Plastic Bagging It In Congress
In our hands, a plastic bag seems like an insubstantial thing. The bag is so thin as to be translucent, and a single finger can rip right through it.
Yet, plastic bags have a habit of persistence. We pick them up easily, and use them for just a short time, but they don’t truly go away.
Outside the Dallas Fort Worth Airport, I’ve watched over an entire field full of plastic bags. The brush that grows up in that field catches the plastic bags that pass by in the wind, and so, year after year, more and more little plastic flags announce the growing sovereignty of the kingdom of garbage over that field.
The problem seen in that field is repeated all over Planet Earth. Year after year, we’re buried a little deeper in piles of plastic bags.
Those bags aren’t just ugly litter. Plastic bags clog waterways in nature, and in civilized settings. In places like Bangladesh, plastic bags in storm drains substantially worsen floods when they come.
The plastic material out of which the bags are made is also in itself a source of harm. Coming as it does from the manipulated remains of ancient life, the plastic contains substances which mimic hormones, disrupting the endocrine systems of animals and human beings alike.
What’s to be done? Representative James Moran is on the case with H.R. 2091, the Plastic Bag Reduction Act of 2009. The legislation creates a 5 cent tax every time a plastic shopping bag is used. If plastic bag is recycled, the tax doesn’t come into effect. The funds from the tax would go into a trust fund to support conservation efforts.
Promoting conservation and preventing plastic bags from blowing out into the environment – who wouldn’t support that? Well, a lot of people wouldn’t, it turns out. There are no cosponsors for the Plastic Bag Reduction Act yet.
[...] that end, Representative James Moran introduced H.R. 2091, the Plastic Bag Reduction Act last year. The legislation, if passed, would have created a 5 cent tax on every plastic bag given [...]