Plastic Bag Bans

I woke up this morning thinking about plastic.

Again.

I have developed a minor obsession with plastic. It helps that plastic is literally everywhere, all the time. There are many opportunities to think about it.

I have recently been getting emails from my environmental sources that have been touting the benefits of plastic bag bans. And yesterday, as I went for a walk through the neighborhood, I followed behind a man carrying his groceries home in a plastic bag.

I followed him for awhile, walking the same route, and thinking (again) about plastic. Specifically, plastic bags.

Plastic bags are one of the most common sources of plastic pollution. I mean, I don’t really have to even say anything about them, right? We all know. We all know now that plastic bags are a problem.

I don’t think I’ve taken a plastic bag at a grocery store in years. I can’t remember the last time I accepted one. I keep reusable bags in my car. I bring a bag when I walk. It doesn’t cause me any trouble or hardship. It seems like this is really a low-hanging fruit. Cutting out plastic bags.

Many states and cities have already banned them successfully.

Here are some facts about plastic bags, from publicinterestnetwork.org.

Click to access US-Single-Use-Plastics-Coastal_1_0.pdf

“The U.S. uses over 280 million plastic bags
every day on average. We use these plastic
bags for a few minutes and then they pollute
our communities and environment for decades.”
“Plastic bags are not readily recyclable and
can jam up recycling equipment, hurting
the overall recycling system.”
“Plastic bag bans work. Just four years after
Seattle banned plastic bags, Seattle homes
threw out 50% fewer plastic bags. In 2017,
after hundreds of local governments and
the state of California banned single-use
bags, 72% fewer plastic bags were found
during beach cleanups, compared with
2010.”

Let’s get these plastic bags out of here!!!!!!!!!!!

Environmentamerica.org has a calculator for how effective a plastic bag ban would be if instituted in Nashville, TN.

(Calculator: https://environmentamerica.org/center/resources/plastic-bag-bans-work/)

Over 200 million bags kept off of Earth a year, just from a ban in Nashville.

The other persuasive point here is that we would also save over 1 million barrels of oil by banning plastic here in Nashville. At a time where we want to reduce our energy consumption and especially of fossil fuels as much as possible, that could be some really welcome savings.

It seems to me that we need this action as soon as possible, and this is an easy step. Most of our plastic usage is just based on convenience. With a little more foresight and planning most of our single-use plastics can be eliminated, and money and energy can be saved.

Thinking about it from an efficiency perspective helps motivate me to action as well. Generating less waste and consuming less waste means that we don’t use as much energy on production and removal. Less water, less oil, less electricity, less cleanup cost. And anywhere where we can save energy and effort, that reduces costs elsewhere, and that energy and labor can be utilized somewhere else.

This is something that is in my mind when I think about mowing lawns. Where are we wasting energy? Where could we better utilize human time and resources?

I see wide tracts of land that are mowed that are not really being utilized for anything. (I say not used for anything but perhaps there is a reason why they keep them clear and I just don’t know about it. I admit I am not a land use expert.) It costs energy and labor to keep that mowed, while not serving much of a role (that I can see). It seems to me that if it were allowed to grow freely, it would be a carbon sink, and it would also not require energy use of mowing, of watering, and would not need any human labor either.

What if our lawn mowers were also gardeners? What if they cultivated instead of cut?

I know I’ve strayed a little off topic here, but this was in my mind as I watched the mowing crews cut a large swath of grass around a small strip mall near my house. Nobody is walking or playing in that grass. So what if it was a garden instead? Or a patch of wildflowers or grass, which would require less effort than a garden? We are already spending time and energy to cut it. Why not cultivate it instead? It seems that that would be a better use of the land and cost less resources over time.

In many ways, we’ve fallen out of sync with nature — swept up by the momentum of our industrial and societal engines. But there are plenty of chances to restore balance. With a little imagination and effort, we can make meaningful changes. A simple plastic bag ban looks like one easy place to start.

Trash Quest Pt. 3

June 30th, 2025

This is not a staged photo.

This is a photo of our bathroom that I took yesterday. And this is what I mean when I say that “what has been seen cannot be unseen”.

What do you see here?

Prior to even a week ago, this scene meant nothing special to me. It was just a bunch of standard bathroom items. Deoderant, skin care solution, toothpaste, toothbrush..

But yesterday, with my new obsession, all I saw was plastic.

Before me, in my very own bathroom, a field of petroleum products. Every single item there on this counter made of plastic, and destined for a landfill, and for existing on the earth for forever.

I’m at the coffee shop again with my sister, and she sat down with her drink. I looked over and said, checking it out, “That looks good. What is it?” She said, “It’s so good. You have to try it. It’s a pistachio latte.” And then something caught my eye. Right next to the latte, resting on the table, was a cursed item.

