Banning Plastic Grocery Bags: Environmental Savior or Wasteful Eco-Fad?

From Bellingham, Seattle, and Issaquah, Washington to Portland, Oregon and parts of California (most recently, Pasadena, as of July 1), cities are joining the latest environmental trend―banning plastic grocery bags. Concerned about the amount of plastic that reaches our oceans and its impact on wildlife, communities have decided that banning the bags is a simple and environmentally responsible approach.

But is it? What does the science say?

Banning the bags actually may be a net negative for the environment, yielding little environmental benefit while increasing carbon emissions and other impacts.

Advocates of the ban cite the bags’ effect on marine life and mammals. Unfortunately, their claims are often false or misleading. For example, the Shoreline city council was told “the ecological impacts of this plastic include over a million sea-birds and 100,000 marine mammals killed by either plastic ingestions or entanglement.” In fact, this assertion has nothing to do with plastic bags.

NOAA corrected the claim, saying, “We are so far unable to find a scientific reference for this figure.” The only study NOAA can find does not deal with plastic bags or even marine debris, but “active fishing gear bycatch”―in other words, fishing nets that are used at sea, not discarded plastic bags.

Read more at Cascade Business News