Back in the early 1990s I used “biodegradable trash-bags” as my science fair project. They haven’t caught on because IT DOESN’T MATTER in the slightest. I might generate a few pounds of plastic bag trash every year while the farmers use hundreds of millions of pounds of “plastic mulch” in the same time. My contribution isn’t even two tears in a bucket.

But don’t worry, New Jersey will save the world by just doing whatever New York does. Our governor is like the little dog dancing around the big bull dog in the old cartoons. “Hey Spike! What are we gunna ban next Spike? Come on Spike, let’s ban something! Heya Spike! Wanna get high, Spike?” It’s been a while since I’ve posted because I’ve been collecting data. It turns out the ban on Plastic Bag only extends to the people and stores where it is most likely to annoy us instead of actually achieving anything useful. Are you feeling like you’ve made a sacrifice? That’s will assuage your guilt from living an otherwise wasteful lifestyle! Don’t feel bad. You’re American. You really have no choice.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted because I’ve been collecting data. I’m not going to spew a bunch of internet-researched fake news numbers supporting anything in particular. I’ll just point out a few things and you can do the math.

1. Since the ban started to get real this past Spring the family has been given about 2 dozen tote-style bags to replace the single-use-plastic-bags. The majority of them are made of plastic.
2. 8 out of 11 stores we have shopped in (that are not labeled “grocery stores”) have given me plastic bags in which to ferry my stuff home.
3. Some cats share our living space. They make the poops so our “grocery bags” were never single use. We’ve now had to buy bags in which to put the poops. The new bags are made of corn and will decompose if the humidity gets above 80% but the manufacture and distribution isn’t carbon neutral like the bags already in our home were.
4. Here’s the best part: I estimate that the groceries coming into our house would have used 28 bags. We’ve used none since the ban! Yay! I can upgrade my car engine to have a fourth cylinder without guilt now! Oh, but wait. The groceries themselves contained 97 single use plastic bags. Plastic bags in the cereal box. Plastic bags to hold the fresh veggies. The sugar. The apples. The tissues. The meat. The bread. Hot Pockets individually wrapped? Like anyone eats just one at a time! Oh, and this number could be a LOT higher if I counted the little things. Each. Kashi. Bar. Is. Individually. Wrapped. With. A. Small. Plastic. Bag.

So, for all the hubbub, the “ban” hasn’t done much good. Sure did annoy some people though so that brings the magic of Awareness into the equation which is then touted as winning. Of course, we’ve always been aware we just don’t care. No, that’s too strong. We just don’t have time to care what with dodging the potholes while driving our kids to school in the morning because of the bus-driver shortage, trying to find a vaccine that actually works so we can visit Grandpa in the veteran’s hospital, and getting a building permit so we can build a pantry to hold all of our new bags. The point is, these little plastic crimes against nature are and have always been recyclable. You can bring them right back to the store you got them and, if you dig around under some old boxes, you’ll possibly find an empty “plastic film recycling” receptacle covered in dust and mouse droppings. Making these more prominent and accessible would have been easier than a high and heavy handed ban that required a big media campaign. Ah, but I forget… the point isn’t making a difference. The point is making a big media campaign. Paid for by our taxes. Damnit, the Murph just wrote himself a campaign check and we happily endorsed it.

Let’s pretend for a moment that we care to make a difference, why not? We’ve already hit the first “R” of the “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” mantra. Here’s a no-grand-standing, no ban-planning, no political fire-fanning approach to making a difference:

1. Reuse: Compress those bags into flat strips and use them for insulation in our homes. Energy efficiency will play as big a part as deplastification in the future.
2. Recycle the bags we have. Seems a forgotten no-brainer. They were always crappy (even before my cats got at them) so they’re not good as double-use-bags anyway.
3. Ask stores to start giving out biodegradable bags, if they must, like the brown paper bags that were, counter-productively, also banned by this law.
4. Forget all that nonsense because the VAST majority of plastic waste is NOT the bags.
5. Start asking local companies to go back to wax paper, cardboard, cloth, tin or glass for their packaging. Then ask harder. When they stop donating to your political campaigns, out them publicly. Reward those that willingly comply.
6. Fix the recycling programs that no longer actively recycle cardboard, tin or glass.