A black, plastic spoon.

It will be used once. It has already been used once. To stir her drink. And what happens to it now?

You already know.

We have to wean ourselves off of this plastic addiction. Actually, we have to cut ourselves off cold turkey. We have to do it, for the whales, for the babies, for everything and everyone, for the Earth.

So, I’m trying out as many ways as I can think of to generate as little waste as possible and avoid plastic. Here are some of the things I have already adopted successfully:

No paper towels. This is very easy. Just use a rag instead. I have not had a use for a paper towel in months. Rags are good enough, even better.
Asking for “for here” ware. All the coffee shops should have for here ware, so you are not throwing anything away. Starbucks should even have this.
A new discovery: buying “bulk” from a local store. You can bring a container and fill it up from their bulk containers, and weigh whatever you put in it, and pay for it. You acquire no packaging this way.

A new idea I experimented with for the first time just yesterday: using baking soda instead of toothpaste. Apparently this is something you can do. Both my roommate and his girlfriend already knew about that. I had no idea. Baking soda in paper boxes instead of toothpaste in plastic tubes.

But what about toothbrushes?

There are bamboo toothbrushes you can buy, which will probably be what I do. You can apparently also use twigs. I’m wild enough to actually try that, although it seems like you’re supposed to use specific kinds of twigs. Any twig would probably be alright though. For the blog.. I have to give that a try.

(479 words)

Trash Quest Pt. 2

Note: This post is 683 words, excluding this note. It’s not 500 but it’s the best I could do. It started at 1000. I refuse to cut any more!!!!!!!

After writing up my morning post about my trash quest, I opened up my bag of collected trash and plastics. It was time to see what I had. I haven’t thrown anything away, except for a broken, metal door hinge. I regret throwing it away.

I examined my trash, and found a few things. There was paper of various kinds, mostly paper from mail. That’s recycleable. Easy. It’s not compostable because it contains small amounts of plastic film that act as a window, to see the sender’s address.

I had a poster from Gibson Garage that was not laminated, and so recycleable as paper.

Then, there was plastic. Strange hard items, rigid plastic like trays and containers, and then a lot of plastic film/bags. The plastic film I found could be recycled at a few grocery stores near me. The Publix was the closest, so I took my bag of plastic and set off to investigate.

Now, I was successful. They did accept plastic bags and plastic wrap at a recycling bin at Publix. That was most of my plastic. Great. But then…

When you see it, when your eyes are opened, to the scale and scope of the problem, you cannot unsee it. It’s like being in The Matrix.

I walked into the Publix. I wanted to see what I could buy, without acquiring any plastic.

The answer was, nothing.

Nothing at all.

I was supposed to be in a place for buying food. I was in a grocery store.

Yet, all I saw was plastic.

A sea of single-use plastics: shrink wrap, bags, rigid containers, stickers—everything encased in plastic.

This is the problem, people.

Now, that was bad. That was horrifying, even. But what was worse?

On my walk back home, I picked up 9 plastic bottles.

I picked up other pieces of trash as well. Wrappers, food containers. With each piece of plastic litter, my rage was rising. And then?

The literal icing on the cake, was an actual cake.

I saw it up ahead in the road. Two plastic bags, fluttering in the street.

I approached. One bag had half of a cake in it, in a rigid plastic container. The other bag had a bundle of bananas.

Hundreds of ants were swarming the cake. I decided to dump it, let the ants feast. I took the bananas with me to put in my compost hole.

I took the stickers off the bananas. They’re plastic, and won’t degrade. The cake I was disgusted with, and I threw that plastic away. I should have gone farther and cleaned it, and added the rigid plastic container to my collection. I threw the bananas in my compost hole.

This pissed me off. I was getting angry. I found two cans and two bottles on the last minute of my walk.

Now I was really fired up. I wasn’t done. I knew that our trash can itself would be full of recycleable and compostable trash. Why? Because of our roommate.

The dude chugs Dr. Pepper like his life depends on it. Like it’s his Holy Elixir of Everlasting Life. And he throws all of those cans in the trash.

I talked to him about it. I’m not angry with him is because he’s absent-minded. He doesn’t realize what he’s doing.

The biggest reason why we should not allow these permanent items out in the world, in the size and scope that they are: Even if they can be meticulously recycled, there will be people who don’t do that, or things that go wrong. And they will end up in the environment.

I pulled four Dr. Pepper cans out of the trash. Then, there was mailing waste. That could be recycled. Paper towel waste, and two chunks of bell peppers: compostable.

Parker and I haven’t been using paper towels for months. We just use rags instead. But the other roommate bought some recently.

This is the trash quest I am on. The size and scope of the problem is huge, y’all. But we have to do it. We have to solve this.