While many politicians and environmentalists are trying to ban the use of plastic bags, writer Adan B. Summers argues that there are not so many benefits doing so, but in fact many disadvantages. In his article “Bag Ban Bad for Freedom and Environment”, writer Summers efficiently builds his arguments by using an irony, authoritative statistics, and contracts.
Writer Summers first started his article by satiring a recent bill. By saying “not content to tell us how much our toilets can flush or what type of light bulb to use to brighten our homes”, the writer reminds that us that the politicians and environmentalists have already imposed too many suggestions and rules about our private lives, made our lives less convenient than before …show more content…
By contrasting the impact on the environment and on citizens’ health of plastic bags and paper bags, writer Summers emphasizes that using plastic bags is actually better than using paper bags. As writer Summers illustrated, reusable bags “have a larger carbon footprint than plastic bags”; “compare to paper bags, plastic grocery bags produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions, require 70 percent less energy to make, generate 80 percent less waste, and utilize less than 4 percent of the amount of water needed to manufacture them”. The statements above defeats the claims that “plastic bags are worse for the environment than paper bags or cotton reusable bags”. By demonstrating the huge difference between the environmental effects of plastic bags and those reusable bags, writer Summers tells the readers that the reusable bags are actually much less environmental-friendly than they have regarded -- even worse than plastic bags. Moreover, the use of reusable bags unexpectedly increased health problems. In other words, using reusable bags is bad for people’s health “due to food contamination from bacteria that remain in the reusable bags”. This argument is reliable as the writer suggests that “A November 2012 statistical analysis by ... found that San Francisco’s plastic bag ban in 2007 resulted in a subsequent spike in hospital emergency room visits due to E.coli, salmonella, and Campylobacter-related intestinal infectious disease”. The increased number of people with health problems contrasts with that before the bag ban, therefore highlighting the disadvantages of reusable