Word: plastics
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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...
...pantheon of lost causes, defending the plastic grocery bag would seem to be right up there with supporting smoking on planes or the murder of puppies. The ubiquitous thin white bag has moved squarely beyond eyesore into the realm of public nuisance, a symbol of waste and excess and the incremental destruction of nature. But where there's an industry at risk, there's an attorney, and the plastic bag's advocate in chief is Stephen L. Joseph, head of the quixotically titled Save the Plastic Bag campaign...
...Recently, Joseph and his cause have taken a few hits. Last Tuesday, Los Angeles became the most recent American city to take a stand against the bag, when its city council voted unanimously to ban plastic in all supermarkets and retail stores by 2010 if a statewide fee on the bags has not been put in place by then. (It's estimated that Los Angeles uses 2 billion plastic bags a year, only 5% of which are recycled.) Joseph had filed suit against Los Angeles County on the grounds that it did not prepare an Environmental Impact Report...
...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...