Ban The Banners

The San Diego City Council has approved a plastic bag ban. San Diego becomes the 150th California municipality to eliminate single-use bags, notes enviro-weenie Joshua Emerson Smith.

Just how many of those municipalities went to the voters for their opinion? Just one. Fairfax, which is a tiny (pop. 7,607) community in Marin County.

The Union-Tribune article features a scary-looking photograph of a dumpster overflowing with trash. Well, what would you expect on the morning after July 4th weekend at Belmont Park?

Smith notes grimly that plastic checkout bags "often end up in landfills." Isn't that why we have landfills?

But, Smith writes, the bags also wind up as "litter in storm drains, rivers, canyons and beaches." They sure do! But the bags aren't being tossed carelessly by Fairfax residents. There seem to be certain populations who show an above-average tendency to litter.

Which populations? Let's interrogate The Los Angeles Times, and their article titled, L.A. fights plague of garbage in central city neighborhoods. Los Angeles is spending millions of dollars to improve "the attitudes of people who dump."

Who are these people, with their blithe attitudes about shitting where they live? "Much of the focus is on the immigrant-heavy neighborhoods of Westlake and Pico-Union just west of downtown."

Oh, "immigrants," huh? They just need time to assimilate, then.

Curious that the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce supported the bag ban. Wonder why? The ordinance isn't on the City of San Diego's Council website. But try to guess where the mandatory $0.10 per paper bag substitution charge goes.

Paper bags generally cost about $0.04 each. Safe to say that the retailer is going to pocket the difference. If only ten percent of the 700 million plastic bags become single-use paper bags, that would be $40 million in profit going to retailers.

Not to worry about low income residents being forced to pay this tax. They are exempt, naturally. The people who are affected the most by government interference are always subsidized at everyone else's expense.

"San Diego’s ban requires that paper bags be provided for free to customers who are receiving government food assistance."

There is such a thing as a biodegradable plastic-type bag. Why doesn't the government try a carrot approach, and let the market decide? And is a hundred billion plastic bags discarded into landfills really any worse than twenty-five billion disposable, non-biodegradable diapers?

It's not really about waste, it's about creeping, penetrative, incremental intrusion. Government is just another word for the things we do together.