Glenn De Baeremaeker, new Works Committee Chair, is every Torontonian’s boogeyman under the bed. He is a menace to my sanity, and I’m sure everyone else’s. If you listen to this guy, you’re sure to have a sleepless night and a stressful day. He began his stint-in-charge with his garbage bag rant; now he’s threatening to ban plastic bags wholesale from Toronto stores and homes. Methinks he’s been watching that couple who are going garbage-free for a month and thinks that’s a great idea for the rest of us poor sods. Someone should go search his garbage bags and watch what he sneaks out the back in the trunk of his car, so we’ll all know the truth of his convictions and see who really has the extra energy and time to handle the garbage and the shopping in his household.

So what is Dr Baeremaeker so uptight about? Two hundred million plastic grocery bags that take up less than half of a percent of landfill waste. Yup while there are other items that take up vast amounts of landfill space — anyone hear diapers? — he’s aimed his bag fat power gun at the gnat of the garbage world. Furthermore, this gnat is used over and over before it ever hits the dump, to line garbage bins, carry shoes to the office, pick up dog poop, the list is endless. Nine out of 10 Ontarians reuse (isn’t that one of the sacred mantra words of the environmentalist?) their grocery bags before filling their green bag with them. On top of that, this ever-so-useful invention doesn’t have to be made from petroleum-based ethylene. Corn is one renewable source packagers can switch to, and some have. I also read in a letter to the Toronto Star that Symphony Environmental has come up with a plastic bag that biodegrades in mere weeks to carbon dioxide and water. And according to Azom.com Bayer is experimenting with a formula that will produce a biodegradable bag without using solvents or chlorine to make the bags. In other words, there are already alternatives to the petroleum-sourced plastic bag, and there are more being developed. But does De Baeremaeker care? Of course not. The Toronto councillors we keep electing are our nannies, and they know their job is to make our lives tougher as we’ve been naughty little girls and boys by creating garbage in the first place, and he’s Toronto Council’s supernanny, given the power to enforce our penance.

Notice though they don’t go after the guys with the real power: manufacturers and packagers. After all, you can’t blow up your chest and beat it when facing a guy who can blow you down with one puff. Only intellectual smarts and logic will overcome their hot air, something many Toronto councillors seemingly lack in spades.

Fortunately, a few have held on to their common sense when they achieved office. Adam Giambrone believes in De Baeremaeker’s idea, but then is quoted in the Star as saying, “But the city is going to be offering plastic film as part of the blue bin later this year or early next year, so people will be able to recycle the bags.” And newbie John Parker doesn’t believe that “you get good policy by having someone in some ivory tower try to mastermind what everyone should be doing out there.” And Chin Lee notes that “a lot of people in Toronto use them to put stuff into their green bin, and the city skims off the plastic bags when they treat the green bin material, so a lot of bags are already being recycled.” (All quotes from The Toronto Star, 18 January 2007) Nice to know what really happens at the trash facility. De Baeremaeker obviously doesn’t want us to know Toronto can and is recycling these bags. Which begs the question, if companies around the world are already coming up with alternatives, local grocery stores (like the Big Carrot) are already using some of them, people instinctively reuse them, and the city can recycle them now and will within a year offer that as part of the blue bin program, why is De Baeremaeker once again leaping out from under our bed and filling our day with nightmares? Because he’s so damn earnest.