The Annual Estate clean-up began last week, in conjunction with dryer, warmer weather and the spring cleaning scheduled at Wayne Manor. (Batman and Enviro-Girl keep a similar calendar.) Enviro-Girl grabbed a garbage bag and pulled her Wellingtons over her feet (jeans tucked in) before heading out to the West Field. The West Field is near the elementary school and traditionally Enviro-Girl finds old assignments, permission slips, juice box containers and fruit snack wrappers blown into the tall grass and prairie. Picking up school trash doesn't bother Enviro-Girl--really, for a school of 820 children, there isn't too much litter. And the debris of childhood makes her nostalgic for her own school days of packed lunches and Christopher Columbus Day crossword puzzles. She discovers the occasional football and kickball (returned the next day in her child's backpack) and random windblown trash from tipped-over garbage cans.
This year, however, Enviro-Girl blew a gasket while out in the field. She gathered TWO TIMES the usual amount of trash in the West Field and most of that new trash was plastic shopping bags. Enviro-Girl thinks plastic shopping bags should be outlawed, the sight of them makes her physically sick. She wonders:
* Why make a disposable item out of a nonrenewable resource like petroleum?
* Why make a disposable item that is NOT biodegradable?
* Why doesn't the fact that there is a Great Pacific Garbage Patch covering the area twice the size of Texas freak people out to the point of making plastic bags illegal?
* What are people thinking when they go into a store and buy a loaf of bread and have it bagged? That's now TWO plastic bags used as packaging...
* What is the bagger thinking when they automatically put a single item into a shopping bag? The bags cost the stores money, wouldn't it be more cost-effective to ask if a person wants a bag--and then maybe fewer people would take them?
Yes, Enviro-Girl has issues with plastic shopping bags (and whiny children, advertising on TV and AM talk radio). Plastic shopping bags are wastefully redundant since most purchases are packaged anyway and it seems a no-brainer to stop using them. Plenty of places have banned plastic shopping bags, including China (a country notorious for its polluting practices), South Africa, Ireland and Taiwan. It's a small thing to tax shoppers for them or impose fees on companies using them--it's a much bigger thing for Enviro-Girl to retrieve them off of 60 acres and then send them to a landfill. Enviro-Girl is begging you, people, stop using the damn plastic shopping bags. Advocate for their ban, reuse your shopping bags or get yourself some cloth or canvas bags for shopping. In honor of Earth Day this week, make this one small change to help Save the Planet from Pollution. 
Take a pass on the shopping bag.
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