lets for a peaceful march and protest. we can do another occupy thingy over this.
GTA puts a ban on plastic bags by 2013.
- Thread starter simon482
- Start date
lets start banging on pots and pans!
This was a stupid idea....the current bag charge had its intended effect, usage of plastic was way down and people were getting the habit of using the cloth bags........and now council has gone off the deep end, probably just to piss off Mayor McFattard.....idiots! Paper gets wet and breaks, and has no effective carrying handles...
This was a stupid idea....the current bag charge had its intended effect, usage of plastic was way down and people were getting the habit of using the cloth bags........and now council has gone off the deep end, probably just to piss off Mayor McFattard.....idiots! Paper gets wet and breaks, and has no effective carrying handles...
My main supermarket is on the NE corner of Markham and Steele, i.e. is part of Markham by a few meters. Luckily I can still get plastic bags.
the good thing to come out of this council is that heroin addicts will be able to shoot up legally in somebody's neighborhood. not mine i hope. with that out of the way and the fiasco on eglinton started, they were able to focus on the really important stuff: nickles and dimes. literally.
Maybe you should become an underground dealer to the 416.
I'm interested in buying packs of 100's
I will email to support the ban.
I can't believe you let yourself get caught up in Ford's typical irrational over-reaction to this. No retailer in Toronto is going to leave a customer stranded after checkout with 15 items and no way to carry them out of the store.
Plastic water bottles have been banned at City Hall since 2008.
http://wx.toronto.ca/inter/it/newsr...0dc95c6d572b58da85257514005206c3?OpenDocument
oh yes this council is more like a PTA than a group running a HUGE business. these are the kind of managers that check on copier paper usage.
I did not read all the posts so, this may have already been mentioned. Plastic bags were introduced in favor of paper bags to help "save the trees". Idiot environmentalists!
I'm going to go against the popular opinion here with my "endorsement" of the ban. I think it shows real leadership and Council's decision will eventually be seen as being ahead of it's time... Here's why...
There is ample scientific evidence to suggest that plastic NEVER degrades. The item might break down, but the base material ultimately breaks down into small beads of plastic material. This plastic leaches into groundwater and is found in the tissue of most birds, fish, and I suspect domestic farm animals and humans too. (I'd try to link some references, but I gotta get to work... maybe later). There is a belief in the scientific community that every piece of plastic ever made is still in existence (although some has been recycled of course!). This plastic material may or may not have adverse health effects... hard to imagine it doesn't.
As for the various arguments in favour of keeping the bags:
Most plastic bags are recycled. Wrong. Most eventually go into landfills where they serve the laudable purpose of preventing other waste from decomposing properly. Admittedly, many are re-used many times first, but ultimately they end up at the dump.
Paper bags are more harmful than plastic. Wrong. Brown paper grocery bags are typically made from recycled paper. Even the ones that aren't, could be made from FSC certified paper. FSC means that the paper has come from managed forests... junk trees grown and harvested and replanted every 7 - 10 years to make paper. These trees are grown like any other agricultural crop. "Real" trees are much too valuable for lumber to use for paper.
"What are we going to use to carry our groceries???". For fucks sake, take a cloth bag. Take a backpack. Some guy on CFRB said yesterday, "What if my wife calls and says pick up some pickles... How am I going to get them home?" WTF? They're in a bottle. Carry them.
As for the argument that cloth bags aren't recyclable... May be true... but it doesn't really matter, because they can be reused for many years and when they do get tossed out, they will decompose.
I see this decision as the first of many that will come in the next bunch of years. We need to reduce our use of "disposable" stuff... bags, water bottles. All are harmful. All are virtually unnecessary. Anyone who spends any time near the ocean can testify to the amount of plastic floating around out there. I travel to remote areas of Central America quite often and the shore in these areas is almost always COVERED with plastic crap that has drifted in from somewhere...
One thing I see as a huge advantage of this ban is that it will send a message to plastic manufacturers that they need to come up with eco-friendly alternatives. When their businesses are at stake, I think that suddenly they will be able to produce alternatives like corn-starch based, bio-degradable alternatives. We have seen this in the paper industry with the move to recycled and FSC papers, the car industry, with fuel consumption that is a fraction of what it was a few years ago etc. The lawn chemical companies have all come up with more environmentally-sound alternatives in the aftermath of pesticide bans that have become common place. No, our lawns don't look as nice, but aren't you happy you aren't drinking 2,4,5-T everyday? This sort of ban is about changing peoples behavior. Unfortunately, the "great unwashed" population will tend to defer to what is "cheap and easy" as opposed to what is "right... and might cost a titch more"...
If you didn't notice it, the LCBO stopped using plastic bags about 3 years ago. Did it ruin your life? I didn't even notice until I heard about on the radio yesterday, and I assure you that I am a "frequent-flyer" when it comes to the LCBO.
This thing reminds me a bit of the shark-fin ban of last year. Many people asked what the point of this was. Well, the point was that it was the right thing to do.
