Ya think? What’s the next hazard to be discovered, car pools?
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Lamont lifts plastic bag ban. Because reusables are filthy germ carriers, but you’ve heard that here, many times.He also whacked hunting equipment retailers by requirig them to open to customers on a “by-appointment only” basis, but that’s not surprisng, coming from a petty dictator who hates guns, so we’ll gloss over it, for now. Here’s the relevant portion of his order on bags:
5. Employees Not Required to Bag Items in Reusable Bags. Effective immediately and through May 15, 2020, unless earlier modified, extended, or terminated by me, no employer in a retail establishment shall require any employee to bag any item in a customer-provided reusable bag, provided that nothing in this order shall prohibit customers who wish to use such reusable bags from doing so; such customers shall bag their own items where the employee of the retail establishment declines to do so.
The sudden discovery that reusable bags are dangerous is surprising, in a way, because critiocs have pointed that out for years. But why let science get in the way of political correctness?
Boston Mayor Marty Walsh says his temporary suspension of the city’s ban on single-use plastic shopping bags is about “flexibility.” He’s lying.
It’s about “stupidity.” Boston’s anti-plastic-bag mandate was idiotic from the beginning, and now it’s being outed by the coronavirus crisis as the danger to public health it’s always been.
Gov. Charlie Baker on Wednesday also announced a temporary ban on reusable bags.
…. What’s happened is that workers in grocery stores are complaining about the filthy, germ-infested reusable bags they’re being asked to stick their arms into on the front lines of the coronavirus crisis. As Drew Cline of the New Hampshire-based Josiah Bartlett Center told me, “Research clearly shows that poorly-handled reusable shopping bags are like little Ubers for dangerous microorganisms.”
….[If] Mayor Marty were motivated by data, the plastic-bag ban would never have been imposed in the first place. As we’ve written in this space before, single-use plastic bags are better for the environment than the obnoxious cotton shopping bags woke women get from “fair-trade” vendors on the web.
Paper bags are a lot heavier and take a lot more CO2 to ship. Reusable bags require a lot more emissions to manufacture. One British study found that shoppers have to use a cotton bag 131 times before it had a smaller global warming impact than a lightweight plastic bag used only once. How many times does the average reusable bag actually get reused? Fewer than 15.
As New York Times science writer John Tierney wrote last month, “Single-use plastic bags aren’t the worst environmental choice at the supermarket — they’re the best. High-density polyethylene bags are a marvel of economic, engineering and environmental efficiency.”
Michael Graham is a regular contributor to the Boston Herald. Follow him at IAmMGraham on Twitter.
