Paper or … paper?
Treehugger reports today that the city of San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors has voted 10-1 to ban the use of petroleum-based plastic bags in the checkout lines of grocery stores and pharmacies. The first city in the nation to do so, SF is making a valuable environmental statement; not only are petroleum-based plastic bags way nonbiodegradable, they also take a tremendous amount of energy to produce. Of course, we’d all be better off if stores scrapped bags altogether and required customers to bring their own reuseable ones, but at least this is a step in the right direction—I certainly won’t miss begging the cashiers at my local Safeway, where they double bag just about everything, to go easy on the plastic.
Also noteworthy, and in the same vein as SF’s groundbreaking initiative, is Swedish furniture megaretailer IKEA’s pledge to reduce plastic bag usage through the store’s recently launched “Bag the Plastic Bag” campaign.
Now let’s hope other major cities—not to mention the rest of the nation—follow suit. Cough-New York-cough.
