CELPIP Reading Part 4 Practice Test: Plastic Bag Bans Waste Debate

When Harrowfield prohibited single-use plastic checkout bags three years ago, Councillor Marisa Delgado hailed the bylaw as “the easiest environmental win we will ever have.” Shoppers now bring their own bags or pay 25 cents for a paper one, and municipal crews report that plastic snagged in fences and storm drains has virtually vanished. Yet as such bylaws spread, a nagging question persists: are such bans reducing waste, or merely relocating it?

Dr. Anil Bhattacharya, who studies packaging at a university in southern Ontario, suspects both. The flimsy bags were frequently reused at home, chiefly as wastebasket liners and for collecting after dogs. Once they disappeared, sales of kitchen-catcher bags climbed sharply; being considerably thicker, these may mean some households now landfill more plastic, not less. Paper bags demand substantially more energy and water to manufacture, and a heavy cotton tote must be used dozens of times before its environmental footprint undercuts the bag it replaced.

Delgado remains unmoved. “Nobody pretended a bag ban would resolve the plastic problem single-handedly,” she insists, “but its value lies in altering habits. Carry a bag and you start scrutinizing everything else you discard.” A recent municipal survey found that seven in ten residents now bring their own bags without thinking.

Grocer Tom Kowalczyk, who owns two independent stores, voices a more pragmatic grievance. Paper bags cost him roughly four times as much as plastic, the fee does not fully recoup the difference, and “forgetful customers take it out on my cashiers, who’ve done nothing wrong.” He grudgingly acknowledges, though, that clearing litter from his parking lots has become cheaper.

For Joanne Pelletier, who organizes shoreline clean-ups, debates about carbon footprints miss the point: the bags she retrieved from the beach were never kitchen-catchers but the thin ones that blew out of shopping carts into the lake and the stomachs of birds. Her group’s annual tallies show waterfront bag litter down by more than 80 percent.

Bhattacharya concedes the decline in litter but insists that success be judged by total waste. He would pair bans with schemes for borrowing and returning reusable bags and with clearer guidance on alternatives. “Otherwise,” he cautions, “cities risk applauding themselves for a problem they’ve merely moved out of sight.”

I grumbled when the bylaw passed, but this article has largely won me over. Dr. Bhattacharya is right that many of us simply replaced the free bags lining our bins with 6. Choose…thicker plastic onesheavy cotton totesold newspapernothing whatsoever, and I plead guilty. Even so, I suspect he 7. Choose…accurately describes the damageoverstates the damagefully accounts for the damageunderestimates the damage those flimsy bags did, given what Ms. Pelletier’s volunteers kept pulling out of the lake.

I do feel for Mr. Kowalczyk. It hardly seems fair that 8. Choose…shoppers should pay morehis cashiers take the abusehe is left out of pocketcouncil takes the blame every time he restocks the checkout, all for a rule he never requested. As for Councillor Delgado’s claim that the ban 9. Choose…solves the plastic problemsaves taxpayers moneychanges how people thinkkeeps the lake and its birds clean, I can vouch for it: I now hesitate before buying anything wrapped in plastic. Add 10. Choose…a lending systema higher fee on paper bagsa liner taxanother survey of the sort the professor proposes, and Harrowfield will have got this right.