Letter to the Editor Ban Ban Full of Gas, Olive Branch Where Due, Not so Quick [September 17, 2015]
Bag ban full of gas Dear ER: Everyone cares about the huge islands of plastic waste circulating in the Pacific and we want to do something about it (“Hermosa Beach poised to adopt citywide plastic bag ban,” ER Sept 3, 2015). But banning plastic bags in Hermosa Beach, which serve a dual purpose for picking up dog poop, ending their life making natural gas in a landfill, is rooted in industrial ignorance. While the plastic bag is made from petroleum (natural gas) feedstock, the paper bag required, by an order of magnitude, more energy and more water, meaning the initiative to ban plastic is essentially enforcing a higher carbon footprint. It’s no wonder that the Hermosa Council and its backers cloistered in the small little village, wouldn’t know the consequences of its action. A paper mill is a dirty, messy place that lacks anything a pretty person would want to visit- – let alone work in. The big paper bag is made of a slurry of wood pulp, which is mixed which chemicals at a high temperature to break the sulfur bonds necessary to make the sheen of paper, which is dried and rolled, using high pressure steam. The higher carbon footprint of this and other initiatives, like the…
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