Face Your Bag
Posted by
Clark Williams-Derry
05/21/2007 12:00 PM
Paper vs. plastic vs. who cares?
Ok, I'm whining. But the obsession with paper vs. plastic shopping bags just plain bugs me.
As The Oregonian's Michael Milstein correctly points out: both paper and plastic have their pros and cons. Plastic has some surprising environmental advantages (more here), but also some unexpected drawbacks, including gumming up recycling equipment -- which makes it hard to figure out which option is actually worse in practice. But, quite clearly, reusing bags you already have is better than asking for a new one.
The thing is, we already know all this. What's more, we've known it for decades.
And (heresy alert!) the truth is that this is that paper-vs-plastic is an astonishingly low-priority issue.
