categories, which include global warming potential, abiotic depletion, acidification, eutrophication, human toxicity, fresh water aquatic ecotoxicity, marine aquatic ecotoxicity, terrestrial ecotoxicity, and photochemical oxidation.

True. As Terence Corcoran pointed out in the National Post today, this bag decision was just stupid:

http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/0...with-no-study-no-public-review-and-no-brains/

 

[mightymouse007]

I personally don't have a problem with the ban. However, I might need to think of an alternative for garbages at home. I usually collect the plastic bags for garbage at home only.

 

[oldjones]

I think you're missing my point.

I think we should stick with plastic bags because most plastic bags are either recycled or they are used as garbage bags which end up in a landfill. Yes they wont decompose there, but so long as they are confined to a large landfill a few square miles large, I dont see a huge problem

And you're missing mine. Plastic bags will be as available and as useable as they were for years. Just two things have changed: After Jan 1, no retailer can pretend they're giving you plastic bags for free—A Good Thing—nor can they sell them in singles for you to take your stuff home—A Not So Good Thing.

So buy a box o' bags for way less than 5¢ each, open it and pack your stuff in as many bags as you want, if you care. You seem to be trying to have a discussion about the differing 'virtues' of different bags. I'm not. The measure passed was almost as silly as the Mayor's idiotic proposal to remove the fee and go back to the sham that bags were free. My tax bill and my cash register receipts disagree.

You want plastic carrier bags you don't have to bring from home? Easy answer: Buy 'em. I'd price 'em at a nickel a bag. Not enough for any hardship, but enough to keep them outta the bushes and cut the tonnage going to land fill by half. Every bit we don't waste helps, and we just finished an experiment that proves that price works.

 

[oldjones]

Thats fine!

Then we have to get ALL bottled water out of circulation, including Pepsi, Coca Cola, Mountain DEW....etc..etc.

Are you OK with that???!!

I'm all for it! Count me in. There's not a one of them that 's decent value for money and bottled water's an outright scam. FYI: We used to have deposits on those soft drink bottles, worked just like the beer bottles. But the bottling companies flim-flammed us into believing throwing them away was free, 'cause they weren't paying for the trash haul to the landfill site.

 

[oldjones]

…edit…Read further and you'll find that you need to re-use those cotton bags up to 170 times…

Gosh that does sound like an awfully big number! Why I'd have to go to the store once a week for a tad more than three years! Or a year and a half if I shopped twice. Impossible.

Not that I'm for cotton bags, but I am for re-use, which does rate higher than re-cycle. Do we think all the huffer-puffers who now can't figure out what to pick up their dog-poo with, or line their compost pail have been toting their virtuous plastic bags bag to the stores to re-use them all this time?

The obvious answer is a good old conservative: You wanna bag; you buy a bag. None of the Rob Ford Socialist Peoples Free Democratic Bag shit that costs us all, whether we want bags or not.

We call it user pay.

 

[MattRoxx]

What will now happen is the wacky left wingers will complain that paper is depleting our forests and they'll want to start charging for paper bags. If you think I'm joking, next time you open a bottle of water ask yourself if anyone predicted that would become a billion dollar industry in countries where tap water is safe. Evian was the first. Spell it backwards.
In 2011, the United Kingdom’s Environment Agency released a study that evaluated nine categories of environmental impacts caused by different types of supermarket bags. The study found that paper bags have a worse effect on the environment than plastic bags in all nine impact categories, which include global warming potential, abiotic depletion, acidification, eutrophication, human toxicity, fresh water aquatic ecotoxicity, marine aquatic ecotoxicity, terrestrial ecotoxicity, and photochemical oxidation

I don't believe that study incorporates the digging of oil wells and all the attendant costs and pollution involved in getting the plastic. And here's another study about plastic, you won't find the same about paper products:

Oceanographer Giora Proskurowski ventured into the North Atlantic with a group of researchers last year, and took water samples from the surface and from depths as far as 33 metres.

The results were unexpected.

“Almost every tow we did contained plastic regardless of the depth,” Proskurowski said in a press release.

