Plastic Bags Tough to Recycle, Tougher to Ban
by Earth 911 on February 1st, 2008
Medil Reports features news that a Lake County, Illinois task force wants to reduce plastic bag waste throughout the state, but will attempt to do so without banning plastic bags in retail stores.
Several cities have addressed plastic bag waste, with San Francisco being the first to propose a ban. Chicago has pursued banning plastic bags as recently as last May, particularly because the city does not provide a program to recycle them.
The Illinois General Assembly developed a pilot program to determine the costs for retailers of plastic bag recycling. The results will be studied sometime next month.
For locations to recycle plastic bags in your area, use the Earth 911 recycling locator search.
2:45 am on February 4th, 2008
Here in the UK, in The Lake District, the local authorities have made everyone recycle their household waste. We have to separate the trash into glass, paper, cardboard, glass and plastic containers. The only trash we have left is plastic packaging and food waste.
The weird thing is that now we have to do this a lot of us realise how much wasted plastic there is. In one town the shops all stopped giving out plastic bags and no one complained. I don’t think you have to ban something if hardly anybody wants to have or do whatever it is.
5:24 am on February 5th, 2008
We will recycle all plastic bags at our facilitie if someone can convince the large stores to do so.All they care about is profit and not our green issues.We will even provide totes for their customers to return their plastic and give them a rebate.What else can you ask for.CRS. Ft Wayne, In.
10:31 pm on February 6th, 2008
Why is banning plastic bags a bad thing? If just 25% of U.S. families used 10 fewer plastic bags a month, we would save over 2.5 Billion bags a year. Do you realize there is no other cause, of any kind, that impacts every man, woman, and child on the planet more than environmental causes. At 1 Odd Duck, we think about these sorts of things on a regular basis. Check us out at http://www.1oddduck.com. If you like what you see, pass it along to your friends.
Common Sense 2 Global Green!!
12:57 pm on March 12th, 2008
I live in Chicago and decided to accept plastic bags from stores a few months ago. I do not miss them. I still had quite a few that I reuse at home. When I go to the store, I make a conscious effort to take my own bags. It is a great feeling to walk out of a store with 2 full shopping bags for a half cart of groceries rather than half a dozen plastic bags.
Plastic bags are useful but they shouldn’t be one time use items, or become unsightly “tree decorations” in our neighborhoods. If half of the people in Chicago and the rest of Northern Illinois accepted fewer bags we wouldn’t have to worry about banning them.
4:25 pm on April 3rd, 2008
comment to ozzie1oddduck - your link goes to a page that asks for a login name and password like its a secret site - dont make this difficult for people to find out about you - thanks!
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