The law, passed by a 10-1 vote, requires large markets and drug stores to give customers only a choice among bags made of paper that can be recycled, plastic that breaks down easily enough to be made into compost, or reusable cloth.San Francisco supervisors and supporters said that by banning the petroleum-based sacks, blamed for littering streets and choking marine life, the measure would go a long way toward helping the city earn its green stripes.
Now there is a great deal to be said of this initiative, but it can be equally suggested that individual choice can bring about this on its own. We can choose to not use plastic in our everyday lives; many times this is an easy choice, many times this is a cumbersome and labourious choice. This law promotes the limitation of waste while also limiting the challenge of not using bags. Compostable bags, not new on the scene, are an optimal choice and an obvious one for a solution to our thriving dependence on plastic - it just takes a government to hold the reins of public use and take them on a different tangent. No matter how many bags one or two people refuse at the supermarket, or how many people choose to even reuse those bags once they are used, the problem continues to propagate.
You dont need bags for each member of the produce family; nature allows them to be together, they wont hurt each other, lets just do away with the bags and let them roam free in our carts.
This law may change that trajectory, but we will have to wait and see. I believe this to be a good change, but I am not holding any stock in it until it proves to have staying power and political transparency.
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