As the holiday shopping season hits its peak, not only are consumers buying lots of gifts, they are accumulating an incredible number of plastic bags.\u00a0 Combined with the ongoing plastic bag use, New Yorkers gets an incredible number of plastic bags \u2013 almost always for one, and only one-time, use.\u00a0 According to the Cuomo Administration, \u201cresidents use 23 billion plastic bags annually. \u00a0A significant number of these bags make their way into the environment causing litter and damaging wildlife, which can be seen within our waterways, along our streets and in our oceans and lakes. \u00a0Moreover, these bags do not biodegrade \u2013 they persist for years.\u201d<\/p>\n
The problem is not unique to New York; it is a global problem.\u00a0 According to a recent report, experts estimate that over eight million tons of plastic waste ends up in the world\u2019s oceans each year, and that amount is likely to increase dramatically over the next decade unless nations act.<\/p>\n
The amount of plastics waste found in the ocean is the equivalent of \u201cfive plastic grocery bags filled with plastic for every foot of coastline in the world.\u201d\u00a0 Experts estimate that by 2025, the amount of plastic waste entering the oceans would double, or the equivalent of 10 bags per foot of coastline.\u00a0 The plastic that ends up in the ocean isn\u2019t just unsightly and harmful to aquatic life, it ends up in the food chain, including shellfish, fish and even sea salt.<\/p>\n
While the United States is not the world\u2019s worst offender \u2013 that distinction goes to China \u2013 the U.S. generates an estimated 110,000 metric tons of marine debris a year.<\/p>\n
The average American throws out 185 pounds of plastic every year.\u00a0 Cutting plastic bag use can dramatically reduce waste.<\/p>\n
In addition to the benefits to reducing the amount of garbage in the oceans, plastic bags aren\u2019t biodegradable, and less than one percent of plastic bags are recycled.\u00a0 Even when they are, it costs more to recycle a plastic bag than the cost of producing a new one. \u00a0One staff member from San Francisco\u2019s Department of the Environment, commented, \u201cThere\u2019s harsh economics behind bag recycling: It costs $4,000 to process and recycle one ton of plastic bags, which can then be sold on the commodities market for $32.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Earlier this year, Governor Cuomo approved legislation that retroactively overturned<\/em> New York City\u2019s then recently passed local law to address the proliferation of plastic bags as litter, ecological damage and as part of the City\u2019s solid waste disposal burden. \u00a0The new state law also prohibited the City from passing a new law until January, 2018 at the earliest.\u00a0 Oddly, other local laws around the state that banned plastic bags were not<\/em> covered by the legislation.<\/p>\n In order to take some of the sting out of his approval of the state<\/em> legislation overturning a local<\/em> law, Governor Cuomo created the New York State Plastic Bag Task Force.\u00a0 The Task Force was charged with developing a report and proposed legislation to address the detrimental impact of plastic bags on the state\u2019s environment. \u00a0The Task Force has been meeting and it is expected that the governor will advance changes during the 2018 state legislative session.<\/p>\n It is hoped that the governor will advance a plan to drastically restrict, and in some cases ban, the use of plastic bags for retail purchases.<\/p>\n There is ample evidence that such a program could work.\u00a0 California\u2019s experience is most instructive for New York.\u00a0 Like New York, California has a large, diverse population with large urban areas and a substantial coastline.\u00a0 California\u2019s law has been in force for over a year.<\/p>\n The California law has two major components: (1) a statewide ban on thin plastic bags (under 2.25 mils) that are the ones most often distributed by supermarkets (those with handles, not the ones used to wrap foodstuffs); and (2) a minimum 10-cent fee for paper & reusable bags (including thicker plastic bags).<\/p>\n California\u2019s law has been a success.\u00a0 As described by the Los Angeles Times<\/em>, \u201cCalifornians took in stride the sudden absence of some 13 billion bags that in previous years were handed out at grocery checkout counters and by other retailers of all sorts.\u201d\u00a0 Not only were consumers able to handle the change in their shopping experience, but there was a significant reduction in the amount of plastic bags found on California beaches.\u00a0 Again according to the Times<\/em>, \u201cPlastic bags (both the banned and the legal variety) accounted for 3.1% of the litter collected from the state\u2019s beaches during the 2017 Coastal Cleanup Day, down from to 7.4% in 2010.\u201d<\/p>\n The result?\u00a0 The Times <\/em>calls it a success: \u201cShoppers did not revolt or launch recall campaigns against state lawmakers. Food still gets to people\u2019s houses. Reusable bags did not spark an epidemic of food-borne illnesses, as some critics suggested they would. Consumers didn\u2019t go broke paying 10 cents apiece for the thicker, reusable plastic bags stores are allowed to distribute instead.\u201d<\/p>\n California\u2019s experience shows that its law is a good model \u2013 consumers can easily adapt and plastic bag trash is slashed.\u00a0 Let\u2019s hope that with Governor Cuomo\u2019s push, next holiday season will be just as cheerful \u2013 for New Yorkers and<\/em> the environment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As the holiday shopping season hits its peak, not only are consumers buying lots of gifts, they are accumulating an incredible number of plastic bags.\u00a0 Combined with the ongoing plastic bag use, New Yorkers gets an incredible number of plastic bags \u2013 almost always for one, and only one-time, use.\u00a0 According to the Cuomo Administration, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2000","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2000"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2000\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2001,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2000\/revisions\/2001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}