A day at the Capitol

On the day it is born, a plastic bag is garbage. Aside from the days it will take to ship it from the manufacturer to the retailer where it is distributed, the life expectancy a plastic bag is measured in hours; it will transport goods from the retailer’s store to the consumer’s pantry. And then, it is thrown away. On occasion, the bag will win a reprieve, carrying someone’s sandwich to school, or riding along on some other such errand. Still, the life span of a plastic bag is very short. One might say it is junk the day it is born.

When I spoke at the State Capitol today in support of the Plastic Bag Recycling bill, now known as S.F. No. 267, my testimony was based on the extent to which plastic bags are among the “Floatables” we take out of the river on any given day. Beneath almost every storm sewer spillway, there is an oversized debris field, filled with trash. Within that floating island of trash, there are a variety of fountain cups, beverage and water bottles, Styrofoam bait containers… and plastic bags. You see them floating in the water, laying on the shoreline, and hanging in the trees… having been placed there like ornaments by the wind.

Many plastic bags are disposed of properly. Many are not.

S.F. No. 267 requires the operators of retail chains to play a proactive role in the recycling of the plastic bags they distribute, buy placing collection bins at the entrance or exit of their stores where used plastic bags can be deposited. Why is something so simple such a good idea?

Today, I drew a parallel to discarded tires. When you buy tires in Minnesota, the retailer must offer to take your used tires from you for appropriate disposal, in exchange for a reasonable fee (usually about $5). Sometimes, when people realize the service could add $20 to a set of tires, they opt to dispose of the tires on their own, “through alternate means,” and save the money. Then, because the tires cannot be discarded with their weekly trash or left at a landfill (by law), the tires often find their way into a ditch or waterway. In effect, the rules make it easier to do the wrong thing than it is to do the right thing. Laws should work the other way around.

If the consumer were made aware of a new recycling option for their plastic bags, and then reminded on every visit to the retailer, we would be making it easier to do the right thing.
Further, this is a solution which would be largely funded by the people who profit from introducing plastic bags into our environment in the first place: The manufacturers who make them and the retailers who distribute them.

To put it lightly, not everyone in the room agreed with my position on the matter. There were a couple of gentlemen from the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce who did not think it was fair to place a mandate on small businesses; that the act of executing such a program and then keeping records as to their compliance would be too great a burden. They were followed by a representative from the Minnesota Grocers Association, who reiterated that position, and cited a number of volunteer recycling efforts which were making great progress in our state. Opponents of the bill submitted that 4.5 million pounds of plastic bags had been recycled since 2003… and that because of the success of reusable cloth bags, the use of plastic bags had been reduced by 13.3%. But none of these folks were able to offer a baseline; nobody knew how many tons of plastic bags were distributed in Minnesota. So nobody knows what percentage of the material is actually being recycled.

I applaud every effort that any retailer has put forth toward the cause of recycling. Every bag recycled is one less that will float my way in the river, drift in the wind, or litter our roadways, parks and lakes. But a first-hand look at our rivers—not to mention our wetlands, lakes, parks and roadways—indicate that what’s being done now is not enough. It does not take a long time on the river to realize that every ditch, street, and storm sewer is a tributary that carries garbage right into the river. Plastic bags included.

If so many retailers are engaged in recycling efforts already, I would think that S.F. No. 167 would be welcomed with open arms. It would mandate participation by a significantly larger number of chain store retailers in the metro area: Convenience stores, discount stores, specialty retailers, etc. It would make recycling efforts—and consumer awareness—pervasive.

Plastic bags continue to represent a significant share of the “floatables” that we recover during our clean-up efforts. If more of them were captured for recycling, then fewer would end up in our landscapes, lakes, and rivers. This is an issue which can be more economically prevented than solved.

As it stands now, the bill will be held over for future discussion and consideration; hopefully, it will become part of a future omnibus package, and passed. Stay tuned at the Senate web site.

In leiu of closing remarks, I will offer (below) a copy of my most recently updated map of trash targets in the north metro Mississippi River. Each marker represents a oversized debris field or dumped object. I think the map tells us the time has come for more preventative measures.

© 2009 Mike Anderson, Crystal, MN.

View Pre Clean-up Mississippi Targets 7-20-08 in a larger map