Following the lead of countries like Ireland, Bangladesh, South Africa, Thailand and Taiwan, some U.S. cities are striking back against what they see as an expensive, wasteful and unnecessary mess. This year, San Francisco and Oakland outlawed the use of plastic bags decoration in large grocery stores and pharmacies, permitting only paper custom printed bag with at least 40 percent recycled content or otherwise compostable custom plastic bag. The bans have not taken effect yet, but already the city of Oakland is being sued by an association of plastic custom bag manufacturers calling itself the Coalition to Support Plastic bag printing Recycling. Meanwhile, other communities across the country, including Santa Monica, Calif., New Haven, Conn., Annapolis, Md., and Portland, Ore., are considering taking drastic legislative action against the custom printed shopping bag. In Ireland, a now 22-cent tax on plastic custom bags has slashed their use by more than 90 percent since 2002. In flood-prone Bangladesh, where plastic custom printed bags choked drainage systems, the custom paper bags have been banned since 2002.
The problem with plastic custom plastic bag isn't just where they end up, it's that they never seem to end. "All the plastic that has been made is still around in smaller and smaller pieces," says Stephanie Barger, executive director of the Earth Resource Foundation, which has undertaken a Plastic doesn't biodegrade. That means unless they've been incinerated -- a noxious proposition -- every plastic plastic custom plastic bag you've ever used in your entire life, including all those custom printed plastic bags that the newspaper arrives in on your doorstep, even on cloudless days when there isn't a sliver of a chance of rain, still exists in some form, even fragmented bits, and will exist long after you're dead.
The plastic custom plastic bag is an icon of convenience culture, by some estimates the single most ubiquitous consumer item on Earth, numbering in the trillions. They're made from petroleum or natural gas with all the attendant of harvesting fossil fuels. One recent found that the inks and colorants used on some bags contain lead, a toxin. Every year, Americans throw away some 100 billion plastic bags after they've been used to transport a prescription home from the drugstore or a quart of milk from the grocery store. It's equivalent to dumping nearly 12 million barrels of oil.
Dr. Richard Bailey, executive director of the institute, is most concerned about the custom promotional bags that get waterlogged and sink to the bottom. "We have a lot of animals that live on the bottom: shrimp, shellfish, sponges," he says. "It's like you're eating at your dinner table and somebody comes along and throws a plastic tarp over your dinner table and you."
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