Bob Dunning has devoted several recent columns to ridiculing the idea that plastic bags from Davis could be entering our waterways or finding their way to the ocean. While I don’t find that idea nearly as implausible as Dunning does, I think the real disservice is his myopic focus on “plastic bags in waterways” as the only reason that one might want to ban plastic bags.

To my way of thinking, the main reason to ban plastic bags is implied in the slogan “reduce, reuse, recycle.” What many people don’t realize about that slogan is that those three possible actions are meant to be taken in order: first we should reduce the amount of waste we produce; second, what we can’t reduce, we should reuse; and third and last, what we can’t reuse we should recycle.

But again, not producing waste in the first place is the best of the three actions.

Now, there are many types of waste we could produce less of, but it is hard to do that in some cases; for example, we could choose products with less packaging or write to a company and ask them to use less packaging.

Here is an action that is easy: Bring a reusable cloth bag to the grocery store instead of getting a bag from the store, thus eliminating the waste of energy in producing and shipping the store-provided bags as well as decreasing our landfill contribution, since (let’s be honest) many bags are neither reused nor recycled.

As for those of you who say, “But I use the store-provided plastic bags for trash or picking up dog waste, and I’d need bags for those purposes anyway,” you can purchase bags in bulk that are better suited for the purpose that you need them for (such as smaller biodegradable dog waste bags, which is what I purchase) and those who do bring cloth bags won’t be forced to subsidize the “free” bags that grocery and other stores provide.

In short, if we can’t take this easiest of steps, what hope is there for us being able to make the harder choices that are surely coming our way?

Roberta Millstein

Davis

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