There, wasn’t that easy? It shouldn’t take more than 50 years but by then it will be a problem for our grand children and they are bound to be smarter than us. Hopefully they were not crippled by anxiety after being told daily that everyone is out to get them, everything is dangerous and everything they do is harming the world. Hmmm. I think we need an addition to the above list.

7. Get off your high-horse, stop feeding us a line of horseshit that the world is ending and go back to using horseshit to get around, feed our fields and fuel our fires. The world has been around for 4.5 billion years and will be here long after we’re gone. Enjoy it while you’re here, do no harm, and don’t put anyone on a pedestal who wouldn’t gladly pull you up to join them. Oh, and don’t forget your damn tote-bag in the car.

It’s March! Spring Forward for Daylight Savings! For most of my adult life I have disliked the twice-annual time-change. It screws with my sleep patterns, gets the US out of sync with the rest of the world, messes up the daughter’s bedtime and has occasionally caused me to be up in the middle of the night making sure computer scheduled jobs didn’t run twice or not at all. Whether springing forward or falling backward, I’ve never been a fan. I won’t lie, I did rejoice when Congress passed the Energy Policy Act of 2005 extending Daylight Savings by a few weeks. I do enjoy the daylight in the evenings since I’m really not a morning person… but it’s such a pain to keep switching. And changing the clocks. About 12 years ago I spent a lot of time and money researching and purchasing clocks that would keep themselves in sync and automatically adjust to daylight savings changes. They never worked right. Invariably, right after I would manually adjust all of the clocks in the house, the power company would blink the power on/off and make me do it all over again. Watching the stove, oven and microwave all blinking 00:00 at me I determined that I would be OK with perpetual Daylight Standard. Imagine a world where there were fewer pitch-dark mornings and we could set off the summer fireworks BEFORE the kids bed time!

But… what if the U.S. of A. could say “screw you” to the rest of the world, leap forward an hour… and stay that way? A federal bill, possibly inspired by NJ’s own bill from 2019, is moving through Congress to make it so. A billion patches to phone/computer/scheduling software is a small price to pay and we have done it before. Twice! From 1942 through 1945 the U.S. was in perpetual daylight saving “War Time”. We instituted it again in the 70s during the “energy crisis”. Unfortunately, in winter with the clocks forward an hour, the sun will not be fully risen until after 8. Any morning commute – including kids waiting at the bus stop or walking to school – will be in the dark until 7:45 or so. It eventually was a rash of pre-dawn car accidents involving children that ended the 1970s experiment after only 2 years. Maybe we saved some energy but the price was high.

That was then and this is now. While the energy we use is greener than it was in the 70s, our average usage has more than doubled. It’s not really about the energy savings anyway. When it gets dark we don’t turn off the A/C, stop microwaving burritos or unplug our phones (and cars if trends persist). Nobody really believes this is about energy savings. We just like getting home from work before it is dark out. The morning issue is real but fortunately we also have a lot more crossing guards and school buses (not to mention hyper-protective parents and school districts) than we did 50 years ago. During parts of the school year, my middle-school aged daughter will have to leave the house before it is light out to get to school on time. I’ll have the same issue getting to work on days I actually go into the office. But that’s really only for December and January. In the summer, it will be as though nothing has changed! It will be light from around 5:00 AM to 9:00 PM. Hooray for the long days! The rest of the daylight-savings countries will be in sync with us and all will be well with the modern world. Crank up the A/C, grab a cold one from the fridge, a hot one from the nukerowave and Let There Be Light!

It will be interesting to see if this passes and if other countries follow suit but I just hope something comes of it. Whether the country goes for forever standard or perpetual savings, I’m all for it. Just leave my clock alone!