EDITOR:
I have no preference if our province switches away from plastic bags and moves towards paper bags. I am, however, opposed to elected politicians who won a popularity contest deciding what is environmentally friendly and what isn't.
The Liberal government on P.E.I. must travel off the Island exclusively by bridge and never by ferry; if they did take the ferry they would notice about five minutes down the road they would encounter a strong smell of sulfur in the air, five minutes after that they would pass a paper plant spewing exhaust into the air while also spewing chemicals out into the surrounding waters. The same P.E.I. politicians who are opposed to this paper mill dumping more chemicals in the water are pushing for a plastic bag ban.
1) Paper bags are 7-8 times heavier than plastic bags;
2) Trucks can carry five times the number of plastic bags per shipment than they can paper bags
Trucks run on fossil fuels. P.E.I. will need five times the amount of trucks carrying heavier loads delivering paper bags to P.E.I. than we previously had delivering plastic bags. Good news if you sell diesel fuel. Bad news for the environment.
Reusable bags the answer? Likely not. Almost 100 per cent of reusable bags are produced in China, placed on large container ships that burn bunker crude to transport bags to North America.
Politicians have a well-earned reputation of making a problem worse not better.
Dave Richards,
Summerside
