I draw cartoons for The Los Angeles Times about issues related to California and the Southland (metro Los Angeles).
This week:
On New Year’s Day, Los Angeles became the biggest city in the United States to ban plastic bags.
Mayhem was anticipated. OK, not mayhem. Just extreme agitas. “If they don’t give me a bag, what am I going to do?” the Times quoted an “incredulous” William Macary at a Wal-Mart back in June. “If I pay money, I want a bag.”
I feel him. If I pay money, I want a pony. And a car. And those $350 Italian shirts I lust for when I go to Vegas.
Believe it or not, plastic bags were originally introduced as the eco-friendly alternative to paper bags. No more chopping trees, etc. Now they’re widely viewed as a scourge.
But even treehuggers hate inconvenience. I caught a sneak preview to how some entitled Angeleno consumers might greet a plastic-free 2014 last year, when I visited Washington. The nation’s capital requires merchants to charge shoppers five cents per plastic bag.
“Want a bag? It’s a nickel,” the guy at the sandwich shop told me. It’s a nominal fee, but I said no. I’m typical. Most Washingtonians prefer to bring their own bag or do without. The bag fee is a big success, having greatly reduced litter in the D.C. area.
Why not cough up the nickel? It’s inconsequential.
It’s not the disposability factor. You can use plastic bags for your trash. To pick up after your dog. Whatever. Anyway, much of the stuff you carry in plastic bags is essentially disposable too. Groceries don’t last forever.
Washington’s fee makes people realize that plastic bags are worth nothing. And no one wants to pay something for nothing. It may be hard to believe, but Washington’s experience is clear: in a few short months, we’re going to wonder why we ever wanted plastic bags in the first place.
I like Los Angeles’ approach better. There’s nothing grosser than plastic bags hanging from tree branches, blowing in the breeze. Why tolerate even one? An outright ban is better. But we’re missing out on D.C.’s game-theory economic experiment.
Or maybe not.
We’ll have the option of paying ten cents for a paper bag that isn’t as hard on the environment. Will we? I’m betting the answer is no.
14 Comments.
This is an absolutely hilarious cartoon and I’m not sure exactly why….I think there’s a bit of deadpan humor in it that just caught me off guard for your style
I think it might have something to do with all of the details?
Yeah. The Hawaiian shirt with the trans-panel snake and the tabloids in the background that look like slot machines.
… actually paper bags aren’t all that eco-friendly. They are biodegradable. In order to actually degrade, they need water, air & sunlight. All of which are in short supply in a dump (excuse me “landfill”)
Left in the sun & open air the plastic bags will decompose, too – although not biologically.
Not that I’m recommending either of the above. Bags of whatever material are merely another symptom, just like as CO2 emissions, water scarcity, etc. The elephant (donkey?) in the room is overpopulation. It doesn’t matter if we cut CO2 emissions by 50% because in 30+ years we’ll have doubled the population. Doesn’t matter if we all bring our own bags, because the rest of the waste we generate will quickly fill the Grand Canyon Memorial Landfill anyway.
If we were to reduce our population to a paltry few-hundred-million we’d still have enough genetic diversity to sustain the species but most of our biggest problems would simply disappear. b>Anything else we do, even with the best of intentions, is merely grasping at straws.
Great, now I’m depressed. Maybe we’ve still got some warm, stale, champagne left over…
This sort of thing, like cardboard, can be composted, though cardboard with glue may contain formaldehyde, which will kill living stuff before it (quickly) degrades into formic acid (ant excretions) so the organic gardening purists won’t use it.
You’re right about too many humans being the problem, especially technophiles, though it would be a good idea to keep enough people around who understand nuclear power plants well enough to take them apart.
Plastic bags break. Also plastic recycling is a marginal enterprise and sometimes faked. I routinely steal plastic bags from the recycling bin at the store to use for trash, because I know for a fact they throw them out. I have a nice assortment of cloth bags I use to shop. Also, if you want to see what’s really wrong with all this plastic, google the Pacific garbage patch.
Hippy New Beer, Miep!
I’ve got this 55 gallon drum of plastic bags that I’d resolved to recycle this year. I guess I don’t have to now, so thanks!
One resolution down, and it’s only Jan 2nd. Maybe I’ll get lucky and break my leg & so I can cross the exercise one off the list as well.
What gets me is people who try to recycle the things and then buy garbage bags.
Tyler: your bags will work just as well, and even better, if they’re not made of plastic. Cloth doesn’t stop working when you go upstairs.
The biggest complaint people have about reusable bags is that they can’t remember to bring them to the store with them. The challenges poor USAians have to face are enough to break one’s heart.
Also, 55 gallon drums and five gallon buckets should never be recycled because they are too damned useful to recycle.
meh, just kidding about the 55g drum. 😉 We use cloth shopping bags & when we forget them we recycle or reuse the plastic ones.
I’ve got a five gallon bucket that I got *free* from a restaurant years ago. It originally held pickles, but it’s much better built than the ones I can *buy* from the local hardware store today. How fucked up is that?
All my plastic bags eventually go in to the recycling can. If you live in an appartment with no elevator, they’re a neccesity.
Note that 8 of the 10 items the shopper has purchased are enclosed in their own packaging.
Compare the combined volume/mass of those packages to the same for the plastic bag the shopper can no longer obtain.
I’d say that banning bags, which have many secondary uses, is likely another of many diversions from the real issues
It’s the environmental equivalent of saying, “Hey we really need to stop making pennies!” when the real problem is the Fed.
If you haven’t seen this movie, put it on your bucket list:
http://bagitmovie.com/
I second that.