Plastic Bags: What is to be Done?
Steve Scher
02/13/2008 at 9:00 a.m.
Plastic bags are durable containers for groceries – so durable it takes 500 to 1000 years for a bag to decompose. It also takes a lot of oil to manufacture the 500 billion plastic shopping bags that are used every year worldwide. To deal with the problem China just announced a ban on plastic grocery bags; and there's a similar move afoot in Washington State and in Seattle. Are plastic bags a serious environmental problem? If so, do you support mandatory regulations or a more libertarian approach? And is paper any better?
Guests:
State Representative Marilyn Chase is Democrat from Shoreline, has sponsored a bill aimed at regulating plastic bags in grocery stores.
Joe Gilliam is President of the Northwest Grocery Association.
Tim Croll is director of solid waste for Seattle Public Utilities.
Andrew J. Hoffman is Professor of Sustainable Enterprise at the The University of Michigan.
