Apparently the entire continent of Africa is banning plastic bags. (Sidetrack: I think it’s kind of weird that we refer to all of Africa as one entity–AIDS in Africa, orphans in Africa, poverty in Africa, government corruption in Africa, etc. I guess you get some of that with Europe or Asia, but it seems like we do it disproportionately to Africa. End sidetrack.)
At first it seems kind of silly. But then as you imagine billions of plastic bags floating around, I can see how it’d be quite the problem. I always try to reuse my plastic bags (excellent for dog poop), but we always have way more than we’ll ever use. Seems like it should be fairly easy to ween ourselves from plastic bags. Ikea does a nice job of that by simply charging you 5 cents for each bag you use.
The more I think about it, banning plastic bags starts to sound pretty rational and wasting plastic bags for the two things you bought at Target sounds kind of silly.
Of particular problem as I understand is that the plastic used for most of the bags is a lot thinner than your average Target bag. They fall apart very quickly and aren’t really “re-usable”. So they literally are no-biodegradable waste that really piles up. I have read of vast amounts of countryside strewn and littered with mounds and mounds of plastic bag waste (I may be exaggerating, but maybe not?)
Dave will back me up on this: I HATE plastic bags. I hate when you go to Walmart, buy four smallish things and end up with four plastic bags — five if one of the things you bought was a card. It’s crazy. I am very heartened to see a lot of grocery stores selling canvas bags.