McCormick: Florida cities should be able to fight single-use plastic

Pinellas county student removes plastic bag during a community cleanup. | Photo: Mia McCormick

OPINION

BY MIA MCCORMICK

“Mom, I found another one!” 

I grimace. I wish we were hunting for missing socks, caterpillars, or even Easter eggs, but instead we’re pulling plastic bags out of the mangrove roots along a nearby shoreline. My 11-year-old son and a friend from school use trash grabbers to shove it in with the other plastic bags, bottles, foam take-out containers, and even shoes that we’ve picked up during this community cleanup. All of this makes my blood boil, but none more than the ubiquitous and unnecessary single-use plastic bags. Nothing that we use for just a few minutes should be allowed to pollute our waterways, woodlands, and parks for hundreds of years.

Plastic decomposes but never really disappears. Instead it becomes microplastics that scientists have found in the food we eat and even in our blood. Why is that so gross? Plastic is made from chemicals produced by gas, oil, and even coal. So in addition to making up the majority of the litter collected during state cleanups, it’s polluting our bodies too.

Twelve states and roughly 500 municipalities around the country are enjoying the benefits of plastic bag bans. A new report from the Environment Florida Research and Policy Center found that bans in just five locations have cut single-use plastic bag consumption by about 6 billion bags per year – or enough to circle the earth 42 times. If it was up to Florida residents and local governments, we would be on our way to eliminating plastic bags too. According to a 2021 survey from the Department of Environmental Protection, more than 90% of Florida residents and local governments believe regulations on single-use plastic are necessary. But state legislators refuse to give Florida residents the freedom to regulate containers like plastic bags. And now they’re doubling down. New proposed legislation HB 1641/ SB 1126 specifically identifies single-use plastic and polystyrene (Styrofoam) as containers that cannot be regulated. At least 19 municipalities including the city of Gainesville have gotten around the preemption by only banning these products on City properties. This new legislation would extend the preemption to include public lands, and the bill’s representative says it would be retroactive. So all of the current bans would become illegal. 

Local government officials, and the voters who elect them, should have the freedom to make decisions about single-use plastic in their communities. In 2019, when the legislature tried to stop municipalities from banning plastic straws, Governor Ron DeSantis vetoed the bill, saying “the state should allow local communities to address this issue through the political process.” The ability to protect ourselves and our environment from these hazardous materials is more important than protecting the billion-dollar plastic industry. 

In 2024, it’s clearer than ever that the supposed ‘convenience’ of single-use plastic bags is not worth the mountains of toxic waste they produce.

Mia McCormick is an Advocate for Environment Florida and the Environment Florida Research & Policy Center

The opinions expressed by letter or opinion writers are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AlachuaChronicle.com. Letters may be submitted to info@alachuachronicle.com and are published at the discretion of the editor.

  • I remember when the environmentalists pushed hard to switch from using paper bags to using plastic bags. The outcry back then was that paper bags were killing all the trees and we must switch to plastic bags to save the trees. Now plastic bags are killing the Earth. When will this madness stop?

  • This is the type of person that gives the homeless 20.00 only if someone is there to record it.
    Ok you cleaned up some trash, great job.
    Now you feel so entitled to demonize single use bag users. You’re an idiot.
    You should teach your son and his friends a bit of humility.
    That you do things to enrich the environment, not because you spend a couple hours out picking up trash and now you want a Nobel peace prize or your beliefs are that you are superior.
    Stop with the nonsense. Just clean it up and move on.
    Good day, sir!

    • Who knows if they picked up anything. We see a picture of a kid holding one clean bag.

  • I don’t think the problem is the existence of plastic bags. The problem is that some people litter.

    Sort of the same argument that nanny state advocates use for banning guns. The problem is not that guns exist. The problem is that some people use guns for nefarious purposes.

    Banning THINGS (plastic bags, plastic straws, guns, gas stoves, combustion engines, etc.) doesn’t solve the problems caused by PEOPLE who behave in harmful ways.

    I think this person is doing a great thing by cleaning up the trash with her kids! She’s free to advocate for the solutions she thinks will help, and I applaud her for taking action in this area that concerns her.

    However, the laws she is advocating for cross the line from freedom into the soft tyranny of a nanny state.

    I do find it interesting that some on the left are fine with banning plastic straws and plastic bags, but think that keeping explicit books from children is going too far.

    It’s backwards when children are not protected from access to inappropriate materials that will harm them, but adults are micromanaged down to the type of straw they are allowed to use.

