[Stitchawl]

Rant mode: On

I got into a rather heated discussion last night with a shop owner. He wanted to put my purchase into a plastic bag and I wanted a paper bag.

He insisted that using paper bags depleted the planet's resources.
I tried to tell him that the trees that are used for paper bags, toothpicks, disposable chop sticks, etc., are all 'farmed crops,' he still insisted that it was ecologically unsound and that we need to use more plastic. I tried to tell him that these farmed trees only take three years to grow to maturity, and new trees are planted immediately for the next 'crop' but he still insisted that plastic was the way to go. I tried to tell him that the 'raw material' for his plastic bags comes from oil reserves, a NON-renewable resource, and that the bags he was using did not bio-degrade over time, but he still insisted that using plastic was more ecological than paper.
Who was the PR man that sold the world on the idea that plastic bags were more ecological? This guy was good!'
While I do agree that plastic makes a much easier to use 'wet' garbage bag, there is nothing ecologically sound about them. While it's true that in the US, manufacturers are adding corn starch to their plastic bags to cause them to "break up" after a number of years buried, the particles aren't biodegrading so much as breaking into smaller pieces of plastic.
We NEED to get back to basics. All trees do NOT need hundreds of years to renew. The ones we use for disposable products mature quickly. Hell, even a pineapple takes two years to mature, and nobody is trying to say 'stop eating pineapples!' Tree farms cover the state of Maine. They fill the Pacific Northwestern states. We are NOT in danger of running out of trees. We ARE in danger of running out of oil... We have tree seeds to make new trees. We do not have dinosaurs to make new oil.

Rant mode: Off

[Edit: I carry cloth shopping bags in my saddlebags to use when grocery shopping.)


Stitchawl