Commentaries

April 09, 2008

 Commentaries is where Minnesota Public Radio welcomes your thoughtful opinion about current events and issues. Commentaries are like letters to the editor. To be considered for publication, your commentary should be issue-related, clearly written, and follow our Terms of Use. New insights into ongoing topics are especially welcome. Not all commentaries received are published. For topical interaction with others, visit the discussion groups.

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The smoking ban stinks

I am from a town of 300 people and the smoking ban has hurt our local establishments. When my loved one who has served our country comes home and cannot come into an establishnent and have a smoke it really makes me wonder why we fight when our rights have been taken away from us.

Where is our right to freedom of choice? These people have made all our choices for us. When I think of freedom I think that it is not a free country any more. You don't have the right to make my choices for me.

Connie Rasmussen
Middle River, Minn.


Ode to plastic bags

I have been "pack-ratting" my empty bread bags, the liners to the Multigrain Cheerios boxes, and salvageable Ziplocs.

The rumors of stores sacking their use of plastic bags have me freaked about a reeking garbage bin. In fact, even though I request as many as a respectable mom can at the grocery store, I still run out.

As in most households, the bags line our bathroom trashcans. But they also protect our snouts from poopy diapers until the kitchen bin is full, and hubby hauls it out. I fill them with the potato and carrot peelings or celery and strawberry tops when I clean the produce right in the sink, so I can rinse as I go. Then I can carry the refuse drip-free over to the bin. I use bags to pack breakables, to stuff into the diaper bag to separate dirty bib and washcloth from clean, and to lug along Josephine's muddy rain boots, just in case.

When I visit my mom, and she hands over her 200-plus-bag supply, it's like Christmas.

So I ask, what are my options in a sans-plastic-bag world? Okay, I realize I should start a compost pile for the peelings. But the diapers? Is changing my garbage can bag daily any better than re-using a plastic grocery bag?

(You're going to say, "Use cloth diapers," but I barely have time to wash Josie's sleepers; I can't imagine the multi-step sterilization of butt rags -- not to mention working this out at daycare.)

Should I buy foam packing peanuts to send my sister her homemade jelly and my mother her pictures of my growing baby? I just don't see how eliminating plastic bags altogether behooves us in our both-parents-working world.

For the sake of the odor-control in my house, can't we all just shift our energies back to reduce, re-use, and recycle?

Jodi McLain
Taunton, Minn.


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