Editorial: Plastic bags: It’s time to put up or shut up

Last week, Gov. Jerry Brown of California signed a bill of global proportions, banning an item that has caused copious amounts of environmental degradation.

The newly banned item is the dreaded plastic bag.

California has officially become the first state in the nation to fully ban single-use plastic bags at grocery and convenience stores.

At first glance, this may seem like an overreaction — plastic bags don’t seem all that threatening. Yet, in passing this ban, which will take effect in July 2015, California has taken a monumental step towards ensuring the integrity of the environment.

That’s because plastic bags really are extremely threatening. And their danger lies not in the amount of Nutella they can hold without breaking but in what happens before and after we use them at the grocery store.

Approximately 100 billion plastic shopping bags are used in the United States every year, and it takes about 12 million barrels of oil to make them.

Of course, the use of oil presents environmental concerns in and of itself — the burning of oil releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and burning 12 million barrels of it must produce a huge amount of greenhouse gases. But this also poses an economical concern: why are we wasting so much oil on producing something that we don’t even need?

Post-production and post-grocery store, the plastic bag poses further environmental and economic threats. The United Nations Environment Programme estimates that there are 46,000 pieces of plastic litter floating in every square mile of ocean. It’s self-evident why this poses a threat to the environment. But imagine how much this could cost a government to clean up, or even how much it costs businesses like the fishing industry when marine animals mistakenly ingest these bags and die as a result.

Also, only 1 to 2 percent of plastic bags in the United States ever get recycled, leading to the production of more plastic bags and a larger appearance in our oceans.

Taking environmental issues into consideration, it is easy to see that the negative effects of plastic bags far outweigh the minor convenience of using them.

Thankfully, the people of California have realized this but has Pitt?

Currently, the University has a policy of BYOB, or Bring Your Own Bag, for all campus restaurants and convenience stores to encourage students to bring their own bags, rather than using plastic.

But, as long as they use fewer than 15 per semester, students can still receive plastic bags when checking out.

Think about it this way: when you go to a BYOB party, do you expect to drink if you don’t bring your own? No, that would defeat the point — no one’s going to say, “Oh it’s cool, you can have some beer as long as you limit it to three or four.”

That wouldn’t be a BYOB party then, would it?

Pitt needs to initiate an actual BYOB policy, one that doesn’t provide plastic bags at all — like that in California.

Pitt should do this not because we, as college students, take the concept of BYOB seriously, but because of the environmental consequences listed above.

And if we as a University want to come forward and say that we are environmentally progressive, then we should be willing to inconvenience ourselves slightly for such a pertinent issue. 

Seeing how much damage plastic bags cause, we can’t take a middleground on this issue if we are serious about protecting the environment. It’s either all or nothing.