This is what chaps my behind about the plastic bag ban in Dallas. They've voted in a new ordinance that makes you pay 5 cents a bag at the check-out beginning in January. The city's complaint was about how many of these single-use grocery bags get thrown away and end up in water ways and the streets. I never knew how making you pay for a bag was going to keep anyone from throwing it away, but I don't guess I'm as smart as they are. Then, I saw the latest little flyer from the city that was included in my water and trash bill. It was a friendly looking piece of paper that asking if I recycled the right items.
For the most part, I was. Until I saw what you couldn't recycle and topping the list was the same plastic bags that they were griping about littering the city! Am I wrong for thinking that if they recycled these items, there might now be so many floating around? Probably. Because, if a person isn't going to stop throwing them away after they've paid a nickel for one, they're probably not going to put it in the recycle bin, either. BUT, now I, the man who recycles, can't recycle the number one big trash item! So, now it goes into the main dumpster, where it “might” make it into the back of a garbage truck and go to a landfill to sit and wait for a 1,000 years. I don't know about ya'll, but my garbage men have very low accuracy for getting things into the back of a truck. I find more trash in my back alley on trash day than I do any other day of the week. So, much for going green Dallas. If you ask me, it’s just another way to add money to the coffers while not solving the problem it was supposed to fix.
My two cents, thanks for reading.