Their data, published this week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, found that tiny bits of plastic suspended across large tracts of the North Atlantic have “emerged as a major open ocean pollutant.”

According to Proskurowski and his colleagues, previous studies on the problem may have seriously underestimated the amount of minute plastic particles in the oceans because they didn’t account for the effect of strong winds that can drive plastic below the ocean’s surface.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2012/04/27/plastic-garbage-oceans.html

But anyway, that study and many people here are missing the point! This isn't plastic VS paper, it's about disposable VS reusable.

Thats fine!

Then we have to get ALL bottled water out of circulation, including Pepsi, Coca Cola, Mountain DEW....etc..etc.

Are you OK with that???!!

Fine by me. I never drink soda, and bottled water is simply a marketing scam. Coca-Cola's Dasani even says it on the label: PURIFIED water. It's tap water, only you get to pay for it by the serving.

 

[Phil C. McNasty]

Holy shit! I'm pretty drunk! I'm gonna have to read all 5 pages tomorrow, and then reply to you stupid Luberals some time tomorrow.

In the meantime, I wont be recycling anything, so eat that !!

Holy shit, you guys are retarded :happy:

 

[MattRoxx]

Holy shit! I'm pretty drunk! I'm gonna have to read all 5 pages tomorrow, and then reply to you stupid Luberals some time tomorrow.

In the meantime, I wont be recycling anything, so eat that !!

Holy shit, you guys are retarded :happy:

Thanks for proving my point :frusty:

In other "Wow Ford is an antagonistic asshole right wing idiot manchild"...still angry at council and at 'the people', he votes against all of them -left, right, and centre - and against the interests of Toronto.

http://www.thestar.com/news/cityhal...-votes-against-free-money-for-gang-prevention

Mayor Rob Ford was the only member of council to vote against accepting $350,000 from the federal government for a year-long gang intervention project that will not cost the city anything.

Council voted 33-1 on Thursday to accept the funding from Ottawa’s National Crime Prevention Centre. Ford’s vote, which he did not explain, baffled even conservative allies like Deputy Mayor Doug Holyday.

“It’s free money,” Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong, another conservative, said when asked why he voted in favour. “Why would you turn down $350,000?”

Sandra Costain, manager of the children and youth department at Regent Park’s Dixon Hall, criticized Ford harshly. “Isn’t that so disgusting? It’s just sad, it’s embarrassing and it’s disheartening...” Costain said.

 

[Phil C. McNasty]

Ford vows to trash plastic bag ban: http://www.torontosun.com/2012/06/07/ford-vows-to-trash-plastic-bag-ban

Mayor Rob Ford wants to trash Toronto’s new plastic bag ban by the fall.

Ford vowed Thursday he will do everything he can to throw out the “ludicrous” bag ban council approved Wednesday night.

Councillors voted to ban Toronto retailers from offering single-use, plastic shopping bags to customers effective Jan. 1.

In the wake of the bag ban vote, the mayor was on the offensive - slamming the ban on talk radio and branding it “the dumbest thing council has done.”

Despite the fact it was championed by a member of his own executive, Ford didn’t pull his punches while speaking to reporters at City Hall Thursday.

“We’ve done some dumb things but I think banning plastic bags, this is just outright stupid never mind dumb,” Ford said.

From his conversations with the city solicitor Ford said he expects a report back this fall that will outline the problems with the ban.

“She thinks we won’t be able to win this in court and that we shouldn’t have done this in the first place,” he said.

“I think when that gets to the executive committee, some of the councillors that voted in favour of this ban will reverse their vote and I don’t see this ban going through as expected Jan. 1.”

“I don’t think we’re going to win in court, neither does our legal staff,” he added.

Although he applauded the fact council voted to scrap the five-cent plastic bag fee Wednesday, Ford vowed he will fight an outright bag ban.

“I’m going to do everything I can (to undo this),” he said. All I can do right now is make sure the report gets to executive in September and take it from there.”

During an interview on AM640, Ford blamed the ban on residents not being involved enough in municipal politics.

“It’s the people’s fault. Sometimes I get so frustrated because the people are just sitting back listening but they don’t pick up the phone, they don’t go down to City Hall, they don’t ask questions … it’s frustrating,” he said.

