Plastic bag laws well-intended but cause more harm than good

Reduce. Reuse. Recycle.

These are words you don’t hear often enough, which is why Hawaii lawmakers should promote this mantra as an alternative to mandatory plastic bag laws based on sentiment rather than science.

Establishing voluntary private/public recycling programs and education is a cheaper, more effective way to tackle the issue, and it would give consumers the necessary information to make their own informed decision of paper, plastic or neither.

Science has come further than the average green crusader might think. In 2008, a teenager discovered a method that would decompose plastic bags faster than nature. He mixed landfill dirt with yeast and tap water, then added ground plastic and let it stew, isolating the microbial munching heroes that can eat up a plastic bag in just three months: bacterial genus Pseudomonas and the genus Sphingomonas.

This is easy to do on an industrial scale, too: A fermenter, a growth medium and plastic is all that’s required. The bacteria themselves naturally provide most of the energy by producing heat as they eat, and the only by-product is water and a bit of carbon dioxide.

Since bacteria thrive in hot weather, reusable bags pose a public safety threat, especially if consumers are not reminded to wash them regularly.

Plastic bags use 70 percent less material than they once did. Households reuse them as trash liners, pet waste disposal, wet item storage, transport and more. Purchasing substitutes made of heavier grades of plastic requires added resources to produce, transport and may not be recyclable, as is the case for polypropylene. Bag laws also disproportionately hurt low-to-middle income households.

The ongoing bag battle in Seattle is an example of ineffective bag policy with catastrophic consequences. Approved by city council members there in 2008, a 10-cent bag tax led angry Seattle voters to initiate a referendum vote against the measure, resulting in 58 percent against the tax.

It is worth noting that the American Chemistry Council, the plastics trade group responsible for advancing the science of plastics, spent more than $1.8 million in defeating the bill. Contributions by Kraft, 7-11 and national grocers, among others, resulted in record-breaking contributions exceeding both the mayorial and city council races that election.

Not more than three years after King County voters successfully overturned the bag tax, city council members there passed a new bill during the busy holidays that would reverse the public vote.

Past efforts to defeat bag legislation are now useless. The Seattle City Council swiftly reworded and approved their new bag law to finance street cleanup. The odd thing is that the council’s own report concluded that plastic bags accounted for less than 1 percent of street litter or landfill space. Attempts at controlling consumer behavior with laws not clearly understood simply do not work. It distracts us from tackling real environmental challenges.

Bag laws are unnecessary because of poor design and deficient scientific reasoning. Well-meaning intent has nothing to do with it.

There are no "better" alternatives to plastic bags. Reusable totes are often used for a variety of purposes; yet failure to wash them dramatically increases public risk to food-borne illness. Materials like jute and hemp are often transported thousands of miles using overseas labor. Double-bagged paper releases methane into the atmosphere.

Taxes and bans disrupt the free market and overlook new technologies that specialists have worked on for decades.

Hasty approval of "band-aid" bag bills negates lifetimes of effort, advancements and public dollars, which can easily be spent more effectively.

Bag laws are nothing short of irresponsible, incorrect and costly emotional claims based on bad science. When will it end?