EDITORIAL - Blaming plastic bags for human shortcomings

The Cebu City Council, which is not exactly known for brilliant pieces of legislation, wants to copy the Mandaue City example on plastic bags without looking like it is copying. Because Mandaue City has completely banned the use of plastic bags every day of the week, Cebu City now wants to ban plastic bags four days a week. If Cebu City cannot be original, at least it should not follow bad examples.

Mandaue City embarked on its complete plastic ban on the mistaken notion that it will solve its perennial problem of flooding, incidentally the same problem that happens to bug Cebu City. It got the idea from the suggestion that plastic bags clog up waterways. But that is only partly correct. Unfortunately, Mandaue City did not consider the rest of the facts.

Fact number one; plastic bags do not end up in waterways on their own. It is the humans who put them there. Fact number two; it is not only plastic bags that clog up waterways but all sorts of things do, from glass bottles to tin cans, from rubber tires to dead animals, and so on and so forth. Fact number three; even if no one throws anything that can clog up waterways, if there are no waterways to begin with you will still have floods.

And that is exactly what is happening, not just in Mandaue City or in Cebu City, but everywhere where inadequacy and inefficiency screw up urban living and officials grow frantic trying to pin the blame on something or someone other than themselves. In this particular instance, it is the plastic bag that makes for a very convenient scapegoat.

It has been quite a while since Mandaue City completely banned plastic bags. And yet floods continue to hound that city. If plastic bags can laugh, you know who they will be laughing at. And now Cebu City wants to follow the lead of Mandaue City despite having seen the futility of the ban. So maybe it is not the floods that are meant to be addressed after all. Maybe it is the environmental posturing that proves very alluring.

It is a pity because it is the ordinary citizens who will suffer as a consequence. Consider this additional fact. Fact number four; ordinary citizens shop in bulk. And most ordinary citizens who shop in bulk take public transportation. Shopping in bulk and taking public transportation become impossible without plastic bags. Paper bags will not do. Especially if it rains and then floods. To solve man-made problems you discipline humans, not take it out on the products of their genius.