Both as a Voluntary Simplicity member and a member of the InterDependence Project (www.theidproject.com), I am encouraging others to take action to keep New York City's Plastic Carryout Bag Recycling Law (Local Law 1 of 2008) in effect.
Governor David Paterson is currently considering a bill that would establish statewide requirements for plastic bag recycling that would override the stronger New York City Law.
To quote the ID Project Press Release:
While the state bill, S.8643-A/A.11725, would make progress towards reducing the environmental impact of plastic bag use by creating a statewide standard for recycling, it would be a step backwards for New York City. The state legislation applies to individual stores that are greater than 10,000 square feet in size or to chain stores that are 5,000 square feet or more. Comparatively, New York City’s law has narrower requirements that includes all stores over 5,000 square feet or that have five or more locations. Additionally, New York City’s recycling law applies to a larger variety of plastic bags and also places greater responsibility on the plastic bag manufacturers, instead of the retail store, to make sure that the plastic bags are recycled.Christine Quinn and other NYC council members are also support this action: http://council.nyc.gov/html/releases/065_072208_plasticbags.shtml
The I.D. Project’s Ethan Nichtern says, “Plastic bags pose a real threat to the environment and to people’s quality of life. It takes millions of barrels of oil to produce the billions of plastic bags used in the United States each year. Less than 5% of those bags get recycled and the rest end up on our overcrowded landfills or polluting our waterways and oceans.”
As part of their Back to the Sack Initiative, the I.D. Project urges Governor Paterson to support chapter amendments that would exempt New York City from the State bill.
“We are encouraging all our members, as well as other concerned New Yorkers, to petition Governor Paterson to exempt New York City from the State law and leave our stronger city law in effect,” says Nichtern. “We are focusing our activism on the legislation surrounding plastic bags, both to diminish these bags' serious environmental impact, and to discover how we can make a real difference in our community.”
As are the NRDC and the Environmental Defense Fund:
http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS238953+25-Jun-2008+PRN20080625
What you can do:
Call and Email!
Call and urge Governor Patterson, along with Senator Marcellino and Assemblyman Sweeney, to add chapter amendments to bills S.8643-A/A.11725 that would exempt New York City from the state legislation and would allow the city's existing plastic bag recycling statute to take effect.
| Governor Patterson: Phone: (518) 474-8390 Email: http://tinyurl.com/nebsn | State Senator Marcellino: Phone: (518) 455-2390 Email: http://tinyurl.com/5t37ff | State Assemblymen Sweeney: Phone: (518) 455-5787 sweeney@assembly.state.ny.us |
Also,
Sign the IDProject's online petition! (http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/backtothesack/index.html)
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2 comments:
In addition to backing this, today's New York Times has an article that reminds us that paperbags are not the best replacement, but re-usable bags of any kind. So re-using plastic bags is better than recycling them. It quotes an article from the Reason Foundation:
"One hundred million new plastic grocery bags require the total energy equivalent of approximately 8300 barrels of oil for extraction of the raw materials, through manufacturing, transport, use and curbside collection of the bags. Of that, 30 percent is oil and 23 percent is natural gas actually used in the bag-the rest is fuel used along the way. That sounds like a lot until you consider that the same number of paper grocery bags use five times that much total energy. A paper grocery bag isn't just made out of trees. Manufacturing 100 million paper bags with one-third post-consumer recycled content requires petroleum energy inputs equivalent to approximately 15,100 barrels of oil plus additional inputs from other energy sources including hydroelectric power, nuclear energy and wood waste."
EPA agrees that RE-USE is key to conservation. Here's a website: http://web.archive.org/web/20060426235724/http://www.epa.gov/region1/communities/shopbags.html.
The URL was cut off: let me try again:
http://web.archive.org/web/20060426235724/http://www.epa.gov/region1/communities/shopbags.html
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