NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #18/NN_1992_18.iso/spool/sci/environm/10723

Internet Message Format | 1992-08-17 | 2.0 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!ames!sgi!cdp!ecologycntr
From: Ecology Center Fund <[e-mail]>
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Date: 17 Aug 92 09:00 PDT
Subject: Re: Plastic or Paper...which is environ
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Nf-From: cdp.UUCP!ecologycntr    Aug 17 09:00:00 1992
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We get the paper versus plastic question asked of us here at the
Ecology Center pretty often.  Our reply is usually that neither is
good, and that a cloth bag is marginally less harmful in the real
world (where you have to make the cloth bag from something and
most people won't use it all the time, or will buy more groceries
than will fit.

But the whole emphasis on the shopping bag conveniently relegates
thought about the environmental impacts of your shopping lifestyle
to the END of the process.  We'd rather people ask:

How did you get to the store?  How are the products you are buying
packaged?  How was the stuff inside the package produced?  Do you
need what you're considering buying?

Imagine someone who hears tomatoes are "on sale" and gets in the
car, drives 3 miles to the supermarket, (including .25 miles back
and forth in the parking lot), walks into the store and buys 4
polystyrene wrapped HDPE baskets with three tomatoes each.  The
tomatoes of course were grown in soil sterilized with methyl
bromide, were sprayed with diazinon to control hornworm, and were
bred to be resistant to herbicide so that the farmer could spray
his weeds with Roundup.  Taking the tomatoes to his car, the
shopper drives back home and eats a sandwich with one half of one
of the tomatoes sliced onto it, then lets the rest rot in the
refrigerator and throws them out, wrapper and all, three weeks
later.

Making the wrong choice in grocery bags has little effect on his
"ecological karma"

chris