Bag it

Better ways to spend $1 million on plastics 4

The American Chemistry Council will spend more than $1 million to fight a 20-cent fee on plastic shopping bags in Seattle, hoping voters reject the proposal in August.

bagmonsterOr send the Bag Monster and all his friends to Copenhagen this December!Photo by Bag Monster via FlickrIf it seems absurd to spend a cool mill defending something as ubiquitous, hard to love, and (very often) wasteful as disposable bags … consider that this trade group for the plastics industry sponsored a program to pay parents to expose their children to pesticides and allow researchers to study the effects.

Before the ACC’s check clears, we’d like to suggest some better uses for the money, ones that would still promote the wonderful qualities of plastic.

  • Buy some Legos—perhaps 2,000 of the $500 Star Wars Ultimate Collector’s Millenium Falcon. Give them away and makes some kids and geeks really happy.
  • Hire Radiohead to record a peppier, more PR-friendly version of Fake Plastic Trees.
  • Get the Plastic Ono Band back together. Through cryogenic freezing or something.
  • Bobbleheads. Lots of them.
  • Titanic and iceberg-shaped ice cube trays for nautical cocktails. At $6.99 a pop, 142,857 of them oughta be enough for a pretty great party.
  • Hire pirates to attack Plastiki, David de Rothschild’s boat made of recycled bottles, before he can raise awareness to the problem of ocean debris. Scratch that—he told Grist his actual goal is something different: “We’re looking at the Plastiki not to vilify the material but to understand it. A big part of this project is to use technology to innovate new plastics, innovate new uses.”
  • Reusable canvas shopping bags. Wait, those are canvas.
  • Stock up on wine in new eco-friendly (but not wine-friendly) recycled-plastic bottles.
  • More ad campaigns like this one to help young folks love plastics. Because millennials are “a group that really hasn’t been exposed to the overall benefits of plastics.”
  • Distribute a lot of copies of American Beauty, with the scene of the shopping bag dancing in the wind. Watch the scene with your friends and say, “Really makes you think, huh?”

Jonathan Hiskes is a Grist staff writer. He reports, tweets, eats, asks questions, self-promotes, looks out windows, and wonders if it could be like this.

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  1. Eeli Posted 5:18 am
    24 Jul 2009

    Great ideas.  They should be seriously considered because other cities have tried it and it doesn't work:http://www.nypost.com/seven/05292009/news/regionalnews/plastic_sacks_tax_axed_by_council_171491.htm                                                                 andhttp://www.iowaenvironmentallawupdate.com/2009/07/articles/going-green/the-grocery-bag-dilemma-some-suggested-solutions/Good luck Seattle.  

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    1. walt k Posted 11:38 am
      28 Jul 2009

      The article is talking about alternate uses of the dollars the plastic industry will be spending to oppose the initiative, so your comment is somewhat of a non sequitur. It most assuredly will work, although I personally do not believe it is the most effective way to make bag users pay the cost that is currently externalized. It would be far better (limited neither geographically nor to a single obnoxious product) to just slap a high tax on every barrel of oil sold in the country. It should be high enough to deal with all the problems caused by petroleum and its derivatives, not just plastic bags. Since most of these problems have either been ignored, or society has picked up the tab, we have bee subsidizing petroleum usage for many years. These externalized costs are HUGE and include, but are not limited to: the effects of pesticides on the environment, human health, our water supply; the effect of our internal combustion powered automobile transportation system on state and local budgets, including law enforcement; the effects of chemical fertilizer on human health and rural economies, the effect of a centralized, subsidized energy product on employment and human health; the effects of rapid climate change; and of course the effects of the plastic bags, which disintegrate into smaller particles, but don't seem to ever actually disappear. Gasoline never cost 29 cents a gallon, we were just fooled into believing it was that cheap.

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  2. walt k Posted 3:18 pm
    27 Jul 2009

    Another option would be to distribute copies of the direcor's cut of Brazil, with the drifts of styrofoam popcorn blowing everywhere.

    But the best option of all for using plastic is to buy a million dollars worth of drip irrigation tubing and distribute it to organic gardners and small farmers.

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  3. rangerskye Posted 9:36 am
    28 Jul 2009

    Excellent listing -- and funny how it's the same idea as TunnelFacts.com -- what else could $4.2 Billion buy Seattle, instead of a deep-bore tunnel highway?

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