dearpeter wrote:
I wonder a few things about this campaign. The biggest curiosity for me is why Hsieh hasn't attacked Hau over the plastic bags rules that he implemented while working as environment minister for CSB. Maybe it wasn't all Hau's doing, but I can't figure out why people aren't mad at him over having to pay money for bags that are 20 times thicker than the old free ones. It was supposed to be a measure to reduce plastic use, but it seems to me the opposite effect was realized.
Apparently, the new bags are biodegradable (not sure about that), but nearly all trash here is incinerated. And the new bags are supposed to release fewer toxins when incinerated, but I think this is definitely a red herring, since plastic bags wouldn't really be a significant source of toxins in incinerator smoke anyway, not compared to the batteries, electronic items and such that surely remain in the waste stream. Plastic is just another form of petroleum hydrocarbon, and modern incinerators tend to burn hydrocarbons to something like 99.999 percent completeness.
The whole bag thing seemed like Hau took an environmental measure that was expected to hurt the plastics industry and turned it into a gift to them, and others too, as all those one and two kuai charges surely add up to a lot of money that goes somewhere. Isn't this serious perversion of environmentalism? Shouldn't Hau be held to task over it?
The plastic bag ban was a good one with flaws. You saw far fewer bags on the streets and in the parks after the ban came into effect. Part of what these policies do is train people to think abotu the environment more and their impact on it. That it caused mroe plastic to be produced is bad, but that it got people used to recycling bags, and not expecting that everything has to be wrapped and then wrapped again was good.
People are far less likely to throw away one thicker bag on the street than those little flimsy ones. In fact, just look around. How often do you see a thick bag on the street? Rarely. Thin ones? Often. Even if more plastic is used the fact that the streets are cleaner helps in the push for environmental consciousness.
The Broken Windows Effect also comes into play here. If the streets are cleaner people are less likely to litter them. So, which is better? Producing a million thick bags that are reused, or 10,000,000 thinners ones that, while they use less plastic, are tossed freely about the streets, thus encouraging even more littering?
It was the right policy to make at the time but it needs to be improved. Why criticize someone for that?
