Letter: Don’t legislate plastic

Oct 09, 2023

Asheville City Council reportedly wants to ban single-use plastic bags within Asheville city limits [ "Singled Out: Asheville Considers Ban on Single-use Plastic Bags," April 26, Xpress]. Plastic bags, if they end up in the landfill, do not deteriorate over time as most garbage does. For your information, Ingles, Home Depot and Lowe's stores provide a bin for customers to deposit their plastic bags. The content of these bins is then picked up by a company to be recycled for flooring, furniture, etc.

The problem is that there are many residents in Asheville who are uninformed about the importance of recycling plastic bags. They dispose of these bags in their garbage or release them freely outside on roads, etc. The solution, to my mind, is to educate the public about the harm that single-use plastic bags can inflict on the environment, not to ban the use of these bags through legislation.

If this ban is passed, it applies only to the city of Asheville. What about Buncombe County and other mountain counties? Don't they deserve to know how single-use plastic bags are bad for the environment? To my mind, education, not legislation, is the key to fixing this problem.

— Meiling DaiAsheville