It's not easy being green
E. Thomas McClanahanThe problem is you have all these annoying trade-offs. Think how environmentally pure we’d be if we got power only from wind and solar? Of course, we’d freeze in the dark, but we’d have our green virtue for warmth.
Even something as harmless as reusable grocery bags turns out not to be completely harmless. What a bummer. This used to be an effective way to display one’s civic virtue. Think of it. With a couple of resuable bags, you’re saving the entire planet! Maybe the entire universe! And you’re striking a blow against the plastic bag, despised symbol of America’s evil, rapacious consumer culture.
Unfortunately, you may also be endangering your health, because it turns out reusable bags are little bacteria farms. The people at the Property and Environment Research Center, a free-market environmentalist group, found that after San Francisco banned plastic bangs, “deaths and ER visits related to these bacteria spiked as soon as the ban went into effect.”
The International Association for Food Protection collected reusable bags in California and Arizona and found large numbers of bacteria “in almost all bags and coliform bacteria in half. Escherichia coli were identified in 8% of the bags, as well as a wide range of enteric bacteria, including several opportunistic pathogens. When meat juices were added to bags and stored in the trunks of cars for two hours, the number of bacteria increased 10-fold, indicating the potential for bacterial growth in the bags.”
Of course, washing the bags takes care of most of the bacteria, but that unfortunately uses up resources like water and energy. At any rate, the next time you see some environmental saint haul out a reusable bag in the check-out line, make sure those things stay away from your food.
Mark Hastert
8 months, 3 weeks agoGee, howz about a spritz of Lysol between washings? It’s not like they require a special load in the washer. I’d say your increased environmental footprint from throwing a bag in with your bath towels is pretty minimal and when they’re finally thrown away they’re biodegradable. But maybe as good a reason for their use is that the have nice handles and don’t split or tear.
Phil Cardarella
8 months, 3 weeks agoLessee: Toss in wash. Problem solved. Crisis averted.
“We’d freeze in the dark”? Really, Mac? You really think that if we used solar and wind as PART of our energy generation — with less carbon and some nuclear in the mix — your tush would get too cool?
Not to worry: At the rate our Carbon Industry is warming the earth, you will soon have to move pretty far north to freeze.
Hey, maybe the Global Warming deniers could share a acre or two with a starving polar bear — which would kill two birds, as it were…
William R. Nelson
8 months, 3 weeks agoIt’s not easy being green, but it is easy to get rich being green, if you’re on the receiving end of Obama’s profligate flush of tax dollars down the bankrupt green energy toilet into the wallets of his cronies.
I’ll jump on the green band wagon when I see a solar powered airliner, or a wind driven truck delivering goods, or a politician run his mouth with something besides hot air.