Banning Bans and the Banners They Rode in With....
I got invited to a Facebook group this morning that wants to ban plastic/paper bags in Saskatoon. Seems like a worthy cause, yet I can't help wondering who gets hurt. Oh well, as usual, the only ones that get hurt are the poor. People for whom an extra few dollars a year makes an actual difference in what they're eating tonight. People who don't have the luxury of driving to the grocery store. People who will have to to carry their reusable bags around all day in case they get the chance to pick up some groceries.
It's all well and good to say we don't need to use them, since there are alternatives. Yet none of those alternatives are as cheap or as convenient. We already have about two dozen reusable canvas bags around the house. I make an effort to use them, keeping a couple in my back pack for stopping at the store on the way home, and trying to keep a dozen in the car for the next trip. Even then, I forget regularly. That means if I'm shopping at one grocery chain, my choice is to pay a few cents per bag or haul them out in the cart and toss them loose into the vehicle. I have choices, I have options, we all do. But now one group wants to take way those options and force us all to do what's "right."
Why isn't it good enough that there are options? Why can't we do out best to educate a generation into adopting methods that will work? Why is the right approach found in working to ban something that is perfectly legal? One of the nice thing about living in a democracy is that as long as the law doesn't forbid something, I can do it. But that's not good enough. Instead of trying to fix real problems, people like to go around applying band-aids then patting themselves on the back because they're "part of the solution."
The most annoying part is that the bags aren't even the problem. The problem, once again, is us. As with almost everything that goes wrong with the planet, the problem is our carelessness and our self centered impatience. There's nothing inherently bad about plastic, or paper, bags. They're useful, they're recyclable, they're compact, they're inexpensive to manufacture. But we don't have time to recycle, recycling is too inconvenient. Despite the fact that many grocery stores have bins for recycling the bags, we toss plastic bags aside immediately, and not in one of those places.
The other part of that problem is that we can't be bothered fighting the real problem. "I'll just drop this wrapper here, or this cigarette butt. It's only one tiny thing and million other people are doing it, so it's not worth while to take it to a proper disposal place. I'm just one person and I can't make a difference."
It's bullshit and we all need to face it.
Every single one of us makes a difference, every single time we take the shortcut to save a second of time or a small inconvenience. Every one of us makes a difference every day. The problem is, it's usually the wrong difference. If we all decided to just make the one change of no longer treating the planet like one giant garbage can, a lot of our problems would go away.
Who am I to complain? I'm the creator of the Facebook Group "Ban Bans", for the all the good it may do me.
I got invited to a Facebook group this morning that wants to ban plastic/paper bags in Saskatoon. Seems like a worthy cause, yet I can't help wondering who gets hurt. Oh well, as usual, the only ones that get hurt are the poor. People for whom an extra few dollars a year makes an actual difference in what they're eating tonight. People who don't have the luxury of driving to the grocery store. People who will have to to carry their reusable bags around all day in case they get the chance to pick up some groceries.
It's all well and good to say we don't need to use them, since there are alternatives. Yet none of those alternatives are as cheap or as convenient. We already have about two dozen reusable canvas bags around the house. I make an effort to use them, keeping a couple in my back pack for stopping at the store on the way home, and trying to keep a dozen in the car for the next trip. Even then, I forget regularly. That means if I'm shopping at one grocery chain, my choice is to pay a few cents per bag or haul them out in the cart and toss them loose into the vehicle. I have choices, I have options, we all do. But now one group wants to take way those options and force us all to do what's "right."
Why isn't it good enough that there are options? Why can't we do out best to educate a generation into adopting methods that will work? Why is the right approach found in working to ban something that is perfectly legal? One of the nice thing about living in a democracy is that as long as the law doesn't forbid something, I can do it. But that's not good enough. Instead of trying to fix real problems, people like to go around applying band-aids then patting themselves on the back because they're "part of the solution."
The most annoying part is that the bags aren't even the problem. The problem, once again, is us. As with almost everything that goes wrong with the planet, the problem is our carelessness and our self centered impatience. There's nothing inherently bad about plastic, or paper, bags. They're useful, they're recyclable, they're compact, they're inexpensive to manufacture. But we don't have time to recycle, recycling is too inconvenient. Despite the fact that many grocery stores have bins for recycling the bags, we toss plastic bags aside immediately, and not in one of those places.
The other part of that problem is that we can't be bothered fighting the real problem. "I'll just drop this wrapper here, or this cigarette butt. It's only one tiny thing and million other people are doing it, so it's not worth while to take it to a proper disposal place. I'm just one person and I can't make a difference."
It's bullshit and we all need to face it.
Every single one of us makes a difference, every single time we take the shortcut to save a second of time or a small inconvenience. Every one of us makes a difference every day. The problem is, it's usually the wrong difference. If we all decided to just make the one change of no longer treating the planet like one giant garbage can, a lot of our problems would go away.
Who am I to complain? I'm the creator of the Facebook Group "Ban Bans", for the all the good it may do me.
posted by Kent Pollard | 13:11
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2 comments
