May 04 2004, 10:38 PM The Thing About The Bags

Some time ago upon emerging from a local polling place, having cast stones in the primaries, I was accosted by a gentleman who, armed with clipboard and the kind of bald earnest that can only be manufactured and not meant, tried to have me do him the favor of putting my name on his petition. I am originally from a place where this sort of thing is strictly verboten; one cannot legally even put signs within a stones throw of the doors of a polling place, and I am a product of the privacies so cherished there. I declined the man, and tried to tell him why, and things went somewhat downhill.

I was interrupted. "Where are you from?" I told him, which got me suspicion; it is not a local place. "And you just voted?" I explained to him that I have been living here between these rivers for the better of a decade, but I grew up elsewhere. I pointed down the street to our home, but the concept seemed strange to him. "Well, I've been up where you say you're from," he said. The petition was about the environment. "And given that, I'd expect you would care more about the environment."

So I pointed out that it was a privacy issue more than environmental issue, and I tried to explain about the plastic bags, to be interrupted again. That was enough for me, so I took my leave and went to buy some yogurt. After me, he called out:

"I'm always interested in hearing people's remarks."

No, old man, you were not. You were interested in hard selling me into doing you the favor of having my name for your list. You were not considerate of my privacy - you were not considerate of me. If you had been at all interested in my remarks, you would have listened about the plastic bags.

It turns out that plastic bags, if care is not taken, break down in the environment into tiny bits in a similar way to many other plastic products. These bits work their way down into the water, and then down to the sea.

In the Pacific, this is a particular problem: in the middle of that great ocean turns a great slow eddy, the Pacific Gyre. The Gyre is a natural collector of ocean-borne trash, and it is becoming thicker and thicker with tiny bits of plastic. One very real effect of this is the death of birds. Young albatross chicks consume ever more plastic with their meals each year, and cannot process or pass it. It sits in their stomachs and keeps them full, and they slowly starve to death. The effect on the population is accelerating.

In part due to this, I try to bring a cloth bag to the grocery when I go, to tote my goods home in. I too often fail. When I forget, however, and I am not presented with the opportunity to help out with the bagging, I leave the choice of material to the person at the end of the belt. I find it useful to be as least difficult as I can be in those situations (I have seen the strangeness pass for hours through the checkout line, and I am not ashamed to admit that I lack the tremendous patience that is needed to make go of it on the weird bad days), and the relative merits and sins of paper or plastic are somewhat set aside by my attempts to make good use of whatever I get, be it craft or recycling or some other thing (I too often fail).

That particular time, having fetched my yogurt, I asked for a plastic bag. I would bring it back to that man, I said. I would show him the bag, and tell him stories about it. I would demonstrate my care for the environment. I would give him my remarks. When I returned to the polling place, they had gone.

I am uncertain what wisdom I can offer toward plastics. We have a real taste for the stuff, now, and that hunger will most assuredly send ever greater amounts out to poison the seas. At the same time, polymers save effort, save time, save lives, and make such things possible as the temperamental machine on my lap and all the activity that it implies. We should likely use less. We should certainly exercise more care. I do not know.

I am more sure of this: if one wants from someone a favor, don't be rude to them.