Word: plasticities
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Against the use of cloth shopping bags, however, or the string type his grandmother might have taken to the high street, Joseph has fewer arguments. Plastic bags make handy trash-can liners, he says, or receptacles for cat litter. And, of course, they can be reused to hold shopping. "Do you know what I think is the best thing about them? You can shove about 12 of them in your glove compartment...
...clearly won the war; Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed an anti-trans-fat bill into law on July 25. Earlier, Joseph sued San Francisco's parking department to get the agency to remove graffiti from its signs, and he was an anti-litter activist. Graffiti and litter - including, say, plastic shopping bags - live on, so he's batting about...
...former anti-litter activist support plastic bags? Joseph points out, and some environmentalists agree, that in many ways paper bags are just as bad for the environment as plastic ones. While paper bags decompose, they also release methane while doing so. While plastic bags are sometimes made with petrochemicals, paper bags require more energy to be made and recycled. The evidence that plastic bags kill marine life is not conclusive, and it's generally acknowledged that the detritus from commercial fishing is much more damaging. "My research into this issue has proved to me that something funny is going...
...However persuasive his arguments, Joseph's task may be Canute-like. In June, China banned shops throughout the country from giving out free plastic bags and banned the production, sale and use of any plastic bags less than one-thousandth of an inch thick. Bhutan banned the bags on the grounds that they interfered with national happiness. Ireland has imposed a hefty 34-cent fee for each bag used. Both Uganda and Zanzibar have banned them, as have 30 villages in Alaska. Scores of countries have imposed or are considering similar measures...
...Joseph labors on nevertheless, undaunted by the tide or by what his Marin County neighbors must think. "I've told a lot of people that I'm trying to save the plastic bag," he says. "They look at me with horror." But he says that no, he has not seen a drop-off in dinner-party invitations. "This is not an issue that belongs in the left bucket or the right bucket. It's about truth. And I'm determined to make it register...