LETTER: Plastic bag ban is virtue signalling nonsense

SooToday received the following Letter to the Editor from reader Ashley Perrin in regard to the city-wide plastic bag ban: 

Dear Editor,

I can’t be the only person to be looking at this differently than those who wrote out the bylaw.

Does anyone else believe this is nothing more than virtue signalling nonsense?

What is the point of banning “single use” plastic grocery bags? Grocery bags are hardly single use. We load them up at the store, unload them at home and tuck them away to use again as a kitty litter dumping bag or as a small garbage bag.

Is the point of banning single use plastic grocery bags to reduce the amount of plastic trash in the ocean?

If so, we aren’t the problem. Our garbage hardly ends up in the ocean. The worst of that comes from countries such as China, and impoverished coastal nations or nations whom have rivers running to the ocean. Perhaps if we really wanted to make an impact we’d stop making silly nonsense laws and actually get our hands dirty the way Boyan Slat is. For clarity Mr. Slat is a Dutch teenager who is making solar powered booms to reduce ocean garbage islands.

Does it actually help reduce plastic bags in our landfill?

Ask yourself and observe how many more store bought Glad kitchen garbage bags you’ll have to use now in lieu of plastic grocery bags.

How about paper bags? Are we using more of these as insisted in Sootoday’s interview video posted on November 16th? The need to use more trees is involved which is our best and most plentiful carbon sequestering source in the world.

What this seems to me is that this is a big win for the big Glad garbage bag companies. What are we using as an alternative to packing our groceries at the store? How much of an environmental impact do these alternatives have? There is nothing that we do on this planet that doesn’t have an environmental impact on this planet. We sure can clean our act up. But sacrificing common sense, analytical thought, and our economic future isn’t one of them. And no, the planet wouldn’t be better off without humans, for those of you who dare to dance along that line.

Ashley Perrin