Written response to the readings of Plastic: A Love Story: “They are not lies, but rather incomplete truths, which is worse.”

Perhaps the reading that has intriged me the most so far was Chapter 6: Battle of the Bag from Plastic: A Love Story. In a way, I had always wondered how did we as a society became so attached to plastic bags, specifically single-use disposable plastic bags. In realty, however, I never bothered to stop and think how actually was it even possible that in plenty twenty first century, with all our knowledge about the damage that this irrational and inefficient practice has borught to the world, we were still so fond to creating waste, or rather, that we were still so unbothered. It was not until this reading that I started created links, and realized for example, that throughout my life I have been told that many of the alternatives (such as paper bags or the cloth bags, which “consume a lot of resources”) were equally if not worse than just using plastic bags. And I am not saying that a random advertisement was forced upon my younger self. My parents, my friends and even my professors, to whom you would trust your intelectual opinions, used to tell me that “Paper bags are terrible. Terrible!”, quoting Stephen Joseph from the reading. Internalizing that the different alternatives 

Internalizing that the different alternatives have also their flaws is not a problem in itself; but rather when this critique to the alternatives makes the people adquire an attitude of indifference, where “it doesn’t matter if we don’t use plastic bags, since the problem will still be there anyways”. It is quite intriguing to think that this opinion would leave us so close to the answer, yet it has been so hard to take the next step: the problem are not the plastic bags, but rather the single use products! I feel this attitude of indiference over the issue is fundamentally what is holding us back, and attitude that is also fueled by this idea of the recycling process as a solution to the problem. This was perhaps the idea that surprised me the most, and that made me realize how complex this issue has been, not only in itself, but also as it has been directed by corporations with interests in mantaining the status quo. From the outside it seems so obvious: release some of the guilt the customer has been feeling and they won’t worry about the issue as deeply. It’s because of this that we have to recognize the true extent of the problem, and which solutions are useless (such as changing plastic bags to paper bags) or way less efficient as we would like them to be (recycling).