Plastic Bags Everywhere

I am sure this is not the type of advertisement Walgreens was thinking of when it gave this plastic bag to a customer. I found this wonderful example at http://www.bagsintrees.com/ which chronicles these wonderful plastic pieces of 'art' in Baltimore, MD. One of my favorite things about their site is that they have integrated their find with Google Maps so that you can see where they found the bag. I love this type of humor. They should have an ongoing map that shows you all of the spots on one map.

Digging a little bit deeper, it is simply amazing the amount of plastic bags that are used and thrown away every year. Here are a few stats that were compiled by http://www.reusablebags.com/: (you can find more here.)

• According to The Wall Street Journal, the U.S. goes through 100 billion plastic shopping bags annually. (Estimated cost to retailers is $4 billion)
• Plastic bags don’t biodegrade, they photodegrade—breaking down into smaller and smaller toxic bits contaminating soil and waterways and entering the food web when animals accidentally ingest.
• In 2001, Ireland consumed 1.2 billion plastic bags, or 316 per person. An extremely successful plastic bag consumption tax, or PlasTax, introduced in 2002 reduced consumption by 90%. Approximately 4,755,060 of oil have been saved due to this reduced production. Governments around the world are considering implementing similar measures.

So what's the answer to the plastic bag problem? Ireland seems to have done pretty good. I just wonder if the consumption mentality of Americans would produce the same sort of result. My fear is that we would just pay the extra 15 cents thus taxing ourselves. Retailers are already counting the cost of those plastic bags into their cost of product. It is not like they are giving it to us for free.

I agree that if a change is going to be made, it needs to be consumer focused since the stores loose control of the bags once they leave the store. You need a reason for the consumer to want to change.

Personally I can't see myself carrying around a bunch of hemp or bamboo bags. But maybe I shouldn't slam it until I have tried it....

Anyone out there use bags like you can find on http://www.reusablebags.com/?