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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • WEDNESDAY, JANuARY 16, 2019
OPINION
editor@dailyastorian.com
KARI BORGEN
Publisher
JIM VAN NOSTRAND
Editor
Founded in 1873
JEREMY FELDMAN
Circulation Manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN
Production Manager
CARL EARL
Systems Manager
OUR VIEW
Banning plastic bags makes great sense
Here’s an idea
whose time is now
P
lastic bags are lightweight,
handy and easily thrown
away after use.
Just about everyone will have
used those disposable bags from
the grocery store to carry their
foodstuffs home, and occasionally
a second or third use to temporar-
ily store or transport some reason-
ably light item — then tossed them
away when they split.
We can be cured of this common
practice by taking a long, careful
look at a photograph of a dead sea-
bird or other creature whose beak
or stomach has been clogged with
this symbol of human convenience.
The struggle of losing this “con-
venience” vs. what should be our
planet-wide commitment to pro-
tecting the environment seems an
obvious choice.
It is time to ban or significantly
restrict single-use plastic bags in
groceries and other stores.
It’s a comparatively small action,
but a reasonable one.
Critics may see this as an
infringement on businesses, and
a lessening of convenience in our
consumer society. Paper bags aren’t
as versatile, useless when wet, and
just plain awkward when their han-
dles break off. Industry spokesmen
say they may cost businesses more
than three times as more to stock
at their cash registers. But they are
biodegradable and often manufac-
tured from recycled paper.
The city of Portland has been
a pioneer in this campaign and its
website contains excellent tips on
specific strategies to help — as
well as a well-argued case for why
its leaders have taken the stance.
“Plastic bags are extremely light-
weight and can act like balloons
blowing out of garbage trucks and
landfills,” city leaders say. “These
flyaway bags litter our parks and
Bahamas Reef Environment Education Foundation
A plastic bag floats in a school of fish.
trees, enter storm drains and can
eventually end up in rivers and
oceans where they break into small,
toxic pieces.
“Plastics have found their way
into all five of the world’s major
ocean current systems and are one
of the most common types of lit-
ter found in Portland’s rivers and
on Oregon’s beaches. Sea animals
often mistake plastic particles for
food, causing harm to the animals
and potentially affecting the sea-
food we eat.”
State considering ban
North Coast leaders talked about
a possible ban last year, but the
idea went nowhere. Outgoing Asto-
ria Mayor Arline LaMear said
last month that she wishes she’d
pushed harder on the issue.
“It always just disturbs me when
I drive someplace and I see them
on our roads, trees and ocean,”
LaMear said in August. “I’m aware
some people like these plastic bags
Water
under
the bridge
Compiled by Bob Duke
From the pages of Astoria’s daily newspapers
10 years ago
this week — 2009
Among those from the North Coast traveling to Presi-
dent Barack Obama’s inauguration will be Matt Winters,
editor of the Chinook Observer in Long Beach, Wash., sis-
ter paper to The Daily Astorian.
Before he departed, he was asked about his excitement
level for the trip.
“Getting to tell my 11-year-old she had a ticket to see
this wildly historic event was one of the highlights of my
life,” Winters said. “Being there to hear this good man
speak the sacred words of the oath of office will reverber-
ate through her life.
The logistics of going have been absolutely awful,
but evaporate into nothing compared to the privilege and
potency of the experience.”
As a former smoker, Janine Pickering can
see both sides of Oregon’s expanded Smokefree
Workplace Law, which took effect Jan. 1.
The Labor Temple bartender said the law has
probably cut down on her bar’s business and
makes more work for her because she has to
keep track of customers entering and leaving the
bar with drinks in-hand.
The law bans smoking in taverns, among
other places, and requires smokers to stand 10
feet from the entrances, exits, open windows and
ventilation intakes.
After seven happy boom years, the Pacific sardine fish-
ery appears to be going bust.
Coming off a record year in 2007, the coastwide catch
limit for sardines dropped from 152,654 metric tons to
for convenience, but we hope to
show how much damage it does to
the environment.”
More than a dozen other cities in
Oregon have taken action, includ-
ing the tiny community of Silver-
ton — a place smaller than Asto-
ria. That has prompted discussions
in Salem about taking a statewide
approach. The Legislature is now
considering a tax on plastic bags
and a ban on single-use plastic
straws.
We think it’s appropriate for the
state to step in, though the proposal
doesn’t go far enough.
It’s plain silly for people to
travel from city to city not know-
ing what regulations exist in dif-
ferent communities. It’s also unfair
for small merchants in one town
to make the switch when their big-
box competitors a few miles down
the road hand out bags by the ton.
All that needs to happen is for
people to buy and then re-use
sturdy cloth bags of their own —
80,184 last year, cutting fishing seasons extremely short
and knocking down income for nearly a dozen processors
and two dozen fishing boats in the Columbia River area.
