The plastic bag ban was a huge mistake

Kings County Politics

As the plastic bag ban is set to become law next week under the reasoning that it will decrease endangerment to the environment, new studies are showing that recyclable bags might endanger your health and maybe spread the formidable coronavirus. 

In the June 2018 issue of the Journal of Environmental Health, the trade publication published public health professor Dr. Ryan Sinclair’s scientific paper entitled, “The Spread of a Norovirus Surrogate via Reusable Grocery Bags in a Grocery Supermarket,” in which he concluded that reusable bags are very effective in transmitting infectious viruses from private homes to supermarket grocery carts and checkout stands. 

Sinclair, along with a team of scientists, conducted an experiment where shoppers were given grocery bags that were inoculated with a surrogate virus as a stand-in for the Norovirus. Unsurprisingly, the virus was found in the highest percentages on the shoppers’ hands, the checkout stand, and on the clerks’ hands. 

“These results indicate that reusable bags, contaminated with a virus from their household, have the potential to spread disease and put shoppers at risk of illness,” Sinclair wrote in a letter to the City Council when the law was being debated on the city level. 

To make matters worse, according to the bag the ban website, the millions of the petroleum-based reusable bags are mostly imported from the Far East because of the cheap price tags and it is questionable if they are sanitized properly. Additionally, microbiologists have found E. coli, salmonella, fecal coliform, and other harmful bacteria in reusable bags.

Unwashed bags that come across bacteria that can last a couple days, like the Coronavirus which can last anywhere from two days to nine hours on surfaces, will lead to the contagion being spread faster, according to Brooklyn architect and environmentalist Allen Moses, who has been consumed with the issue for several years.
 
Moses noted that New York City has a rat problem, particularly in the subway. Wild rats carry the bacteria C. difficile, which is an important cause of diarrhea and intestinal disease that kills 14,000 people in America per year. Reusable bags are more porous and people resting them down on the subway floor are more liable to pick up these germs and take them home, said Moses.

In 31 days, New Yorkers will have their hands full after buying groceries...

NY Post


Paper or plastic? New York shoppers may soon find themselves juggling their groceries home.

A paper bag shortage is expected to hit the Empire State hard when Albany’s plastic bag ban goes into effect March 1, The Post has learned.

Retailers are allowed to offer paper sacks for five cents a pop at checkout — but they’re already having trouble stocking the gear due to a nationwide shortfall.

It’s a problem manufacturers say could last up to five years because there simply aren’t enough factories to meet the booming demand, as efforts to reduce environmentally unfriendly plastic bags increase.

“It’s a major issue,” Phil Rozenski, a spokesman for Novolex, one of several major bag manufacturers in North America told The Post.

“It’s so large that there are outages in the Midwest in trying to get supply to retailers.”

New York store owners say they’re working on short-term fixes, including stocking up on more pricey, reusable bags — but are bracing for backlash from customers when the ban hits.

The owner of two Key Food stores in the Bronx, Sal Bonavita, placed orders at the beginning of the year for both paper bags — which he has not offered for years — and reusable bags, but has not received them yet.

“I’m hoping to get some paper bags before March but I know I won’t have enough,” he said.

The grocer told his cashiers this week to warn customers to bring reusable bags in the future. There are also signs in his stores about the new law, but most of his customers are immigrants and he worries they may not be getting the message.

“I expect my customers to be surprised by this in March and our checkout time is going to soar,” Bonavita said.

The 30 Gristedes and D’Agostino grocery stores in the city ordered paper bags in December but have only received one case per store so far — which is “surprising,” owner, John Catsimatidis told The Post.

“Our supplier took the order but also warned us that there is a shortage of paper bags,” Catsimatidis said, “I assume that it’s an excuse for them to raise the prices now,” he guffawed.

And you all think the bail reform law the state passed was bad?