    I suggest persuasion rather than force on this topic. Make your case. Educate people about the harms of plastic bags and littering. Change hearts and minds, and thus behavior.

    Our local gov’t can’t even get the roads fixed or manage the homeless problem (which contributes mightily to the litter). They should not micromanage the grown-ups who are earning a living and buying their own groceries.

    • Concerned Mom
      That’s well stated and you’re spot on!
      Thank you for your response!

    • Great comment Concerned Mom. All well said, this was obviously a photo op for future City Commission meetings for them to ban plastic bags.

  • This reminds me of vaccine. Take it or die (paper bags are killing trees) now use plastic bags to save trees (now take boosters) now don’t use plastic bags to carry your store items packaged in plastic to the car (now the vaccine side effects are finally being exposed)… That is right sheeple just keep doing what you are told and remember you aint black if you don’t vote for me.

  • If 90% of the people were actually against plastic bags, why aren’t they asking for paper in the stores when they shop? Just a reminder of just some of the single use items we use. Picture us without them.

    Meat wrapped in plastic.
    Out of area products shrink wrapped in plastic.
    Bread in plastic.
    Bottled water and drinks.
    Liquid bleach, soap, cooking oil, etc.
    Frozen food.
    Bundled items.

    Just look at the sales flyer for your store or the shelves and see all the single use plastic and picture buying that stuff where you can’t see the freshness or quality.

  • Hey! You! All of you!

    The issue is local autonomy and the increasing actions of the state government to usurp it. I thought “conservatives” wanted smaller government. Apparently not if they get the end result they want. Maybe they’re not conservatives.

    • We get smaller local government thanks to the state government preventing the wannabe authoritarians from putting their boots on our necks!
      You vote for wasteful, overreaching, intrusive government, we have no use for your government!
      We may be the minority in this county but you are the minority in this state!

    • Hey DJ Jizz-stain on your shirt….

      You said “The issue is local AUTONOMY” you are such a dumbazz this story isn’t even about the economics of automobiles. This story is about plastic bags. Maybe next time you are in the dollar store you ask for a plastic bag and take a good close look at it by putting it over your head.

      • UYSP, do you own a dictionary? Autonomy means being self governing. And who’s the “dumbazz”?

  • I believe studies have shown that banning these bags did not decrease the use of plastic bags and caused more problems. People had to use strengthened multi use that are worse for the environment 😳

  • A 2018 Danish Environmental Protection Agency report found that a reusable cotton bag had to be used at least 7,100 times to offset its environment impact when compared to a normal supermarket plastic bag that’s reused once as a trash bag and then incinerated.

    Organic cotton bags have to be used 20,000+ times.

    Look for Table C1, report is in Danish and English.
    https://www2.mst.dk/udgiv/publications/2018/02/978-87-93614-73-4.pdf

    So basically all these people slowing down the supermarket checkouts with their 20 reusable bags are polluting more than hundreds of normal people.

  • they cried when we used paper, they cry when we use plastics, they cry when we use detergents to clean our nonperishable bags. They ban plastic straws but not the giant plastic recyclable cups you stick them in. They cry about the polluting paper mills and water bottling plants but line up to get loads of plastic wrapped bottled water and stacks of plastic wrapped toilet paper to wipe their @**** with when a storm approaches. Oxymoron much?

  • Uh… It’s not like I walk around and see plastic bags everywhere. I bet those kids had to search for a while to find that one, assuming the wannabe-journalist mother didn’t bring one for them to take a photo of. It sure looks clean.

    • Ok. Now recycle that plastic bag, don’t ban it. Fine people who are litterbugs…have panhandlers be canhandlers and give back to the community.

  • Mia,

    You are a wonder, thank you. Folks do not know that Gville’s ordinance among other seemingly virtuous propositions, is as meaningless as its promotion as “zero waste” . We each produce 7 pounds of sold waste a day (including tons of plastic), the national average . And more than half of our total ~1000 tons per day stream is commercial waste in dumpsters etc whose users are charged wildly variable rates with no information about the fate of their waste. For decades the commercial waste has been unrecycled, distributed among private and public landfills or burn facilities. It took many years of public hearings at county meetings to finally assure that a percentage (about 30%) of our residential stream which is at most 40% of the total stream is recycled and we have only recently begun to take control of the commercial tonnage for separation, recycling, composting and reuse, another decades long process that requires your passion and input. My last comment at a county meeting was a request to delete the title: “Zero Waste” from the program as its just a politically attractive lie promoted by city commissioner (Hayes-Santos) to make folks feel better while doing the same thing.

    Mark Kane Goldtsein

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