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Response to "Unsustainable Environmentalism"
Article appeared in The Harvard Crimson

Here is my response to The Harvard Crimson article decrying our efforts to ban the use of plastic checkout bags, dated 15 April 2008:

Dear Editor,

Somehow I expected more from a former associate editorial chair of The Harvard Crimson. Juliet S. Samuel simply doesn’t have her facts straight when it comes to her defense of non-biodegradable plastic retail checkout bags (Unsustainable Environmentalism, April 15, 2008).

I’m not quite sure where she got the quotations attributed to me. I don’t remember having spoken to her, nor have any documents or releases we’ve distributed about the detrimental effects of plastic checkout bags contained any statements by me comparing these bags to DTT. And contrary to Samuel’s statement, I have never mailed 15,000 reusable bags to my constituents.

Samuel says our legislation (Ordinance O-27-07) has failed in the Annapolis City Council. She is wrong again. It passed with amendments and was adopted by the City Council on February 25, 2008. It was greatly expanded to consider other environmental concerns, and instead of calling for an outright ban on paper and plastic checkout bags, it has begun the process by requiring major supermarket and drug store chains to reduce by 40 percent the number of paper and plastic checkout bags they are distributing. These stores are being given until May 31st, 2009, to accomplish this.

Samuel also makes the flippant remark that the 12 million barrels of oil used to make these 100 billion plastic checkout bags is only “0.15 percent of the U.S.’s total yearly oil consumption.” Let’s put it another way. These 12 million barrels of oil is one day’s US foreign oil imports. However, this 12 million barrels does not take into consideration the energy used to manufacture and transport both paper and plastic checkout bags to warehouses and retail outlets nationwide.

Samuel indicates that a few cities are considering legislation to ban plastic checkout bags. It’s not a just few—it’s now over 40 municipalities and counting, more than 10 states are considering legislation that will ban the bags while numerous nations around the world have implemented “plast taxes” and other means to curtail the use of plastic checkout bags. China, Australia, Ireland, France, Denmark, Bangladesh, Kenya, and many other nations around the world have already dealt these bags a vote of no confidence.

The argument to curtail the use of disposable checkout bags is clear and simple:

More than 100 billion plastic checkout bags are distributed by American retailer stores annually. Ninety-nine percent are not recycled, but rather end up either in the environment or landfill. (Recyclers don’t want them. They damage recycling machinery.) Furthermore, they don’t biodegrade--lasting by most estimates between 500 and a thousand years. In the US alone they are accumulating in our fields, creeks, rivers, oceans and landfill at the rate of 99 billion a year.

Our cause is sensible and just. By requiring large retain chains to begin marketing and vigorously encouraging the use of reusable checkout bags the environment wins, the customer wins and stockholders win. The more reusable bags in circulation, the fewer paper and plastic checkout bags are used. This means the big chains will reduce their costs for purchasing paper and plastic checkout bags, and it means significantly less expense for them in transporting and storing these checkout bags. By their own admission, this would result in enormous savings—savings that can be passed on to both stockholders and customers alike.

The next time someone like Samuel tells us that the plastic bag dangling from a tree in our front yard is “relatively harmless,” we should consider the facts. Rejecting disposable shopping bags and using reusable shopping bags is simply one more way of leaving a more sustainable earth to our children and future generations. It’s well worth the small adjustment we should be making in our American way of life.

Sam Shropshire