Here’s one general way to describe my life:
Go to CVS for decongestants and a birthday card—acquire plastic bag.
Go to Best Buy for the DVD and the soundtrack to my latest favorite movie, Terrence Malick’s The New World—acquire plastic bag.
Go to Giant for weekly supply of groceries—acquire several plastic bags.
Go to Blue Ridge County Store for a sandwich and a yogurt—acquire plastic bag.
Go to Barnes & Noble for latest gargantuan novel by Thomas Pynchon—acquire plastic bag.
Go to…
O.K., O.K., you get the idea (and I have a sneaking suspicion that most of your lives can be described in the same manner). I’ve got cupboards and drawers full of the things. Parts of my house are like mock landfills. Have I no shame?
I’m not one of those people who remember their dreams, but I can easily imagine that I’ve had a recurring one over the years that goes something like this: I’m standing next to a burial mound of plastic bags, blast of cold wind after blast of cold wind hitting them so that they make a sound like a death rattle. I look down at my feet and see Freud tying my legs together with a bag blown loose from the mound. Then I look over my shoulder and see Jung tying my hands via the same method. Both men are cackling in their own way at how easy this dream is to interpret. Then Al Gore approaches and administers the finishing touch by slipping one of the offending bags over my head.
I do have a little shame that allows me to think about the problem fairly rationally. How about refusing to accept them in the first place? I’m sort of proud to say that I have managed that a few times—especially when the purchases are easy to carry. But most of the time I’m hypnotized by the rustling sound of goods making their way into their temporary home. The process is over before I know it. There’s also the matter of how some cashiers seem so hurt if I just say no. “Naked like that?” their eyes seem to say, as if I’m suggesting polar bears should get sheared like sheep.
How about recycling? I have on more than one occasion brought a grocery-cart-sized load of plastic bags back to the grocery store. But somehow that activity seems futile in the long run, like keeping global warming from increasing but not making it decrease.
Why don’t I use a reusable bag? I’m wary of coming across as an environmental lunatic. But shouldn’t we all be stark raving mad in that respect these days?
Apparently, I’m not alone in taking the largely comatose approach to environmental consciousness. Some retail outfits, such as IKEA, have put in place something akin to electroshock therapy: charging a nickel for plastic bags to discourage their use. IKEA’s initiative is called “bag the plastic bag” (shoot, they beat us to the clever phrase—it would have been the perfect headline for this article).
For Wales, such a step is mere child’s play. Just last month, that country, dizzy from the fact that the U.K. uses 8 billion plastic bags each year, made a move to ban them altogether by next March. The Assembly Government in Wales sees it as a sister-measure to their public-smoking ban.
Would I pay 5 cents for every plastic bag I now have in my house? I think I’d rather uproot my whole life and move to Wales. The bottom line: I’m waiting for retail stores to take a small step or government-types to take a big step and force me to stop being a complete jerk.