Dori: Ban on plastic bags belongs in China, not Washington

In breaking news on Wednesday, there is a push for a statewide ban on plastic bags.

When you decide what side of an issue you want to be on, why not take the side of those of us who use the handles, who reuse the bags as lunch bags? That’s environmentally-sound, right, reusing the bags over and over again?

Remember when they first told us that plastic bags were greener than paper bags? They were supposed to be the environmentally-friendly solution to paper bags. That’s how they were sold to us. The whole scientific community told us that. And the scientific community cannot be wrong about anything, ever — I would be a plastic bag denier if I said that.

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You see all of those pictures of the ocean full of plastic, and the turtle with the six-pack ring around its neck, and the floating jetsam, and they’re all very, very sad. But, you have to remember, the vast majority of that plastic comes from China. The United States is a much smaller contributor to all of that.

At a press conference at the Seattle Aquarium Wednesday, a guy came in dressed as the “Plastic Bag Monster.” I guess if you don’t want the plastic bag ban, you’re on the monster’s side. We also learned that if we don’t ban plastic bags, there will be an extinction of everything that we hold dear. I hold my family dearest, so apparently our families will go extinct if we don’t ban plastic bags here in Washington.

But as we all know, this is just about money. The goal of this plastic bag tax would be to raise $14 million for the state of Washington by charging 10 cents on every paper bag you have to buy in place of a plastic bag at the grocery store. It’s a transfer of money from the citizens to government control, all for a potentially infinitesimal effect on our oceans.

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