February 7, 2023
[ARTICLE EXCERPT]
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Sustainable Princeton Executive Director Christine Symington also questioned the Freedonia findings. “What is clear is that they don’t provide any research to support how they came to this conclusion,” she said, pointing out the biased funding source for the report. “When you see a report that is not backed up by any data, you should treat it with a lot of skepticism. It’s a suspicious report, just picking up and creating headlines and clicks, but there is no data behind this.”
Symington noted that the biggest issue in initiating the ban was “to reduce litter and pollution from bags and straws that end up in our streams and on our beaches,” and she emphasized the importance of remembering to reuse the alternate bags.
“The key there is you have to use them over and over again, so there’s a behavior change in the habit of bringing a reusable bag back to the grocery store so you don’t have to get another reusable bag,” she said. “It takes a while for everybody to adopt that habit. For this to have the intended effect of reducing emissions from consumption of resources, it is very important that we remember to use the same bags that we have over and over again.”
As far as her own habits are concerned, Symington observed, “I’m not perfect, but I’m pretty good. I have bags I’ve had for decades that I’m very fond of when I go shopping.”
She went on to point out that Sustainable Princeton has a collection point for bags and a volunteer takes the bags to the Princeton Mobile Food Pantry and other places in town where they can be reused and their useful lives can be extended.
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View the full article on Town Topics here.
Written by Donald Gilpin
