RVANews is covering the General Assembly debate.
A few points that are still not getting through to the public are the extent to which plastic bag litter is negatively impacting our environment/wildlife, how much bags are interfering with farming harvests, how much oil can conserved by reducing plastic bag use, and how much money businesses could save by not offering bags.
Thank you for posting this! Here is the link for contacting your legislator:
http://conview.state.va.us/whosmy.nsf/Main?openform
We need to reduce the amount of plastics that we use in U.S since they are finding their way into and on the beached, streams,rivers and oceans. All the recent news of all th Garbage Patches floating plastics in all the oceans.
Also being that plastics are oil based we
need to wean ourselives off plastics and
do a better job of reducing, reusing and recycling of plastics.
One more reason to control bag litter, that which may convince the lesser environmentally concerned to be more aware. When a bag floats aimlessly over a roadway and a vehicle runs over it, there is a good chance that the bag can catch on rotating parts under the vehicle. I have pulled plenty of bags out of transmissions, axles and CV joints where the bag got entwined and pulled through a mating seal. All expensive repairs because someone couldn’t find a proper trash receptacle.
I wrote to my legislator, but the plastic bag ban has already failed. They’re still working on possibly passing the disincentive bag “tax”.
http://action.surfrider.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=2277