Just Bag It

                Spencer Schillerstrom                                                                                                                                      1/12/2015

                The movie Trashed opened my eyes to a lot of troublesome topics about the way we deal with our waste. Out of the many topics that were discussed, one in particular caught my eye. After seeing the section in the movie about how plastic is spread all over our oceans, I wanted to know more about the problem with our plastic usage. After a little time spent looking up different articles, I stumbled upon a movie called Bag It, a documentary about a guy exploring our usage of everything plastic.

            This movie, written by Michelle Wright, addresses the plastic movement in its entirety. During the movie, everything from bag politics to health of both humans and animals are addressed. After consideration of all the points made in the movie, our current social norm of using plastic bags just doesn’t make sense! As stated in the movie, 80% of plastic and trash that finds its way into the ocean comes from the land. This trash does not biodegrade like it does on land, but instead just breaks up into smaller pieces, which is very dangerous to marine life. On top of this, plastic contains chemicals such as BPA and phthalates that can harm human health. Since a lot of our foods are contained in plastic, we come in contact with these chemicals regularly. Out of their many effects, BPA and phthalates can increase the risk of cancer, heart disease, and diabetes. In other words, plastic is dangerous. But what can we do to change this?

The movie also discusses the current anti-plastic movement that mainly deals with the idea of reusable bags and/or paper bags. So far, the movement has had a small scale success in America, as towns all over have begun to ban ultra-thin plastic bags. If we have learned everything from the MacBride readings, however, it is that there must be some government action if large scale change in the current capitalistic system is going to happen. Seattle, for example, has fought long and hard to try to de-incentivize the usage of plastic bags by implementing a small fee. With little success due to groups profiting from the plastic bag industry, an ordinance was passed to completely ban plastic bags. Progress is being made, but we still have a long way to go.

As a society, we have created a social norm to use a material that is built to last for a long time to serve a purpose that lasts only a few minutes a day. If living sustainably is a goal that our world has (which it should be), plastic bags and plastic materials do not have a place our future. Bag It is a great documentary that illustrates this point beautifully, and I recommend it to anyone looking to find more information on the topic.