“I USE THE PLASTIC BAGS FOR COLLECTING garbage or for use the next time I shop. But the plastic bags are not the only source of pollution in this city. The vagrancy and bums leave tons of garbage around our sidewalks, parks, beach, etc. The city administration is in total denial about this growing hazardous problem. It gets worse everyday.”
“A BETTER QUESTION FOR THE magnificent Santa Monica Daily Press to ask would be how many readers use the plastic shopping bags for cat and dog poop receptacles. Plenty I bet, including me. If I had $5 for every pound of cat poop that I have sent to the city dump in plastic bags, I could spend a nice weekend in Las Vegas, stay in a good hotel and sit in the Keno parlor all day long. Often, when I drive the 405 freeway, I look upward to the old Mulholland city dump sight, and I am honored that those magnificent residential estates there on Mulholland Drive are setting on at least a ton of my kitty cat’s poop.”
“I USE THE PLASTIC BAGS TO LINE MY garbage can. I put two of the grocery store bags in there. And, it seems that if I didn’t have the use of those I would have to go and buy garbage bags, which would sort of defeat the purpose. Also, when I had a dog, I used them to clean up after the dog.”
“THIS LEADS ME TO A VERY IMPORTANT question. My mother used to dump pieces of garbage in newspaper and roll them up and take them out when I was a little kid. Is that what we’re going to have to do? I wonder what we’ll do without plastic garbage bags. Thank you.”
“THOSE CRAZY OLD BAGS ON OUR CITY Council already passed a law that requires dog owners to carry plastic bags and now they want to outlaw plastic bags. First, repeal the doggie-bag law. We poorer residents will be forced to pay more for food, and we’ve been using the plastic bags for our garbage. Now, we will have to buy garbage bags and doggy-bags and pay extra for the bags at the store.”
“YES, NOW THAT I’M A MEMBER OF A convalescent home, I use plastic bags even though they’re not environmentally friendly. I use them to store food. But, I’m going to try and start using bags that are environmentally friendly.”
“SOME OF THE BAGS, I USE FOR TRASH, to put trash into, and others are the bags I put into the trash. This environmentally politically correct stuff is just bandage on a hemorrhage. Everyone’s garbage has to go somewhere. If you want less garbage, you have to stop encouraging, subsidizing, spawning litters of kids.”
“I USE MY PLASTIC BAGS TO THROW OUT my trash everyday, And sometimes I take them with me when I go out shopping and use them again.”
“I WAS DISTRESSED TO SEE A LOT OF HIGH school students marching down the promenade and the Co-Opportunity in different stores supporting this idea of not giving us plastic bags when we go shopping because most of us take them home and use them for our trash to pick up our pets’ droppings. We recycle them people. We don’t take the stuff out and let go of the bag to blow into a tree. We recycle them, we use them. So what it’s going to do to me personally is cause me to go out and buy plastic bags to pick up pet droppings or to put my trash in. So, I find it just insane that a bunch of children and eco-warriors feel it’s responsible to stop having us have our groceries bagged. People, we need trash bags. So this is just going to create a new income stream for people who produce plastic.” “THIS IS IN RESPONSE TO THE PRACTICAL side of plastic bags: There is none. It is not practical for the U.S. to import billions of gallons of oil to make plastic bags. Oil wars and security interest are not practical. There is no practical side to plastic bags. There are alternatives to plastic bags. We do not need them.”
“YOU HAVE MISDIRECTED AN IMPORTANT question, bypassing a lot of anger at another small and stupid issue. This tempest in a tea pot comes courtesy of the socialist loonies on the City Council and their assorted non-taxpaying brethren of the environmental alarmists like Heal the Wallet. Again, allow the market place to decide. A brave city government will let people choose to support paper or plastic, rather than resorting to a Stalinist edict. Otherwise, our future councilmembers’ slogan may be: Today plastic bags, tomorrow the world.”
“WE FIND MANY WAYS TO REUSE OUR plastic bags. We mostly recycle them by filling them with our newspapers, food cans, plastic and glass juice bottles and milk and juice cartons. They are useful to line or trash cans and also to pick up doggy poop. Eliminating the bags will not solve the problem. You still have plastic baggies, plastic wrap, plastic trash bags and leaks in garbage bags sold in the stores, plastic bags over the clothes from the cleaners, plastic over bags from the department stores, and all the plastic bags for department store purchases. Better to just shut down the plastics industry.”
“REGARDING THE PLASTIC BAGS, I USE them for booties for workmen or people who don’t want to take their shoes off in my house. Most of them get used as garbage bags, and if they stop them I have to buy garbage bags, which is certainly no more environmentally friendly because they have more packaging. And, I have to earn the money for them. But for booties, they work quite well, too.”
“I USE MY PLASTIC BAGS FOR TRASH ALL the time. I never throw them away. I’m thinking of leaving Santa Monica when I go shopping so I can get plastic bags at outlying areas. I think City Hall should not be so liberal on this issue.”
“I GAVE UP MY GYM BAG FOR FOUR grocery bags. I carry books and magazines when I want to go out and want to read. I carry five or six folded-up grocery sacks rolled up with a rubber band in my purse. They’re small and useful. You can’t do that with paper sacks or canvas bags in your purse, but you can with your plastic bags. I love the plastic bags.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 8, 2008. Read the original PDF.