Councillor Josh Colle disagreed with Ford’s assessment the ban was the “dumbest thing” council has ever done.

He said “as an outside observer he’s seen a lot of dumb things happen” at City Hall.

“Maybe one of the dumb things was bringing it back to the floor and it was a bit of a Pandora’s Box that was opened,” Colle said. “We got to a policy position in a speedier way than we thought but when you look around the world Italy has done it, Ireland has done it, Seattle is doing it, L.A. has and so it seemed like we were kind of dickering around.

“If it is so evil, man up and do it,” he added

 

[larry]

making retailers waste their time asking every customer if they wanted a 5-cent bag was dumb. when groceries cost 50 to a hundred bucks, 5 cents is nothing. who cares? but it's like gas at 1 cent more or less a litre. when these trivial details get built up into a CONTROVERSY, it takes the spotlight off of the bigger issues. shiner admitted on tv that the day before the vote he was fine to rescind the 5 cent charge. then over-nite he heard talk and had a epiphany! he then figured getting rid of the bags entirely was a good idea.

what a fibber. admitting to not having thought about the ramifications for a moment is grade-school. every retailer from small to big will have to make big changes in their check-out process. small retailers will lose a lot of money. council doesn't care about that.

but i believe he and others have been talking about this for a while and banded together to make ford look worse than he already did.

 

[fuji]

making retailers waste their time asking every customer if they wanted a 5-cent bag was dumb. when groceries cost 50 to a hundred bucks, 5 cents is nothing. who cares?

Except in reality the policy was very, very effective, although it was minimal extra cost it cut bag use in half. Plainly you don't understand consumers: THEY cared.

Whether cutting bag use is a good idea can be debated, but the policy worked.

 

[MattRoxx]

Ford vows to trash plastic bag ban: http://www.torontosun.com/2012/06/07/ford-vows-to-trash-plastic-bag-ban

I predict that during the next election campaign the mayor will hand out plastic bags with "Re-elect Rob Ford" printed on them.

 

[Phil C. McNasty]

I'm all for it! Count me in. There's not a one of them that 's decent value for money and bottled water's an outright scam. FYI: We used to have deposits on those soft drink bottles, worked just like the beer bottles. But the bottling companies flim-flammed us into believing throwing them away was free, 'cause they weren't paying for the trash haul to the landfill site

But what about emergency situations, like in the summer when its really hot and someone is having a heatstroke, and there are no watertaps around?? Your only option then is to quickly hop into a store and grab a refreshment. Or what if you're on a long distance trip, get suddenly thirsty but no store is allowed to sell bottled water or pepsi. Then what??

I personally see no difference between bottled water and 7-Up or Pepsi. Soft drinks are just 99% bottled water with some flavouring added. If anything you're adding to your carbon footprint when consuming soft drinks, because more work goes into adding flavouring agents into them as opposed to bottled water, which is just plain water and has no flavourings

 

[oldjones]

making retailers waste their time asking every customer if they wanted a 5-cent bag was dumb. when groceries cost 50 to a hundred bucks, 5 cents is nothing. who cares? but it's like gas at 1 cent more or less a litre. when these trivial details get built up into a CONTROVERSY, it takes the spotlight off of the bigger issues. shiner admitted on tv that the day before the vote he was fine to rescind the 5 cent charge. then over-nite he heard talk and had a epiphany! he then figured getting rid of the bags entirely was a good idea.

what a fibber. admitting to not having thought about the ramifications for a moment is grade-school. every retailer from small to big will have to make big changes in their check-out process. small retailers will lose a lot of money. council doesn't care about that.

but i believe he and others have been talking about this for a while and banded together to make ford look worse than he already did.

David Shiner's been a staunch conservative since he was Lastman's budget chief, and it was Ford who picked him to be on his Executive Committee. If anyone was trying to make Rob look bad it wouldn't be him. On that Ford is strictly DiY.

Shiner is also a staunch conservationist—same root word as conservative—and has done other public stunts to raise environmental awareness. This was another. As he said himself, it was a spur of the moment inspiration when he realized if he could get the motion on the table, the votes were there to pass it. Would that our Mayor was as sharp.

