A state in the northern part of India has outlawed the use of plastic bags. Not outlawed them in the sense that you’d get a ten dollar fine for being caught with one. Oh no. Outlawed them like you get seven years in jail or a $2,000 fine for being caught with one. Word!

But Ireland has achieved basically the same results without such draconian measures.

In 2002, Ireland passed a tax on plastic bags; customers who want them for their purchases must pay 33 cents per bag at the register. There was an advertising awareness campaign. And then something happened that was bigger than the sum of those parts.

Within weeks, plastic-bag use dropped by 94 percent. Within a year, nearly everyone had bought reusable cloth bags, keeping them in offices and in the backs of cars. Plastic bags were not outlawed, but carrying them became socially unacceptable – on a par with wearing a fur coat or not cleaning up after one’s dog.

Now that’s the way to get results.

photo courtesy of the San Diego Union-Tribune

Something this extreme is not going to fly in Missouri:

Picnickers in the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh could soon have a shock if they carry their lunch in a polythene bag.

The new law is the most stringent in India

Under a new law, anyone found even using a polythene bag could face up to seven years behind bars or a fine of up to 100,000 rupees ($2,000).

Politicians in the picturesque Himalayan state, a popular tourist destination, say polythene pollution is a major problem.

…….

The new law bans the production, storage, use, sale and distribution of polythene bags.

Perhaps the law in that part of India isn’t exteme. It only mandates a seven year sentence. In South Africa, using thin plastic bags could get you a ten year sentence.

Picture it: “But officer, the grapes kept falling between my fingers. I had to carry them in something.”

“Hmpf! You should have thought about whether saving a few grapes was worth ten years in jail.”

Next weekend, I’ll describe a much less drastic solution, but one that’s beyond anything yet tried in this country.

People accept plastic bags without a thought. You’d accept one to carry a box of cough syrup out of Walgreens, right? Why not? They’re free. Not.

They cost at both ends. They cost petroleum in the making–enough to drive a car a mile for every fourteen bags you make.

And they cost cities when it comes time to dispose of them–up to 17 cents a bag–wasting millions of taxpayer dollars. Of course, they don’t all get disposed of properly. Some areas of the ocean have as much as six pounds of plastic bags for every one pound of fish.

But cloth bags are such a nuisance. I’ll just go with paper instead, you may think. Bad idea. Paper bags are no better. They take just as long to biodegrade in landfills and take up more space while they’re doing it. It takes 70 percent more greenhouse gases to make a paper bag and creates 50 times more water pollution.

So, be a good doobie and get some cloth bags. If you use one twice a week for a couple of years, you’ll save 832 plastic bags. That’s enough petroleum to drive a car sixty miles.

Jeanne Kirkton tells me that she and Jeanette Mott Oxford have discussed the plastic bag problem, and if Jeanne’s elected to the state rep seat in the 91st, she and Jeanette may well sponsor legislation to limit their use. I don’t foresee them trying to ban all plastic bags: people might still be using them to get their grapes home. But if so, they’ll be encouraged to recycle.

Last time I wrote about plastic bags, I asked you to estimate how many you’ve received in the last week. As many as the average person, you think? If so, you better start refusing some of them when they’re offered, because the average family of four consumes 1500 plastic bags a year.

In the United States.

500 billion to one trillion plastic bags are used worldwide each year. That’s 1,000,000,000,000.

And only .6 percent to 4 percent of those 1,000,000,000,000 get recycled.

When my husband and I visited Germany in 1993, he talked me into walking up to the corner store for him and getting him a six pack of beer. Little did I know how the Germans avoid waste. “Sechs bier, bitte,” I told the clerk, and she handed me six bottles–not only with no plastic bag, but also with no cardboard carrier. And I juggled those six bottles all the way back to the motel.

Good for the Germans.

Will Americans ever follow suit? We could at least print messages on the bags urging people to recycle. The one in the picture claims it’s even biodegradable. What? In under a hundred years? And will it be nontoxic when it does degrade? Are those things possible?

Try counting them up: how many plastic bags did you accept from one store or another in the last week? Or if doing that taxes your memory too much just start with your last trip to the grocery store and move to the present.

Jennifer’s Pharmacy in Clayton has cardboard signs hanging in its street window to educate the public about these wonderful conveniences. Here’s some of what I learned from the sidewalk recently:

Twelve billion barrels of oil are used each year to make plastic bags in the U.S.

With oil increasingly expensive, how much sense does it make to fritter it away on items that are actually “in use” approximately an hour? Once their fleeting use ends, they can be recycled. But if they’re not:

They end up in landfills or as wind-blown litter. They take up to 100 years to biodegrade, eventually breaking down into tiny toxic bits, contaminating our soil and water.

Oh, and by the way, the landfills where they biodegrade over the course of 100 years produce methane, a greenhouse gas 22 times as powerful as carbon dioxide.

Thanks to Jennifer’s Pharmacy, I’ll have more to say on this subject later. For now, back to you. What was the count? (And did you remember to include the plastic sleeves your newspaper’s delivered in?)