Bagged: It's a Big Job, but Someone Needs to Ban Plastic Bags

Dear Premier Dwight Ball and Minister Eddie Joyce,

     Partly because of China's plan to stop buying recyclables from countries such as Canada by the end of 2017, there is a new and urgent need to stop wasting so much plastic and start banning single-use plastic bags. I am writing to you today to support Municipalities NL, which is calling for a ban on plastic bags because mayors around the province do not believe that a ban is possible without your help. Plastic bags, especially for groceries and other shopping, are harming us, other species, and our environments. If we can't recycle them, we have to ban them.
     We have proven that we can't recycle them effectively; 91% of plastic is never recycled. In some places, such as most of Canada, we try to recycle bags by collecting them and often by shipping them to China, but we leave a carbon footprint from the transportation and the energy needed to remake the plastics. This is one of the reasons why we haven't started a recycling program for plastic bags in Newfoundland and Labrador. And so we have to ban them.
     Even when we try to divert the bags to a nearby landfill, we fail miserably. Images have been circulating of the "Plastic Bag Forest" near the scenic East Coast Trail and Robin Hood Bay—the trees acting as a filter to catch airborne plastic bags. Whales have been found dead with many plastic bags in their stomachs—in one case, 30 bags. For many species, like up to 90% of sea birds and presumably including people, ingesting plastic has become inevitable; this summer, a new plastic-ridden ocean zone as big as Mexico was discovered in the Pacific. You read that correctly: as big as Mexico. There are several other massive zones of floating plastic in the world's oceans. There is no other explanation except that humans are laying waste to land and sea.
     We behave so abhorrently for a lot of reasons, but I refuse to believe that it's simple ignorance or a lack of conscience; I think we do it because it's traditional to a capitalist society to accept the idea of surplus value and thus, maybe illogically, of waste; and, more important, it's convenient. If you do propose a ban, many people will object on this reason alone. When the ban came into effect in California, I saw a man on the news who said that no one had the right to make his shopping more difficult. If we can't convince him to change his behaviour as a consumer, we need to change the behaviour of suppliers, such as grocery stores. We can all learn that it's easy to carry reusable bags and use them for most of their shopping.
     Meanwhile, I am so tired of our inaction on plastic. (Bagged! In a previous open letter, I wrote to major airlines to find out why they don't recycle plastic cups on flights into Toronto, Canada's busiest airport.) Yet we have alternatives. I fold up a small recycled-plastic bag and put it in my knapsack for those times when I'm not planning on going to the grocery store but do anyway. We can leave fabric bags in our vehicles and bring them into stores with us. Now, an Australian initiative called Boomerang Bags has come to St. John's (and all over Australia, the United States, and elsewhere), and they leave recycled cotton bags to be borrowed and returned at many different stores, such as Food for Thought downtown.
     I would love us to be leaders rather than followers of Australia and innovative cities like Montreal, but there is no shame in gaining confidence from someone else's good idea. With the Green Party starting to find support in the Maritimes, and with several newly elected progressives on the City Council of St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador might someday soon have more politicians who are listening to the many citizens who believe that we are failing future generations—not only people but other animals: whales, sea birds, polar bears, sea turtles, and even a lobster caught last month in New Brunswick with a Pepsi logo nearly fused into its claw.
     Don't we care?
     We need to act. Please write a new law that will ban plastic bags here too.
     Many will gratefully support you. 

Sincerely,

     Joel Deshaye

PS. While we're at it, we should create local industries for recycling what we can't ban, such as glass—an easily reusable and recyclable material. Why can't we do that here?

Works Cited

• Bartlett, Geoff. "Banning Single-use Plastic Bags a 'No Brainer,' Says Sheilagh O'Leary." CBC News, 13 June 2017.
• Cole, Christine. "China Bans Foreign Waste—but What Will Happen to the World's Recycling?" Scientific American, 21 Oct. 2017.
• Grenier, Éric. "For Its Next Breakthrough, the Green Party Might Want To Go East." CBC News, 30 Nov. 2017. 
• Gyulai, Linda. "Montreal Adops Plastic Bag Ban." Montreal Gazette, 23 Aug. 2016.
• Keats, Tony. "Plastic Bag Ban." Municipalities Newfoundland and Labrador.
• Molloy, Mark. "Lobster with Pepsi Logo 'Tattoo' on its Claw Caught in Canada." The Telegraph, 1 Dec. 2017.
• Montanari, Shaena. "Plastic Garbage Patch Bigger than Mexico Found in Pacific." National Geographic, 25 July 2017.
• Oliver, Kenn. "Women, Progressives Lead Sweep for Change on St. John's City Council." The Telegram, 3 Oct. 2017.
• Parker, Laura. "Nearly Every Seabird on Earth Is Eating Plastic." National Geographic, 2 Sept. 2015.
• Parker, Laura. "A Whopping 91% of Plastic Isn't Recycled." National Geographic, 19 July 2017.
• Silva, Steve. "Company Asks Nova Scotia for Permission to Put Plastic Bags in Landfill." Global News, 1 Dec. 2017.

How to cite this blog in MLA format: Deshaye, Joel. “Bagged: It's a Big Job, but Someone Needs to Ban Plastic Bags.” Publicly Interested, 3 Dec. 2017, www.publiclyinterested.weebly.com.