Oh plastic bag, can I compare thee to a summer day? You are more convenient and more useful than all that came before you.
Strong winds will shake the trunk of my heart but you will never fall from a tree once stuck in a branch. Your convenience doth shine even though I know your destruction to the earth is hot.
Sadly nature is changing and your eternal usage is coming to an end. The inferno summer of last has set the stage for your demise.
As long as I can breathe or my eyes can see I will mourn you plastic bag and all the ways you brought me joy.
My imperfect sonnet may be tongue and cheek but it’s a fact, single use plastics are headed for extinction. The Plastics Action Plan is being implemented, (albeit slowly), and it’s coming to a store, event, office, or school near you.
I love the plastic bag for its simplicity and versatility. The light soft ripple of a clean white plastic bag is a beautiful thing. They are strong. They hold liquid, garbage and dog poop. It keeps bread and produce fresh, and keeps things dry in the rain.
Plastic bags are not expensive so you never have to worry if they rip. There’s always plenty of plastic bags around, at least for now.
As hard as I try I cannot envision a replacement. Compostable plastic maybe but I’m not sure that is viable in the long term. Paper, well it’s inferior.
I must divorce the plastic bag because it’s contributing to the 1.2 billion single-use items dumped in Metro Vancouver landfills yearly. That’s a frightening statistic and our local governments are going to restrict their use whether we like it or not.
Plastics are killing our oceans and our landfills are exploding so it’s time, time to let go of old bad habits like reaching for the plastic bag.
By now we should all be carrying reusable shopping bags, and drinking coffee and water from reusable bottle and cups. Don’t use plastic utensils or straws, buy bars of soap not body wash, and compost your food. For the smokers, don’t drop your butts and don’t buy plastic lighters.
Thankfully the City of Delta is planning big changes for us because we can't do it without rules.
It’s in our best interest to reduce our plastics now, so when the hammer falls we will be experts at reducing our own waste.
Ingrid Abbott is a freelance broadcaster who is in a 12-step program to control her Ziploc bag obsession. It’s a work in progress.
