Plastic straws and plastic forks at a food hall in Washington D.C. on June 20, 2019.ERIC BARADAT/AFP/Getty Images
Gus Carlson is a U.S.-based columnist for The Globe and Mail.
Remarkably – and sadly – New York City’s latest effort to curb single-use plastics, as with so many government initiatives, may have its heart in the right place but has its head in the clouds.
The new regulation, which went into effect this week, is dubbed the “Skip the Stuff” law and makes it illegal for restaurants to give takeout and delivery customers plastic utensils, condiments and napkins unless they ask for them. Violators will be fined and put their business licences at risk.
As in Canada, New York has never met an anti-business regulation it didn’t adore, especially if it drives a partisan agenda. Nothing energizes the elite in power like an opportunity to tell their subjects what’s good for them, whether it really is or not.
Similar nonsense is happening with the Canadian single-use plastics law, a widespread ban on such items as bags, cutlery, food containers and straws. Hot out the gate, the ban has already displayed its inadequacies.
A Calgary co-op supermarket chain has suggested its compostable shopping bags are a viable option for an exception from the ban because they decompose in a month and, with the support of the Alberta government, has lobbied Ottawa for relief under the law.
But Ottawa refuses to recognize the bags as legal, not because they aren’t worthy alternatives, but perhaps because bending the law would be acknowledgment that a concerned businessperson might actually be smarter than a bureaucrat.
This ban and the latest New York law are more evidence that the gap between the elite’s dreams of control and the average business’s reality of getting through the day continues to grow.
It’s truly hard to believe that of all the serious problems facing a major city like New York – crime, homelessness, migrant overcrowding, failing infrastructure, businesses fleeing – this is what keeps Mayor Eric Adams awake at night. It’s the same for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and all the other government leaders around the world who seem to zero in on such trivialities in the face of bigger issues.
Or is it that hard to believe? A basic rule of politics suggests that if you don’t like what people are saying about you, change the conversation. Like countermeasures used by military submarines, this new law is a politically expedient attempt to distract attention away from the harsh realities of failing cities such as New York, San Francisco and Chicago and the incompetence of those in power to fix them.
And all across the Western world, countries including Canada are falling short of their ambitious climate goals. Mr. Trudeau’s government has a long way to go to plant the two billion trees that it said it would put in the ground by 2030. But to ban single-use plastics is an easy way to show that the government is doing something.
Aside from the political theatre, there are so many other things wrong with such laws.
First, they will be virtually unenforceable without an army of bureaucrats, presumably, as in the case with New York, to be highly trained in asking merchants probing questions such as, “Did she or did she not order ketchup?” Is this what passes for job creation – letting the employment rolls reflect the meaningful uptick?
Second, as with the City of New York’s recent misguided ban of wood-fired pizza ovens in an effort to reduce carbon emissions, such laws will affect small, often family-run businesses the most.
The big chains can bear it. But for the small businesses, it’s hard enough operating in this economy. Now mom-and-pop shops with limited resources have to deal with constantly shifting policy, governing business owners down to the granular, and the threat of legal consequences.