Why Oregon’s plastic bag ban will fail.
Yesterday the Plastic Bag Ban bill had its first hearing in the Oregon Senate, which took most of the afternoon and into the evening to complete. Several AFP OR members stayed late to be able to testify and took the principled stand about how this limits consumer choice and freedom. However, no one pointed out the 800 lb. gorilla in the room, which is this:
Human nature is the root cause of the littering problem that the plastic bag ban seeks to solve and this legislation does not change human nature.
I pointed this out in my testimony before the committee at the very end of the hearing (The chair held me to be the second to last as she knows me so well) and it was met with stunned silence, because none of the committee members had thought of it before and had no comeback.
Basically I made this point: what makes anyone think that someone who is a litterbug today throwing away plastic bags is not going to throw away a larger, reusable polypropylene bag made in China tomorrow? (I pointed at an example of a large reusable bag on the dias).
My words were greeted with silence and blank looks.