Fanisi- Battle of the Bag Reflections

I found the chapter ‘Battle of the Bag‘ to be an insightful read on the history of plastic’s emergence into American popular culture. What shocked me was that the plastic corporations had to invest thousands of dollars (over multiple years) into educating people on the uses and benefits of plastic. These companies additionally had to spend even more dollars on advertising and convincing large stores to replace their paper products with plastic. Evidently, it took whole campaigns to convince people to start using plastic bags. This allowed me to realize that our transition from paper bags to plastic was, in part, orchestrated by the very organized and determined plastics industry. It sounds like a small group of companies was able to shift the entire shopping culture and it is examples like this that remind to never underestimate the power of corporate lobbying and mobilisation.

When I reflect on this reading, I have the following questions:

It took a concentrated efforts of the plastics industry over multiple years to shift the culture towards plastic usage, will it require the same concentrated effort by another more eco-friendly industry to shift us away from plastic?

What ‘eco-friendly’ industry would this be? Does it have to be an industry vs. industry fight or can people/communities fight big plastic companies?

These are broad questions. While I believe in the power of collective action by citizens, the plastics industry has the benefit of being a smaller, richer and much easier to mobilize interest group. They have the strength of small numbers and in comparison, groups like Californians Against Waste, the UNEP or even Precious Plastics would struggle to achieve the same level of culture shapping cooperation/coordination. Also, any potential challengers to the plastic industry like the compostable/biodegradable plastics industry or the renewables industries are still nascent. The efforts of citizens, NGO’s and international groups like UNEP are very important grassroots and international efforts to tackle the plastic crisis. However, reading Battle of the Bag leads me to think that we may need much more consolidated efforts that mirror the type of focused coordination adopted by the plastic industry in the 50’s and 60’s.