Elizabeth Royte, author of the newly published Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash makes some excellent points here - recycling the bags desn't really "close the loop"; feel-good, green-washed activities are not enough; and corporate profits are still trumping real change:
April 18, 2007
Elizabeth Royte, The Huffington Post
When I was asked to speak at something called BagFest at Indiana University South Bend, last week, I was initially skeptical. Why did we need a festival to collect bags for recycling, and what good did recycling them do, in the larger scheme of troubling environmental problems? But when I walked into the cafeteria and saw the ten-foot - and growing fast - mountain of plastic, I had a change of heart.
When I was asked to speak at something called BagFest at Indiana University South Bend, last week, I was initially skeptical. Why did we need a festival to collect bags for recycling, and what good did recycling them do, in the larger scheme of troubling environmental problems? But when I walked into the cafeteria and saw the ten-foot - and growing fast - mountain of plastic, I had a change of heart.
