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Amidst COVID-19 Fight, Single-Use Plastic Bans Reversed in the Name of Hygiene

Will this become a trend?

By Rain Noe - March 19

Just days after Brookline, Massachusetts un-banned Styrofoam, to make takeout/delivery easier for restaurants to manage, the entire state of Maine has reversed a plastic bag ban. This week Maine Governor Janet Mills announced that the ban, which was supposed to start in April, will be postponed.

Why? The thinking goes that re-usable bags spread germs. As Plastics News reports, just two days before Mills' announcement, there was this:

The mayor of the small town of Waterville, Maine, urged the city March 15 to temporarily suspend a ban on plastic bags it passed last year, as well as encourage retailers to ban shoppers from using bags brought from home.

"These reusable tote bags can sustain the COVID-19 and flu viruses — and spread the viruses throughout the store," said Mayor Nick Isgro, on his Facebook page. "Be assured this is not to re-litigate our current ordinance. … This should be seen as a temporary public safety measure."

… But organizations advocating for reusable packaging say properly washed reusables are as safe as disposables.

The Rockport, Maine-based group Upstream said in a March 17 statement that single-use disposables can also harbor viruses and pathogenic bacteria acquired along the supply chain, and it said the crisis points to the need for stronger reusable systems.

I recommend reading the entire PN article, which is well-reported; it points both to studies showing that "the vast majority of consumers don't wash reusable bags enough to counteract [the transfer of bacteria]" to disputations of those studies by health officials. I expect that these disputes will continue.

Photo by Anna Shvets from Pexels

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Amidst COVID-19 Fight, Single-Use Plastic Bans Reversed in the Name of Hygiene

James Carruthers

11 days ago

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"properly washed reusables are as safe as disposables..." Which we absolutely know doesn't happen, and and would offset whatever environmental gains you were trying to make in the first place.

It's entirely possible, at least for a while, that a crisis like this will make people focus on what's ACTUALLY important and what's actually useful instead of virtue signalling.

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Rain Noe

I’m a lapsed industrial designer. I was born in NYC and figured I’d die there, but a few years ago I abandoned New York to live on a farm in the countryside with my wife. We have six dogs.