Plastic bags seem to be an ever-present part of American society. We get them everywhere, the grocery store, the hardware store, the convenience store, even the book store! As a result, we also find them everywhere. Their American Beauty-esq dance happens in alleyways and corn fields, along highways and in forests, even in our own back yards and storage units. Many Americans fight their environmentally damaging presence by using reusable canvas bags for shopping, yet they are still in the minority and plastic bags continue to spring up everywhere.

A lot of enterprising people use them for crafts (as in an earlier article I wrote this year) but their production still continues to create harmful effects on the environment. Most plastic bags are made from petrochemicals (yes, petroleum as in oil), a non-renuable resource. During production, the heavy machinery required to secure the oil and the energy needed for the refining process (which comes from burning tires), ozone gasses are produced. Since recycling is a difficult and underdeveloped process, many bags are not recycled and find their way into landfills and can be harmful to animals and natural environments.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if they simply weren’t an option? While it may be a stretch for Americans to contemplate (or even for countries such as England and Canada whose grocery stores charge for them) going cold-turkey that is exactly what several countries and many cities are now doing. Parts of India and all of Uganda officially have banned the use of polyurethane bags by retailers. They are joined by Paris and San Francisco. Although San Francisco only banns the use of the plastic bags by retailers with over $2 million in revenues, they are the first city in the United States to take the initiative. Uganda, whose whole country has banned the bags, is one of the leaders in the environmental revolution, despite having a national budget of less than 2 billion (less than .2% of the US budget and 3% of what we spend on National Security every year). Wouldn’t it be interesting if the US undertook the same initiatives?