The Orange County Register, via the VV Daily Press, offers an editorial explaining how the free market is working faster than the Los Angeles City Council to address environmental worries about plastic grocery bags. Both Los Angeles and the state of California are considering bans on supposedly wasteful plastic bags. (As it turns out, paper bags may be even more wasteful.)
The editorial observes that
Lawmakers want to look like heroes by coming up with a solution to a “problem” that the market is already addressing. People are thinking about the impacts, quantified or not, of these nearly non-biodegradable materials and most grocery stores have responded by selling their own canvas bags, which double as advertisements. Some are offering five-cent credits or tickets into monthly raffles to customers who bring in their own canvas bags or reuse their plastic bags. While lawmakers might be “taking action,” it’s the market that’s actually doing something.
Wal-Mart, in my town of Whitewater, Wisconsin, and probably everywhere else on the planet, offers re-usable bags already. By the time Los Angeles and California enact new anti-plastic bag regulations, millions of consumers from areas far beyond that city and state will already have abandoned plastic through their own, free choice.