Don't Need a Bag

More on this topic at a later date. But here's a few facts to consider:

1) The first piece of plastic ever created is still on this planet. Plastic does not break down and incineration is hardly an eco-friendly option.

2) Plastic bags are handed out with insane frequency to wrap up the smallest of items. Buy a toothpaste, a candy bar, a pack of gum, most stores will try to give you a plastic bag. Or a paper bag.

If you can handle it, and I'm guessing you can, try to say "No Bag, Thanks." See if you can say it once a week. How about twice a week? Put your gum in your pocket -- that's where it's going anyway, right?

Do you have a bag you can bring into a store for bigger items? Use it. (I personally find this one to be a bit of a challenge. I keep having to leave my cart in the store and then run out to the car for my re-usable bag!)

Want to get really freaked out about plastic bags? Check out this article about a huge mass of plastic trash, fishing lines, dead fish, etc that has come together in the Pacific Ocean north of Hawaii:

Pacific Garbage Dump


Here's some eye-opening, first-person detail on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch from Charles Moore of the Santa Barbara News-Press, reprinted by Mindfully.org

"Plastics are now virtually everywhere in our modern society. We drink out of them, eat off of them, sit on them - even drive in them. They're durable, lightweight, cheap and can be made into virtually anything But it is these useful properties of plastics that make them so harmful when they end up in the environment

If plastic doesn't biodegrade, what does it do? It photo-degrades - a process in which it is broken down by sunlight into smaller and smaller pieces, all of which are still plastic polymers, eventually becoming individual molecules of plastic, still too tough for anything to digest

For the last 50-odd years, every piece of plastic that has made it from our shores to the Pacific Ocean has been breaking down and accumulating in the central Pacific gyre. Oceanographers like Curtis Ebbesmeyer, the world's leading flotsam expert, refer to it as the great Pacific Garbage Patch.

The problem is that it is not a patch, it's the size of a continent, and it's filling up with floating plastic waste. My research has documented 6 pounds of plastic for every pound of plankton in this area."

The latest news on the Pacific Garbage Patch is that partially because it is near a new marine national monument in Hawaii, Congress has completed legislation to begin cleanup of this horrible mess. Read the story from the June 12 Christian Science Monitor here.