Ireland taxes the plastic bag, one more step in what, when I'm feeling optimistic, seems like the surprisingly rapid cultural marginalization of this modern scourge. A year or two ago, it seemed hardly anyone but environmental activists was talking about the trouble caused by plastic bags, and now you see an increasing number of municipalities, nations, and retailers at least attempting to address the problem.
Our local natural and organic foods market, Ellwood Thompson's, instituted a no-plastic-bag policy at the beginning of the month, and it certainly doesn't seem to have hurt business.
I never did like plastic bags for my groceries (don't carry enough, make your hands hurt as the plastic thins under the weight of the groceries and bites into your palm like fishing line) but I did rely on paper, which has it's own environmental toll, but in the past year I've really made the switch to bringing my own bags, thanks in no small part to some great reusable and spacious grocery-size bags my friend Karren brought me from Ikea (my objection to many of the reusable bags is that they are much smaller than regular grocery bags).
Elsewhere, I usually say "I don't need a bag."
Last week, Ideal Bite suggested the power of filling out comment cards to encourage major retailers to adopt environmentally sound practices. Don't you think Target is ripe for the switch to some other option? At Costco, they pile all your stuff into cardboard cartons that the merchandise came packaged in when it arrived at the store. I've never really thought about it before, but that's commendable reuse, and then we recycle the cartons at home.
Speaking of plastic, one of the more disturbing essays I read in this year's Best American... series was about Charles Moore's discovery of the vast plastic gathering ground (or rather, gathering sea) in the North Pacific subtropical gyre.
Here's Moore:
I often struggle to find words that will communicate the vastness of the Pacific Ocean to people who have never been to sea. Day after day, Alguita was the only vehicle on a highway without landmarks, stretching from horizon to horizon. Yet as I gazed from the deck at the surface of what ought to have been a pristine ocean, I was confronted, as far as the eye could see, with the sight of plastic.
It seemed unbelievable, but I never found a clear spot. In the week it took to cross the subtropical high, no matter what time of day I looked, plastic debris was floating everywhere: bottles, bottle caps, wrappers, fragments. Months later, after I discussed what I had seen with the oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer, perhaps the world's leading expert on flotsam, he began referring to the area as the "eastern garbage patch." But "patch" doesn't begin to convey the reality. Ebbesmeyer has estimated that the area, nearly covered with floating plastic debris, is roughly the size of Texas.
So, back to Ireland. Here's the New York Times story:
In 2002, Ireland passed a tax on plastic bags; customers who want them must now pay 33 cents per bag at the register. There was an advertising awareness campaign. And then something happened that was bigger than the sum of these parts.
Within weeks, plastic bag use dropped 94 percent. Within a year, nearly everyone had bought reusable cloth bags, keeping them in offices and in the backs of cars. Plastic bags were not outlawed, but carrying them became socially unacceptable — on a par with wearing a fur coat or not cleaning up after one’s dog.
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