SOME PLASTIC BAG ALCHEMY AND THE CROTON BOARD

An amusing but always cogent letter from this week's Gazette and Paul Steinberg on the village's unfolding plastic bag ban issue. 

To the editor: 

The Board of Education needs to revise the science curriculum to include alchemy in light of the new research performed by the Croton Board of Trustees. 

Many have criticized the revised plastic bag proposal. But with one glaring exception, the revised policy is one which should appeal to both liberals, conservatives, and libertarians. The proposal would allow consumers to use whatever bags they desire, which should please libertarians. It would impose a cost to cover the negative externalities created by plastic bag use, which should please conservatives. And it would allow Croton's elected officials and self-appointed guardians of public virtue to lecture residents, which should please the woke liberal wing. 

Where the revised law fails is in deviating from modern science. Much like in the middle ages, the Board of Trustees believes that a plastic bag is an existential threat to the oceans except when it is transmuted by crossing the threshold of a retail establishment under 5000 square feet in area. 

Once the bag enters a retail space of less than 5000 square feet, a process occurs which is not fully understood. But the outcome is a bag which is no longer a threat to the environment. The birds sing, the dolphins chatter, and the whales do backflips. 

Some cynical types belive that the 5000 sq foot criteria is designed to punish ShopRite for failing to bend to the will of the Croton Board of Trustees, but I think that this reivised proposal is a result of considered thought and analysis of scientific data by the Board of Trustees. Their discovery of the alchemical process is worthy of a Nobel Prize, and should result in a rewriting of Croton-Harmon High School chemistry textbooks. 

--Paul Steinberg, Croton-on-Hudson

 READ MORE ABOUT THE VILLAGE'S TROUBLING NEW POLICY, VIA A LETTER FROM RICK TURNER, AT http://www.crotonunited.org/news-views/2018/7/12/a-very-troubling-policy