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Uploaded: Thursday, March 26, 2009, 9:20 AM

County chooses plastic-bag 'carrot, not stick'
County favors education on reusable bags rather than outright ban on plastic for unincorporated areas

Posted by Me Too, a resident of the Midtown neighborhood, on Mar 26, 2009 at 10:25 am

I am glad this litter scourge has finally received proper attention. Next we should go after plastic cup tops (including to-go coffee cups) and straws. Palo Alto will of course take the lead.

Posted by Joan Abrams, a resident of the Meadow Park neighborhood, on Mar 26, 2009 at 11:26 am

I sometimes forget to bring a reusable bag to the supermarket. Twenty plus years ago on a trip through Switzerland, I shopped at a market and was told at the cash register that there are no bags available. I walked home to our flat carrying and dropping my items. I never forgot once after that.

Posted by Long Wondering, a resident of the Midtown neighborhood, on Mar 26, 2009 at 11:31 am

What do people use to line their garbage can if they don't ever get paper or plastic bags? I use the brown paper bags for that purpose and don't understand what is an environmentally correct substitute.

Thank you.

Posted by rhody, a resident of the Barron Park neighborhood, on Mar 26, 2009 at 11:55 am

And I use the plastic bags to line all the trash cans that receive wet garbage. I'd hate to think someday I am going to have PAY for what will then be a single-use bag, while now I use each bag at least twice.

Posted by I reuse plastic bags, a resident of Another Palo Alto neighborhood, on Mar 26, 2009 at 12:02 pm

You may want to point these issues out and the actions taken by the County of Santa Clara to the King and Queen of Green in PA--HRH Drekmeier and HRH Kishimoto. Not that they will care what you say,since they appear to know best what is right for us all. Anyway, when you have one person who never had to worry about money and another who is aspiring to higher office, the complaints of PA residents mean nothing

Posted by Carol T, a resident of Menlo Park, on Mar 26, 2009 at 12:44 pm

With a desire to be good stewards of our planet, it is highly worthwhile checking out the following educational website with regard to the use of plastic bags:

Web Link

Using cloth bags may take some adjustments, but worth it in order to give a helping hand to the environment.

Posted by ellieg, a resident of the Palo Verde neighborhood, on Mar 26, 2009 at 3:51 pm

Thank you so much to Carol T of Menlo Park for putting in the link to the slide show about what happens to plastic bags after we use them. Not everyone carefully reuses them, somewhere between 500 billion and a trillion plastic bags are consumed worldwide each year.

Only about 10% are recycled; it costs more to recycle them than to produce them. It costs $4,000 to process and recycle 1 ton of plastic

bags, which can then be sold on the commodities market for $32.

Many of them end up in the ocean and thousands of sea animals die each year from trying to eat them and from getting tangled up in them.

It is a short and interesting, if horrifying slide show.

I highly recommend it.

Thank you again to Carol

Posted by Me Too, a resident of the Midtown neighborhood, on Mar 26, 2009 at 4:00 pm

Carol, while plastic bags are in fact trash, so is virtually all plastic food packaging (chip bags, bulk purchase bags, candy wrappers, etc.), not mention drink lids, straws, plastic wrap, etc. Without any real analysis or thought, do-gooders have focused on the plastic bag as a source of evil - it's plastic, that's got to be related somehow to climate change, right? Really it is just a source of some trash, and no different from many others - except that they are darn useful for bringing things home from shopping and then subsequent reuse.

If you want to save the world through reusable bags, please do and feel free to convince your friends. But a law? I just ripped out my lawn to save water - should we force everyone to do so? I drive my car about 6K miles/year - should we tax excessive driving? I dry some of my clothes in the sun - should we ban clothes driers? Instead of dictating people's choices, let's just focus on the big issues (like landfill use charges or taxes on raw materials) and let preferences dictate how people deal with them.

Posted by Resident, a resident of Another Palo Alto neighborhood, on Mar 26, 2009 at 4:06 pm

While I do buy trash can liners so that I have the right size, they are never used only once. I put all messy trash into small produce bags or bread bags and then just empty the bags into the trash can, the same with lining my recycling bin. The bags I do buy get used multiple times before I deem them no longer usable.

Posted by YSK, a resident of the Old Palo Alto neighborhood, on Mar 26, 2009 at 4:41 pm

I appreciate the approach of the county treating people like intelligent adults instead of recalcitrant children who need a guardian to tell them what to do.

Posted by clp, a resident of the Barron Park neighborhood, on Mar 26, 2009 at 6:16 pm

The county has been educating about reusable bags since about the year 2000. Interesting that the county commission and the comments to this forum think that two more years of the same 'ol thing is a "carrot".

If you look back to the first earth day in 1970, people were asked to use a reusable bag, turn down the thermostat, turn off the lights when not in the room, take shorter showers etc. How sad we have not evolved and formed new habits in 39 years and are still asking people to do these same things.

