Tuesday, November 11, 2008

NY Mayor Does Not Fancy Plastic Bags

There's so much cool stuff to talk about right now. Someone who would score high on the awesome-scale posted an instructable on how to make your own Lego Gummies (Lego candy), and today is Poppy/Remembrance/Veteran Day. But maybe more about that later.

But first, the New York Times reports that the NY mayor has a plan to reduce the usage of plastic bags. Since plastic bags are bad for the environment because they are almost always thrown away after they have been used, they also contribute to a bigger ecological footprint. So, reasons enough to get rid of the bags. Bloomberg (the mayor) wants to do this by charging shoppers 6 additional cents at the counter.

Photograph by nadi0

I can imagine people reconsidering using a plastic bag if they are charged for it. Experience has proven it's true, when the Brooklyn IKEA raised the price of their bags with 5 cents the demand was cut by half.
Hopefully New Yorkers will invest some bucks in sustainable alternatives (as in the picture above) that are made from organic cotton and can be (re)used many, many times. (And thereby reduce their own ecological footprint).

-jdh

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