depressing thought of the day

[kip_w]

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Well, not the only one, but it's a winner.

Plastic bags are killing us. (Salon article, via bOINGbOING)

The problem with plastic bags 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 Campaign Against the Plastic Plague. Plastic doesn't biodegrade. That means unless they've been incinerated -- a noxious proposition -- every plastic bag you've ever used in your entire life, including all those 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.

(bOINGbOING quoted the same paragraph. There's lots more to the article.)
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Comments

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

Well, that's not entirely true. It's true that the plastic bags I use are still around, but in new plastic bags. I recycle mine at the Giant, and they get made into new plastic bags. If everybody (or most people) did that, we'd have steady-state plastic bags.

Did you see a council member in Annapolis is trying to ban plastic bags in the city? That's a different part of the problem -- plastic bags killing critters.

[meggins.livejournal.com]

Well, then, I guess it's good we stopped subscribing to the newspaper.

Like mjlayman I recycle the plastic bags I can and try to find other uses for the non-recyclable plastic bags.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

The Giant takes the bags the WashPost comes in; maybe your recycling place will take yours, too, if you resubscribe.