All the grocery stores in PA give a bag credit every time you use your own bag (3 -5 cents). Safeway has been giving this credit since at least the mid 1990's. Some other PA retailers give a credit too or have some other reward for shoppers. The City sent out a coupon in the Dec utility to get reusable bags for 50 cents each at specified stores.

What it comes down to is that the people that don't want to change, won't. People that are working on remembering their bags will in a short time make a new habit.

If people have wet waste they may want to consider using only one can in the house for wet stuff. The dry waste does not need to be bagged. That alone will dramatically reduce the bag needed to 1 per week. At our house, we bag nothing. The wet stuff (meat tray and plastic wrap) sits next to the sink until after the meal is completed and we walk that waste directly to the outside can. It is no big deal take a few steps and deal with it right away. Neither our outside or inside trash cans smell. The inside can needs a minor wipe with a sponge weekly.

I think people that actually want to can reduce their reliance on the paper and plastic bags. Others will focus on being contrary.

The paper bags used as trash liners go to the landfill and do not degrade.That waste of forestry resources is significant when you think of the millions of people that do it.

Posted by ENOUGH, a resident of the Charleston Meadows neighborhood, on Mar 26, 2009 at 6:32 pm

The paper bags used as trash liners go to the landfill and do not degrade.That waste of forestry resources is significant when you think of the millions of people that do it.

Will you Green Goof Ball get over yourself.

I'll keep my fun, my money and my FREEDOM how about you keep the change.

Posted by clp, a resident of the Barron Park neighborhood, on Mar 26, 2009 at 7:23 pm

Enough-

fyi- paper bags are not "free". You'll keep money in your pocket with a reusable bag and by reducing your need for them in general.

Landfills lack the water and oxygen needed for degredation to occur aerobically. The garbage gets covered up with dirt every day and sealed off. Degradation that does occur is anerobic and is due to food and yard clippings, creating methane.

Landfills that have been excavated after 40 years have shown food and newspaper (completely readable) that looks like it was placed there yesterday. A professor in Az studies this and has written books on it. He is a visiting professor to Stanford- William Rathje

Posted by Namreh, a resident of the South of Midtown neighborhood, on Mar 27, 2009 at 1:34 am

I confirm Joan Abram's entry. It still holds for many grocery stores in Switzerland, Austria (my home country), and Germany. I don't know about the other EU countries -- maybe somebody else can comment on it. At some of the stores you can buy a reusable bag or you are charged significantly for a bag if you select to.

And I agree with clp's entry.

Do we want to change something or not? Do we want a changed result?

Reading the entries, I recall what one of my American bosses told me when I wanted to discuss approaching future work problems :

"We solve today's problems today and worry about tomorrow's problems tomorrow."

We need to use a stick. The carrot? You use it to get the animal moving, but you are careful that the animal doesn't get the carrot. ".... worry about it tomorrow". Delaying tactic.

Only very few of us have learned the art of thinking, and therefore concluded that "tomorrow" may become absolutely unpleasant.

I vote for up to 25 cents per bag, paper or plastic. (I use reusable bags and nets for quite some time. If I forget them -- I pay a "fine" - serves me right.)

Last question: Can the Europeans think or not? Or maybe they know something we don't? Or they haven't discovered the convenience and freedom we enjoy by not having to worry about shopping bags? God forbid we talk to them and, even worse, learn something which forces us to change.

Posted by Walter_E_Wallis, a resident of the Midtown neighborhood, on Mar 27, 2009 at 6:47 am
Walter_E_Wallis is a member (registered user) of Palo Alto Online

The one factor never considered in these crusades is the time and convenience of the user. Terms like biodegradable are tossed around as if they were significant, but think of all the stuff we use that is not biodegradable and yet civilization keeps on keeping on - pottery shards for instance. The environazis build a straw dog of so whats and exaggerations and then run to our rescue with another limitation on our freedom of choice.

Posted by Resident, a resident of Another Palo Alto neighborhood, on Mar 27, 2009 at 9:03 am

If the greenies really want to reduce plastic in landfill, why don't they make more noise around business rather than private individuals.

Why is it that some bread I buy is wrapped, not once in plastic, but twice?

Why when I buy, say a small appliance, or child's toy, is it wrapped in plastic inside a box, with perhaps clam shell plastic, plus plastic ties on the cords, and styrofoam, and a myriad other pieces of small plastic, etc?

If the greenies were working on reducing all that stuff, I might be sympathetic. We have no choice but to get all this stuff we don't want, can't reuse, and only throw away.

Posted by wondering, a resident of Menlo Park, on Mar 27, 2009 at 10:33 am

Just wondering when the County or Palo Alto or some of you here will take on the gentleman I hear on the radio every morning, Jim Hannay, of Rector Audi, lecturing all of us on our patriotic duty to buy things. How are we dealing with these conflicting messages? We "get our great country back" (by consuming) while we destroy the planet (by consuming)?