Banning Plastic Won't Save the Planet 

The responsibility for plastic waste needs to be put on billion dollar companies and countries rather than expecting the average consumer (particularly in poorer countries where single use items are often the only thing available!) to solve this issue. And creating extra reusable products made of cotton (like tote bags), for example, is also a major environmental strain on the textile industry too. Things do not just appear on store shelves or on your doorstep without a ton of production stages that create their own cycles of waste. Which is also why the "zero waste" movement is just hogwash and marketing garbage.

Even "single use" items like plastic bags can be reused. Voila!

YES thank you!!! I want to save the earth too but the things some people come up with… 🤯 I wish everyone would listen to this!!!!!!

Here in the UK we get charged for bags in stores, and it's a great motivator. I have 'single use' bags I've used for years at this point, a cache in the car, a cache in my everyday work bag, a couple in the gym kit, a couple in my fancy bag. It's an easy lifestyle once you get used to it :D

This kind of rational thinking is in desperately short supply in today's indoctrination factories (a/k/a universities and colleges). Bravo to this professor.

Thanks, Shelie! In particular, I like your emphasis on considering alternative courses of action. Because singe use plastic bags or cups are "bad" does not mean that their replacements are any better. Btw, you mention single use placstics and their damage to marine life. Well, is there any data on how likely it s that a disposable plastic bag that one of your students places in a trash can at Ann Arbour campus actually ends up harming marine life?

Yeah, but using paper straws for drinks should still be considered as a crime 🙃