The city of Madison recently enacted a law that requires plastic bags to be recycled, thus making it illegal to dispose of non-biodegradable plastic bags with regular household refuse. In order to recycle these sorts of bags, residents now have to visit one of thirteen recycling stations in the city. Although many of these recycling points will be in convenient locations, such as grocery stores, it is estimated that curbside recycling of plastic bags is two and a half years away.
The law certainly can’t be faulted for trying, but for such a simple issue, its remarkable how convoluted our failure can be. One might liken this new law to the policy of allowing the possession of marijuana, while banning its consumption. In both cases, the attempt to ban the practice is half hearted and inevitably destined to failure. However, in the case of plastic bags, there are substantial consequences for the failure of the policy. Plastic bags fill our landfills in vast quantities to the point where toxins from the bags run off into water tables, further polluting our water system. Furthermore, the production of these bags is environmentally costly. Because the plastic which constitutes these sorts of bags is a petroleum bi-product, these nearly worthless bags come at a high cost in terms of natural resources.
So why even bother with them?
The municipal ban on the disposal of plastic bags provides, at best, a marginal improvement over the status quo. Although the recycling of plastic bags will indeed help to alleviate the congestion of our landfills with these seemingly immortal bags, we will still pay the environmental costs associated with the production of plastic bags. Moreover, recycling itself is a costly and inefficient process. Although it is not my intention to deride the practice of recycling, it is a process which itself consumes more energy – and thus natural resources – than the reuse of a resource. Furthermore, the success of recycling is dependent upon the community’s will to recycle. Although we can rely on the members of the Willy Street Co-op to recycle their bags (if they’re not already using cloth totes), the inefficiencies of recycling will be made grossly manifest by suburban and low-income recycling habits.
Enforcement of these recycling laws will be daunting to say the least. One can really feel the force of this problem by asking, “When was the last time that I was fined for disposing of a recyclable in the trash?”
Even if there were 100% compliance with this new law, the very fact that plastic bags are being produced, shipped throughout the country, and then later recycled is far more environmentally costly than if they simply were no longer produced. Plastic bag recycling is something that the city should offer, and has indeed been available to city residents before this law came into being. My point is not that recycling is, in itself, bad. Rather, my point is that it doesn’t solve the environmental problem that it claims to solve.
It is truly remarkable how such a minor issue of environmental policy can reveal the lack of will on the part of municipal policy makers. What would be lost if there were no cheap plastic bags in the city of Madison? Paper and cloth bags can provide almost all of the functionality of plastic bags with only a fraction of the environmental impact. I won’t bother to speculate as to the motives for this lousy piece of legislation, as they don’t really matter.
The real tragedy of this sort of half-hearted policy making is that it distracts from truly consequential issues of environmental policy. This policy, like our stringent litter laws, is remarkably effective in improving the aesthetics of our everyday environment. Consequently, these laws tend to make us feel as though we are really helping to improve the health of our environment.
As Edward Abbey so astutely pointed out, what does it matter if a fast food wrapper wastes away in a landfill or on the side of the road? Litter does its damage whether its out of sight in a landfill – or the mid-pacific – or on the side of the road. However, in the latter case we feel the impact of our wasteful habits, whereas in the former case we can easily forget the problem. This latest plastic bag recycling policy is exactly the kind of feel-good environmentalism that we can no longer afford. Now, Madisonians will be able to proudly proclaim that we are no longer wasting our plastic bags, we recycle them. Yet, it is plain to see that we haven’t really solved anything.
Moreover, plastic bags constitute a relatively inconsequential policy issue, and a straightforward one at that. Energy production, natural resource harvestation, industrial waste…these are consequential issues and ones that we aren’t addressing. Although it would be irresponsible to blame the feel-good environmentalism of our new plastic bag policy for our failure to address more demanding sorts of issues, our preoccupation with mere aesthetic issues such as roadside litter certainly isn’t helping. This isn’t to say that we should litter or use plastic bags, but rather that banning these practices is such an amazingly small legislative accomplishment and we can no longer afford to be satisfied with these sorts of accomplishments.
This is why the new plastic bag policy is so tragic. Plastic bags are such an inconsequential matter, and our failure to meet this insignificant challenge with an appropriate response bodes poorly for our ability to meet greater challenges, environmental or otherwise. It is certainly my hope that a ban on plastic bags can be brought into municipal law in the near future. Moreover, it is my hope that such a law can be brought about in an effortless manner, as we have much better ways to expend our political energy.
