Last month the Albuquerque City Council voted 6-3 to repeal the Clean & Green Retail Ordinance, which banned single-use plastic bags. District 4 Councilor Brook Bassan sponsored the repeal, which was vetoed by the mayor but ultimately overridden by the council, allowing single-use plastic bags in grocery stores and retail outlets once again. For the week of April 4-10 the Neighborhood Journal asked people in their community what their thoughts were on the repeal.
Susan Salazar said: “I think they have more important things to be working on in this city and that the plastic bag issue is a very minor thing to be worried about.”
Seventh grade Albuquerque Academy student Shizen Shepard responded: “I think I don’t like it because the plastic goes, always mostly goes, into the environment and can go into oceans and that leads to fish drowning and the less population of them.”
While with his dog Cody, Isaac Robles said: “That’s a good question. I mean, I’m not really too sure because the paper bags were pretty good. Like they’re just not doing enough to keep bags in the store period because they have so many extra plastic bags. They’re just trying to get rid of those so that way they don’t just lose out on money. That’s pretty much what I feel that that’s all about, because once they switched over they could have just stayed at paper instead of going back to plastic. That’s pretty much what I think about it.”
While at North Domingo Baca Dog Park a gentleman who asked not to have his name or picture on the internet said: “My opinion is, it’s okay. Because the environment is so polluted. You know. If we do, it’s for the next generation. Because us, we’re too old, you know. We won’t feel it. Bueno. Not even this generation. It will probably be a few generations before, you know. By that time, who knows? Because the world is so unpredictable in my opinion, and that’s why it’s okay. That’s the only reason, but it would be nice to help the environment any way we can.”
A woman by the name of Lisa, who also did not want her picture taken while at North Domingo Baca Dog Park, answered: “I thought the plastic bag ban was great because plastic is terrible for the environment. It’s not difficult to bring your own tote bag to the store. We need to reduce, reduce, reduce.”
Patrick Zedalis, who was at North Domingo Baca Dog Park, answered: “So my thoughts on the ban are it’s kind of a step backwards. I do believe that people need to be more environmentally conscious. I work over at the biology department at UNM so it does hit home a little bit. And I know there is a cost to benefit ratio and overall I think the less plastics that we have in the environment are for the best, but at the same time, money wise, do people really pay attention to it as much? People have said that you have to pay a little bit. I don’t remember what it was, like 10 cents a bag maybe or something like that. I understand that people don’t want to have any more associated costs with the increase in inflation even though it’s miniscule in comparison to everything else. But I can understand why people don’t want to pay for other uses of bags. You can take your own – that would always be my suggestion. I definitely think we were going in the right direction trying to transition and I think if we stuck to it a little bit longer it would have paid off in the long run just like everything else.
While at North Domingo Baca Dog Park Karinna Solares said: “My thoughts on the plastic bags is that they should get rid of them. We don’t need any more trash or environmental dangers to our ecosystem. Just driving down the highways we see thousands of trash bags. It’s kind of disheartening to see all of this. It’s not decomposing the way we want it to and it’s just harming our ecosystem, our environment, our animals. The amount of times my dogs have tried to sniff at the trash is just gross.”
Jonas Williams responded: “If I’m being honest, I feel like plastic bags are nice to scoop poop with. I’ve noticed that before the plastic bag ban we had a cabinet just full of plastic bags we use, and there’s not anymore. There’s definitely an efficient way of going about that. We can get bags for poop. If paper bags are best for the environment, using paper bags doesn’t make me mad. It doesn’t hinder carrying groceries for me. If anything, I feel like paper bags are stronger to carry groceries with. So, I feel like it’s stupid.”