They’re just a tiny fraction of litter and landfill
The Angus Reid polling outfit issued a national poll result Wednesday under this headline: “Three in five Canadians OK with banning plastic shopping bags.” We can’t deal with every form of junk science around during this week, but the bag poll deserves a quick review.
First there’s the warped context-free one-shot question that has the effect of tapping into popular ignorance. “Some Canadian towns have prohibited all retail stores from providing customers with single-use plastic carryout (shopping) bags, urging customers to bring their own bags or boxes instead. Would you support or oppose banning plastic shopping bags in your own city or town?”
On top of the question, there are obvious signs of pollster bias. “What’s fascinating is we do support the notion of a ban,” said Mario Canseco, vice-president of Angus Reid Public Opinion. Who’s “we”? The only “we” in the room are 58% of Canadians who were accosted with a dumb question and figured, what the hell, I’ll say yes to banning something. That leaves 42% who are not part of Mr. Canseco’s manufactured collective and would prefer not to be dictated to by pollsters wielding biased questions and meaningless opinion results. Maybe we’ll take on opinion polls as a junk-science subject next year.
“Maybe we’ll take on opinion polls as a junk-science subject next year.”
I would love to see that. As far as I can tell, EVERY poll ever taken has the inevitable flaw of sample self-selection bias built into its design.
As expressed just yesterday (6/14/12) by the cartoonist Tinsley (through the charcater Mallard Fillmore), “Up next, results of the latest poll of registered voters …who have nothing better to do than talk to pollsters.”
If people didn’t want plastic bags, they would not use them. So clearly they do want them. You don’t need a survey.
PS Next time they want to know the blindingly obvious they can send me a large cheque (check) and I’ll tell them.
I was wondering why walmart didn’t have plastic bag recycling bins outside the local store until I found a walmart plastic bag at the back of my property in an advanced state of decomposition.
The plastic bag bans are part of a tax grab.. The Imaginary Environmental Problem of billions and billions of bags was invented,and is being used, to justify taxing those billions of bags up to a nickel or dime each to pay bloated municipal salaries/pensions/benefits.
What better time to collect taxes than when people are standing in line with money in their pockets?
the big joke is that the bags are made from refinery waste products that would be burned off on the stack. Instead the stuff is turned into a useful product that is being demonized by a bunch of lunatics.
Cloth bags are environmentally worse than plastic bags. This was a UK government commissioned life cycle assessment that the UK government didn’t want to release until it was leaked.
Amazing how the ‘fixes’ proposed by the green lobby are so often cause more environmental harm than the ‘problem’. Windmills mashing birds and bats. Solar PV causing more CO2 because of inefficiencies forced on backup generation. Electric cars with worse net fossil fuel mpg than ordinary ones. It just keeps on happening.
When my wife mails a package to her sister in Barrie, Ontario, she used plastic shopping bags as a filler. They get used at the other end until they wear out. I guess that should be counted as a NO vote.
The seat of government for the state of Texas has banned the use of plastic bags. This comes after banning paper bags several years ago. Of course Austin is 98% liberal if not more so what can one expect? Don’t know what the people there will do when they ban the cloth bags.
I refuse to shop at a place that doesn’t provide bags to get my stuff to the car. I’ll drive 20 miles to the “other” store instead. People should vote with their feet and teach these bag nazis a lesson in economics.
Hey guys! We are missing a great opportunity here. Let’s start a company that turns plastic shopping bags into rare earth minerals for use in EV batteries. We can get a couple of billion dollars from the government in the form of loans and grants. We can rent an abandoned factory and hire a few alchemists, I mean chemists and pay ourselves a few million bucks each annual salary. We can get the President, Lisa Jackson, Salazar and Chu Chu to visit our plant and endorse it. A modest campaign contribution would be necessary.
When the thing collapses, we can declare bankruptcy, pocket the money and move on to another scam. We could call it “Pollyandra”.
Works for me Allen. I suppose you could consider it a tax refund.