The propensity for plastic continues

Published on October 22, 2005 By Rajiv Badlani In Business

They're cheap, easy and everywhere: As many as a trillion plastic bags are used worldwide a year. But would Americans kick their plastic addiction if they had to pay for them? Alaskans call them "tundra ghosts" and "landfill snowbirds." In China, they're "white pollution." South Africans have sarcastically dubbed them their "national flower." Snagged in treetops in Ireland, they become "witches' knickers."

The bags are not just a blight, but are wasteful, kill wildlife, pollute oceans and may be insinuating toxins into the food chain. Purchases are bagged almost reflexively. "When I buy a birthday card, it goes into a plastic bag – I buy one item and it goes into a plastic bag," said Mark Murray, executive director of Californians Against Waste, an environmental group in Sacramento. A Japanese study found that beads of polyethylene plastic can concentrate toxins at up to 1 million times their strength in surrounding sea water. A British study found that ocean invertebrates such as barnacles and jellyfish can eat plastic fragments. That leads Murray to worry that "plastic particles are becoming vehicles for transferring toxins up the food chain." Plastic grocery bags were banned in Galena, Alaska, a village of 850. "Bags blew out of the landfill and into the Yukon River, and there was even some evidence the salmon were eating them," said Cindy Pilot, director of the environmental department of the Louden Tribal Council, Galena's governing body. With a grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the council handed out 2,000 free canvas bags and phased out plastics in the town's three stores. To date, nearly 40 other Alaskan villages have followed suit, said Bill Stokes of Palmer, Alaska, who helped formulate many of the bans with the state's Department of Environmental Conservation. Taxation works, as does demonstrating an elegant alternative like an attractive cotton bag. See what we have at www.badlani.com/bags/ - see how attractive and affordable they are too. What's your call on this? Tax 'em or not? Read the full story here. More...

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