Now it looks like 2009 will be even worse, with only
59,232 metric tons of sardines available for harvest.
50 years ago — 1969
A cautious optimism seems to be the general attitude
on the part of Clatsop County leaders toward the area
economy in the new year.
“The year 1969 looks very bright,” said Cannon Beach
Mayor Gerald Gower.
Most officials interviewed recently felt that construc-
tion and general activity in 1968 gave hope for a healthy
1969.
Activities of Astoria Plywood Corp. will not
be curtailed because of a strike by members of
the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Inter-
national union, a company spokesman said
Monday.
Several plants in the southern part of the
state reportedly were unable to operate due to
the strike, which shut off supplies of natural gas.
“We generate our own steam right here in the
plant,” the spokesman said, “and have no need
for outside fuel.”
Widespread closure of Clatsop County schools fol-
lowed Wednesday in the wake of a storm which dumped
tons of snow on highways and outlying roads.
The Port of Astoria was honored this week as
the site of a coming-out party for a new Japanese
log and lumber ship, the Seine Maru, now on its
maiden voyage.
The 505-foot-long vessel put in Saturday at
Astoria for logs after a two-week trip from Hiro-
shima. She’s to depart this week for Vancouver,
B.C., and then sail for Shimizu, Japan.
Bill Hoag, owner and operator of the Astoria city tran-
sit system, said Thursday he’s just about ready to ask the
city if it wants to take over the system, which he’s oper-
ated for five years.
Hoag, 60, said the transit system’s insurance and tax
keep them in the car, or fold them
up and carry them if they are walk-
ing to the store. When large gro-
cery stores were ordered to charge
for plastic bags in Great Britain in
2015, their use diminished signifi-
cantly as residents returned to their
1950s practice of carrying their
own shopping bags.
The government’s environmen-
tal minister, Therese Coffey, hailed
the program as a success less than
a year later when announcing sig-
nificantly diminished number of
bags in circulation. “It will mean
our precious marine life is safer,
our communities are cleaner and
future generations won’t be saddled
with mountains of plastic taking
hundreds of years to break down in
landfill sites,” she told The Guard-
ian newspaper.
That success led to broader dis-
cussions about straws and polysty-
rene in Britain and other western
nations. Australia, for example, is
poised to enact tighter rules on dis-
posables in most regions late this
year.
For the past two or more
decades, we have exhorted North
Coast residents to “think glob-
ally, act locally.” That phrase was
dreamed up as the 1960s ended and
made popular in the 1970s. Since
then, it’s been an easy philosophy
that anyone can embrace. It just
makes sense.
Disposable grocery bags are
among the foremost symbols that
we have become an out-of-control,
throwaway society.
Cloth bags are usually easier and
more comfortable to carry, and can
be used over and over. Their addi-
tional bulk is minimal, and worth
the effort.
Here’s a step we can take to help
the environment — and signal our
shared belief in the need to do so.
It is an idea whose time has
come.
payments and cost of parts had risen so high that he can’t
feasibly operate the service much longer. He said he pays
$138 a month insurance on one bus.
75 years ago — 1944
Two medium-sized navy planes operating from the
Clatsop airport collided in the air Thursday almost directly
over the mouth of the Columbia River, and one pilot para-
chuted from his spinning plane into the sea, while the other
miraculously brought his battered plane safely home.
The flier forced to bail out is still missing.
The streets of Astoria’s residential districts
will be literally lined with tin Saturday morning
as household tin can collections wait for pickup
trucks to take them to the railroad gondola
which will carry them to a salvage center.
Pre-Pearl Harbor fathers are now being taken from Clat-
sop County for induction into the armed forces, according
to Leif Halsan, of the local selective service office.
Fathers were included in draft lists of the county in
“numbers fit to mention” for the first time in the Decem-
ber induction call. Halsan said that the local board has
now “really begun” to call fathers whose occupations are
considered non-essential.
“The only thing which can at all forestall widespread
drafting of fathers is a large increase in the enlistment of
women in the armed forces,” Halsan said.
Mrs. Merle Chessman, wife of the publisher
of the Astorian-Budget, narrowly escaped seri-
ous burns and possible death in a freak fire at
their home, 526 Grand Avenue, at noon today,
according to Wayne Osterby, fire chief.
Mrs. Chessman was applying a cleaning fluid
to her kitchen floor, when suddenly the entire
floor was enveloped in flames, apparently start-
ing when fumes of the fluid came in contact with
a blaze in an incinerator attached to her gas
stove.
With a broom Mrs. Chessman attempted to
beat out the fire, which was spreading to the
floor of the hallway of the home. Unsuccessful,
she called the firefighters, who arrived in time to
check the blaze before serious damage occurred.