It’s not in the bag?
Peaches on Jun 10th 2010
I have been thinking about reusing lately, and this post on NPR jumped out at me: “Plastic’s Future May Not Be in the Bag.”
Indeed. I make the same mistake, and feel rational doing it, that people quoted in the article make – I use plastic bags from the grocery store for dog poo. Although I do try to remember to take my own bags, and I have become quite good at it, when I forget I console myself for the ultimate purpose of the plastic bags: bathroom trash liner, other bathroom trash liner, dog poo. When all else fails, I return the bags and put them in the special bin outside the store.
The problem is the same as with all reused nasty ones: eventually they will meet their end at the landfill, and that will be that. You can crochet little purses or wallets with “yarn” made out of cut-up plastic bags, and you can iron plastic bags and make a plasticky fabric out of them, but at the end of the day, it’s still plastic, and someone is going to get tired of the little purse or the mini skirt that has a Target bull’s eye on it, and it will get thrown out.
Our only salvation is not to make those bags in the first place, not to find clever uses and reuses, and re-reuses. I can see already everybody’s houses filled with stuff nobody really wants, and it all gets preserved not because we are too sentimental to part with it, but because we don’t dare to.
We’ll have a glorified trash heap as homes, and our stuff will own us and we’ll be cursed with it forever.
Or is that too dark a vision?
The bottom line here is this: Plastic bags are a drop in the bucket when you compare it to the packaging of the products you buy, from how far away they have been shipped, and the fact that,
“Once people no longer have a ready supply of old grocery bags stashed at home, they will have to find new ways to pick up their dog poop or line their bathroom waste baskets. If people just go out and buy other plastic bags, it will defeat the purpose.” The whole discussion of whether plastic or paper bag, or bring your own bag is “just a distraction,” says Bob Lilienfeld (Use Less Stuff).
Aw chucks, and here was something I had just started to get good at…
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