As for retailers having to make changes. Gosh golly! They've never ever had to do that before. The sky is falling! Nothing need change at the cash, except the bags will be paper. And you should pay for each of those as well, but the socialists will likely have their way and hide the bag-tax in prices we all pay so you can pretend they're free. No retailer "…will lose a lot of money", not if they're competent enough to be in business in the first place.

But there is a way to bring back the Beloved Plastic Bag. Tell your Councillor to smarten up and pass a bylaw that lets you buy as many as you want.

Meantime a BTW on the Most Entertaining Mayor Ever: He lost another vote, later in that same session, 33 to 1. He was the only Council member who voted to refuse federal money to pay for youth outreach workers. You remember them, Ford and his cronies cut a bunch of them (calling them gravy, not services) because we couldn't afford them, even though we're on track for a surplus, and even though he's raising property taxes.

Nonetheless in his lonely universe of one, we can't afford them even when someone else pays for them.

But after the shooting, he will visit the scene.

 

[MattRoxx]

But what about emergency situations, like in the summer when its really hot and someone is having a heatstroke, and there are no watertaps around?? Your only option then is to quickly hop into a store and grab a refreshment. Or what if you're on a long distance trip, get suddenly thirsty but no store is allowed to sell bottled water or pepsi. Then what??

I personally see no difference between bottled water and 7-Up or Pepsi. Soft drinks are just 99% bottled water with some flavouring added. If anything you're adding to your carbon footprint when consuming soft drinks, because more work goes into adding flavouring agents into them as opposed to bottled water, which is just plain water and has no flavourings

You are currently aware that there will be times in the summer when it will be hot. Carry one of these re-usable re-fillable objects on those days. They last a long, long time, and the metal one is really good at keeping water cold. Use either a strap or caribiner so you don't have to hold in hand all the time.

Must I explain everything to you?!

And once again: most retailers already sell reusable bags at the checkout counter for .69 to $1.00, for those who impulse shop or for any other reason don't have a bag with them - or want to start using reusable grocery bags. This isn't rocket surgery, people.

David Shiner's been a staunch conservative since he was Lastman's budget chief, and it was Ford who picked him to be on his Executive Committee. If anyone was trying to make Rob look bad it wouldn't be him. On that Ford is strictly DiY.

That wacky radical leftwing nutjob "Luberal" pinko only votes in lockstep with Ford 95% of the time!
http://fordfortoronto.mattelliott.ca/tag/city-council-scorecard/

 

[oldjones]

But what about emergency situations, like in the summer when its really hot and someone is having a heatstroke, and there are no watertaps around?? Your only option then is to quickly hop into a store and grab a refreshment. Or what if you're on a long distance trip, get suddenly thirsty but no store is allowed to sell bottled water or pepsi. Then what??

I personally see no difference between bottled water and 7-Up or Pepsi. Soft drinks are just 99% bottled water with some flavouring added. If anything you're adding to your carbon footprint when consuming soft drinks, because more work goes into adding flavouring agents into them as opposed to bottled water, which is just plain water and has no flavourings

You cannot be serious. Your 'cure' for life threatening heatstroke being to "…grab refreshment" from a store, gave you away. Coffee, Juices, sports drinks, and just plain outta-the-goodness-of-their-hearts-to-save-a-life tap-water would be available. Assuming you had the cash for all but the last, of course. Not a safe assumption given you were too stupid to avoiid the heatsroke when you could have been in the shady store, and too improvident to avoid the dehydration by supplying yourself with water. BTW before bottled water, we had drinking fountains, in all sorts of places, tax-paid and private.

To get back to bags, and the actual topic, here's the deal Phil: You want plastic bags, buy 'em. call up the Mayor and tell him rescinding the bag fee was stupid. But be polite and don't point out it was his bungling of that stupid measure that brought about the ban.

But don't demand we all pay a hidden tax so idiots can imagine they're double-bagging with free bags they then clog the waste stream with. Waste Not, and User Pay. Two good conservative maxims to live by.