As we progress in the 21st century and come closer and closer to a day of reckoning with the landfills and floating garbage piles we’re sharing the planet with, the green apostles are saying that the root of all evil is in fact not the love of money, but those innocuous little plastic sandwich baggies that make brown-bagging it so much easier.
Californians alone use 19 billion plastic bags each year. Plastic bag litter is dangerous to marine life and costly to taxpayers who get the bill for cleanup efforts. Last year, Achim Steiner, the head of the U.N. Environment Programme, said definitively, “There is simply zero justification for manufacturing them any more, anywhere.”
All this is why One Small Step, a company that sells reusable lunchware, has launched its catchy “Boycott the Baggie” campaign. It’s asking everyone to pledge to generate one less piece of trash per day, a relatively modest cutback — and one that we might be forced to make anyway if many communities pass the plastic grocery bag bans they’re considering.
Are you interested in boycotting the baggie? Check out these cloth versions that you could easily replicate yourself. Then catch up with other boycotters on the Facebook page.
Photo by Boycott the Baggie via Facebook.