Merry Christmas shoppers!
The Scrooges on Denver City Council will vote Dec. 23 on a 10 cent fee for plastic and paper grocery shopping bags to satisfy their leftists constituents without actually helping the environment.
While the plastic debate has focused primarily along the coasts, where greenies insist it’s killing our oceans, the campaign has moved inland to try and convince us plastic is overwhelming our creeks, or something.
The reality is, our landfills don’t like plastic because it clogs their machinery. Environmentalists don’t like plastic because it’s a product of oil.
So it’s an easy target to make everyone look environmentally friendly without actually doing anything by disposing of the problem by charging fees to be litterbugs.
However, this doesn’t explain why paper bags are being targeted as well. Nor does it address all the plastic and paper bags used for other shopping purposes besides groceries.
Paper is a renewable resources, but some critics complain it requires one gallon of water per bag to create.
Has anyone bothered to look at the resources and energy required to make reusable bags, which are manufactured tote bags made with jute fibers that are grown in India, as well as, gasp, plastic?
That might explain Gov. Polis’s recent trade trip to India.
What is the cost of transporting jute from India to China to make reusable bags to be shipped to America?
Sure, we don’t throw away nearly as many reusable bags, but toss them we most certainly do.
The things are not sanitary, especially after carrying groceries, and can harbor dangerous bacteria like E. coli, salmonella, and fecal coliform.
How many gallons of water heated with fossil fuels do folks use each week to keep those things sanitized?
This is the problem with liberal public officials who were elected to solve these issues.
Rather than educate the public to recycle, they would rather charge them a fee for being litterbugs.