"'Except for a small amount that has been incinerated…every bit of plastic manufactured in the world for the last 50 years or so still remains. That half-century's total production now surpasses 1 billion tons. It includes hundreds of different plastics, with untold permutations involving added plasticizers, opacifiers, colors, fillers, strengtheners, and light stabilizers...Thus far, none has disappeared." From Polymers are Forever, Alan Weisman in The World Without Us 2007

Once long ago people had a glimpse of the way life should be—people would not over consume, they would love the Earth and make love but not war. These people alarmed those who didn't want change. Before long, the solar panels that Jimmy Carter put up to symbolize a new way of making energy were tossed off the White House. The visionaries were called dirty tree-hugging hippies. I remember the day I knew things were different—a woman sat in class with big hair and a bright green polyester pants suit. Before long, I had an SUV. And in the years that followed, we snapped up cheap goods. Slowly the Union label was replaced with Made in China And now we are left with a legacy for our children. Mounds and mounds of plastic. Plastic made from oil.

There is a massive plastic wad the size of Texas rotating in the Pacific Ocean. It's been described as " a fright of cups, bottle caps, tangles of fish netting and monofilament lines, bits of polystyrene packaging, six-pack rings, spent balloons, filmy scraps of sandwich wrap and limp plastic bags." (The World Without Us) Each year ships add 8 million pounds of plastic to the ocean. But 80% of all the plastic in the ocean comes from land where it has blown from garbage trucks, trash cans or littered or been swept there from storm sewers. Plastic doesn't break down quickly and even when you can't see it, it lets off estrogen mimics or "gender benders" to mess with the hormones of living things. It's been called the cockroach of all chemicals—ever present and not going away any time soon.

Out in the oceans, turtles eat plastic bags because they look like jellyfish. As the turtles die, perhaps a jellyfish explosion will follow, unless offshore drilling kills off all marine life. But plastic bags are not just in the ocean. It's been calculated that for every square mile of Earth on the planet, there are over two pounds of visible plastic, much of it plastic bags.

Some places are taking steps to reduce some of this litter. One way to do this is to put the clamps down on plastic bags. China banned free plastic bags beginning this month. They were using 3 billion plastic bags per day. Now if a customer wants plastic bags they have to pay for them. They join places such as Uganda, Bangladesh (which linked plastic bags to clogged drains and flooding) and San Francisco. Some places such as Ireland and Australia allow plastic bags but tax them. In South Africa, thin bags are banned and thick ones are taxed. The bags have been banned close to home in Marshall County Iowa.

Not all is perfect with bag banning. People could make up for it by purchasing other plastic items for lining trash cans for example. And of course, those who make the bags call the banning hysteria.

Only about 1% of all bags make it to a recycling center. The same is true of plastic water bottles, of which 40 million are thrown away per day in this country. Soft drink bottles do a little better, with 30% being recycled. Recycling bottles of all kinds is down from a high of 53% recycled in 1994. This leaves those in the recycling business with less market and a struggle to make a profit. Where there are strong bottle bills, recyclers see a return rate of up to 95%. But these laws are few and far between. Three states --California, Hawaii and Maine--have laws that cover water bottles and only eleven states have bottle bills. In states where there is an expanded bottle bill, recycling is up.

As for me, I think twice before using bottled water and have gotten in the habit of bringing cloth bags with me so I don't need plastic ones. I recall the ugly sight of the plastic bags waving from barbed wire that I saw when I traveled across the Midwest this spring and it motivates me to remember my bags. There are times of course when I forget my cloth bags and have even gotten so engrossed in talking to the cashier that I forgot to use them. For those times, a gentle reminder in the form of having to pay for bags and a nice tax that could go to cleaning up the planet would not be so bad, would it? We don't want to replace the sight of Stars and Stripes with a waving plastic bag as our national flag now do we?

Cathy Haustein, 70108

Summary of bag banning
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/04/080404-plastic-bags.html
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008806100381 (plastic bags banned in Iowa)

China bans bags
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/01/09/china.plastic.bags/index.html
http://edition.cnn.com/2007/TECH/11/14/fsummit.climate.plasticbags/index.html

Easy ways to help
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/10/19/SS6JS8RH0.DTL

Recycling
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5279230/

Yes! Magazine, Summer 2008 page 16

Great Pacific Plastic Patch
http://www.greatgarbagepatch.org/
http://www.mindfully.org/Plastic/Ocean/Pacific-Garbage-Patch27oct02.htm
http://www.oceanconservancy.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=10228&news_iv_ctrl=-1&abbr=press_&JServSessionIdr012=zrk31sbp92.app43b