Plastic bag lobbying group influences curriculum

[alp227]

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

Under pressure from a lobbying group for the plastics industry, California school officials edited a new environmental curriculum to include positive messages about plastic shopping bags, interviews and documents show.

The rewritten textbooks and teacher's guides coincided with a public relations and lobbying effort by the American Chemistry Council to fight proposed plastic bag bans throughout the country, including one eventually approved in San Francisco.

But despite the positive message, activists say plastic bags kill marine animals, leach toxic chemicals, and take an estimated 1,000 years to decompose in landfills.

In 2009, a private consultant hired by state school officials added a new section to the 11th-grade teacher's edition textbook called "The Advantages of Plastic Shopping Bags." The title and some of the textbook language were inserted almost verbatim from letters written by the chemistry council.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/08/19/MNA61KOQRC.DTL&ao=all

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As if the Koch Brothers funding the economics department of Florida State University and No Child Left Behind dumbing down public education weren't bad enough.

[county worker]

1. Walking along the beach here in the Central Coast on Vandenberg AFB you see lots of washed up

plastic. These are not beaches with a lot of visitors. The plastic is not left behind by visitors but comes from the sea. Whether it is dumped there or washes out to sea from the land it is everywhere. I see lots of styrofoam and small bits of colored plastic from containers.

[dtexdem]

2. Hmm, positve things about plastic bags:

1. much cheaper than bullets for mass executions (remember Pol Pot?),

2. .... give me time, haven't thought of another one yet.


;-)

[sakabatou]

13. Picking up dog poop?

[Igel]

15. Here are a few.

More sanitary. If you don't wash that chicken blood out of your cloth bag you're breeding germs.

Energy saving. You don't have to wash plastic bags. And they cost less to produce.

They can be reused. We use them for kitty litter, hauling stuff around.

They can be recycled.


People don't like them because they're plastic, and plastic's bad by definition. I've never quite bought that argument. It's absolutist in a very much non-absolutist world.

People don't like them because careless people let them blow around in the wind, making the view less pretty (the main complaint I've heard) and because they kill animals, both terrestrial and marine. Oddly, I don't think any of those I've had have ever blown free to kill an animal or contaminate another's sight. I guess I don't get any of the evil bags. Or perhaps it's not really the bags' fault, and we're just trying to manipulate things to avoid blaming the guilty; after all, a problem, like a crisis, is a horrible thing to waste.

[saras]

3. More detail...

"The additions included: "Plastic shopping bags are very convenient to use. They take less energy to manufacture than paper bags, cost less to transport, and can be reused."

"Plastic shopping bags are very convenient to use."
Really? Who finds them convenient? I get far too many bags for a small amount of groceries. The checkers are constantly fussing with their stack of plastic bags, to get it to sit in the holder properly and work. They are inconvenient and difficult to dispose of. They are too flimsy to use for other purposes, and the ones around here have holes built into the bottom of them (drainage, I presume) that renders them unfit to use as garbage bags.

"They take less energy to manufacture than paper bags"
So? This is only relevant if they are both single-use items. Paper bags may be reused MANY times - dozens to hundreds. And to be honest, "manufacturing" cost should include all the costs of recycling as well. Paper bags cost zero to recycle - they're actually worth money in some situations. Paper is also more adaptable - there are many more secondary uses of paper bags than plastic.

"cost less to transport"
Aha! Now we're getting somewhere. No one but a multinational corporation transports enough plastic bags at once to notice a difference. It's utterly trivial to us - how much more gas does your car use carrying three paper bags back from the store compared to three plastic ones? Is that enough gas money to justify the damage they do as nonrecyclable garbage?

"can be reused"
Really? For what? Too many of them fail to reuse as grocery bags unless all you buy is boxed cereal. The attempt to find other uses for them has been an amusing Internet meme, but has produced nothing better than plastic bag dresses and rugs. As I pointed out earlier, they're no good for anything that spills, leaks, or drips, for anything with sharp points or edges, for anything substantially heavy, for anything that might react with plastic or plasticizers.

It's bad enough when the distort or slant information. When they resort to bald-faced lies like this, they are (probably a secondary intent of theirs) reducing the respect people give to textbooks as a whole.

[zalinda]

6. I re-use plastic bags. Thrift stores always want them. n/t

[saras]

7. We should send them ours. Thrift stores here have steel shipping containers full of them.

[zalinda]

10. Not only do thrift stores use them

but our grocery stores here have a box in front of the store to recycle them. Whether or not they do it, I don't know, but it's a nice thought. The thrift stores do go over and take the bags that are in the recycling boxes.

zalinda

[Lorien]

9. I haven't used any in years. Need plastic bags for pet waste or other

re-uses? Look to bread bags, empty kibble bags, and a zillion other bits of plastic packaging that comes into the home encasing countless consumer goods.

[grahamhgreen]

4. Plastic bags should be banned or taxed.

[matt819]

5. That prompts another question

Are tobacco company offices smoking or no-smoking?

[xxqqqzme]

8. Huntington Beach City Council

Monday night passed a measure paving the way for a ban. City staff is to return w/ the language of the law banning the single use bags. I is being patterned after the ban passed by Long Beach Council this year.

The HB idiot mayor voted no because 'no other city in Orange County has done it'. Brilliant!

[defendandprotect]

11. Looks like Koch is running Dems, Public Ed, Congress -- well, everything -- !!!

[FormerOstrich]

12. The plastic lobby

carries some mighty weight.

It isn't just the grocery bags. Check out the fine plastic china for "take-out" or even "eat-in". A Windy's salad for dining-in is served in a plastic bowl with lid fine enough for depression era survivors to save indefinitely.

It isn't just the grocery bags or food industry. Everything has excessive packaging materials. Individually wrapped pieces which should be in bulk.

All of the gluttonous "disposable" excess requires energy to manufacture. Mankind is so short sided.

btw...the corn-on-the-cob trays at Costco are made from plant material and compost-able. They look and feel like Styrofoam. I didn't believe they would break down but I was wrong. They did indeed compost. How great is that? :)

[No Elephants]

14. Plastic bags are especially bad in coastal states.