So you have a few months to get used to it. Pick up a few cloth bags and remember to take them. (I try to put them back into my car once I have unpacked my groceries since I tend to grocery shop spontaneously.
There is ample scientific evidence to suggest that plastic NEVER degrades. The item might break down, but the base material ultimately breaks down into small beads of plastic material. This plastic leaches into groundwater and is found in the tissue of most birds, fish, and I suspect domestic farm animals and humans too. (I'd try to link some references, but I gotta get to work... maybe later). There is a belief in the scientific community that every piece of plastic ever made is still in existence (although some has been recycled of course!). This plastic material may or may not have adverse health effects... hard to imagine it doesn't.
As for the various arguments in favour of keeping the bags:
Most plastic bags are recycled. Wrong. Most eventually go into landfills where they serve the laudable purpose of preventing other waste from decomposing properly. Admittedly, many are re-used many times first, but ultimately they end up at the dump.
Paper bags are more harmful than plastic. Wrong. Brown paper grocery bags are typically made from recycled paper. Even the ones that aren't, could be made from FSC certified paper. FSC means that the paper has come from managed forests... junk trees grown and harvested and replanted every 7 - 10 years to make paper. These trees are grown like any other agricultural crop. "Real" trees are much too valuable for lumber to use for paper.
"What are we going to use to carry our groceries???". For fucks sake, take a cloth bag. Take a backpack. Some guy on CFRB said yesterday, "What if my wife calls and says pick up some pickles... How am I going to get them home?" WTF? They're in a bottle. Carry them.
As for the argument that cloth bags aren't recyclable... May be true... but it doesn't really matter, because they can be reused for many years and when they do get tossed out, they will decompose.
I see this decision as the first of many that will come in the next bunch of years. We need to reduce our use of "disposable" stuff... bags, water bottles. All are harmful. All are virtually unnecessary. Anyone who spends any time near the ocean can testify to the amount of plastic floating around out there. I travel to remote areas of Central America quite often and the shore in these areas is almost always COVERED with plastic crap that has drifted in from somewhere...
One thing I see as a huge advantage of this ban is that it will send a message to plastic manufacturers that they need to come up with eco-friendly alternatives. When their businesses are at stake, I think that suddenly they will be able to produce alternatives like corn-starch based, bio-degradable alternatives. We have seen this in the paper industry with the move to recycled and FSC papers, the car industry, with fuel consumption that is a fraction of what it was a few years ago etc. The lawn chemical companies have all come up with more environmentally-sound alternatives in the aftermath of pesticide bans that have become common place. No, our lawns don't look as nice, but aren't you happy you aren't drinking 2,4,5-T everyday? This sort of ban is about changing peoples behavior. Unfortunately, the "great unwashed" population will tend to defer to what is "cheap and easy" as opposed to what is "right... and might cost a titch more"...
If you didn't notice it, the LCBO stopped using plastic bags about 3 years ago. Did it ruin your life? I didn't even notice until I heard about on the radio yesterday, and I assure you that I am a "frequent-flyer" when it comes to the LCBO.
This thing reminds me a bit of the shark-fin ban of last year. Many people asked what the point of this was. Well, the point was that it was the right thing to do.
So you have a few months to get used to it. Pick up a few cloth bags and remember to take them. (I try to put them back into my car once I have unpacked my groceries since I tend to grocery shop spontaneously.
Had the Mayor not made his idiot proposal to do away with charging people for the bags they want, as good free market conservatives say people should, none of this silly 'discussion' would have been necessary. The relative merits and costs of re-usable bags, paper bags and plastic can be investigated and debated at length, but making everyone pay to give away as many flimsy 'free' bags as some wanted was A Bad Thing and certainly messed up the landscape, if not the landfills.
When people pay for what they want, they think and behave more carefully.
When people pay for what they want, they think and behave more carefully.
Agreed... the "tax" or "fee" or whatever it was, had a huge impact on reducing use. A complete ban is simply the extension of this. This sort of change in public policy is inevitable. We simply need to start looking after this old planet better than we are. Like I said above, to me, this ban shows real leadership. Maybe in the short term, the stores should charge something like $1.00 for a big. That way they are still available if you really need them (and we all do at times), but this would go a long way towards changing behavior...
But really, is it SO difficult to take a reuseable bag? Personally, I am more concerned about eventually not having a plastic bag to scoop my cat's litter into... I guess I will need to try the corn-husk litter which can be flushed.
But really, is it SO difficult to take a reuseable bag? Personally, I am more concerned about eventually not having a plastic bag to scoop my cat's litter into... I guess I will need to try the corn-husk litter which can be flushed.
Very true. It is somewhat hypocritical to get on a soapbox holding a bottle of Evian as well as the other examples that you give. I notice many people use the plastic bags from stores to pick up after their dogs. What will they use in 2013? Will they have to buy plastic bags or perhaps they just won't bother.
And Toronto is also the city known for taking recyclables and combining them with garbage and tossing it all in the dump which is in someone else's community.
Except that most retailers just pocketed the extra money and the Feds made a penny on every bag.
