Dolphins were turning up dead on Swiss beaches.
“Switzerland’s Parliament has approved a motion banning single-use plastic shopping bags. Both houses of the Swiss Parliament Thursday voted to forbid the distribution of the plastic bags. The next step is for the government to implement the ban.” [ENS]
Apparently, no wild dolphins in Swtzlnd, but “Switzerland should serve as an example to other countries by controlling plastic bag waste”.
😉
I suppose this goes along with Germany getting rid of nuclear power plants because of the threat of tsunamis?
I have been calling the Prius “smugmobile” for years.
Intrepid, your “exploding car” idea will certainly appeal to the “humans as a cancer on the earth” brigade … as well as the “zero population growth” groups.
Reality check and Intrepid: Ha, ha, ha, more good material for the cautionary moralist! The story of environmental political action appears to be a tale of good intentions, wishful thinking, sales pitches, and unintended consequences. I read a paper which showed that the chief environmental advantage of driving a Prius is consumer smugness: after taking into account the costs accruing from mining, refining, and manufacturing the batteries from toxic, unrecyclable, and exotic materials, that it is not clear at all if there can be any net benefit to the environment.
Yeah, I was just remembering the demand years ago to save trees by using plastic bags…really, what next? Hydrogen powered car batteries that explode on impact?
It was the environmentalists who DEMANDED we use plastic bags because paper ones killed trees. Now, as noted above, we are to use dirty, “reusable” bags. The ones from a major chain are made from recycled plastic bottles. If you wash them in your washing machine, they fuzz out and are useless. So they get thrown away–in the landfill, where the plastic bottles would have been. Wonder if we will find dolphins wearing these bags in a few years (and not for fashion!)
Just how many of the lakes in (landlocked!) Switzerland are homes to populations of dolphins? 😉
Give credit where it is due – remember that “Switzerland, after two hundred year sof peace and democracy, invented the cuckoo clock” 😉
This actually isn’t quite as poor an idea as it may appear. Every little bit helps to weaken OPEC’s grip on our throats. Better yet to mandate that plastic bags be made from non-petrochemical cellulose as in Brazil.
Congrats to those brilliant Swiss, who can now join those of us in Australia, carrying our groceries home in bacteria filled (biohazard like) reusable bags.