Moneybags

Here's more on plastic bags, a topic I first brought up here.

After the plastic water bottle, you couldn't do much better than the plastic shopping bag as a symbol of American consumerism run amok. We go through 380 billion a year. An estimated 5.2% get recycled; in landfills, they could last 1,000 years. Bags are made from oil, and our bag habit costs us 1.6 billion gallons each year. That last statistic, and its link to global warming, is starting to drive change.

In mid march, Ikea started charging 5 cents for their bags and consumption dropped by 50% in the U.S. and 95% in the U.K. Interesting analysis here at Seth's blog.