“In the United States alone, an estimated 12 million barrels of oil is used annually to make the plastic bags that Americans consume. The United States International Trade Commission reported that 102 billion plastic bags were used in the U.S. in 2009” (Bag It The Movie). This is an enormous amount of consumption of a material that is made from a non-renewable resource, a material that will exist in the landfill for many hundreds of years---and that is going to be thrown away after a few minutes of use. This seems incredibly foolish, right?! It is! Luckily, there has been a movement to use reusable shopping bag and, I’m so proud to say, our Fargo grocery stores have taken steps to promote reusable bags.

But we live in a world where the feedback loop of our individual consumer actions is so large and so far away that those consequences have a hard time making an impact on our actions. We want to do the right thing, we want to stay informed, but it is often an incredible burden to make morally conscious decisions all the time. We need someone to give us a little push to quit the habit. So, I propose adopting a ban on plastic bags or at least imposing a small fee. Now, I’m all for reducing gov’t intrusion into our lives, but just as we adopted measures to ban smoking indoors in public places for the sake of our health, let’s take up to challenge to reduce our consumption of plastic bags for the sake of our environment! We are such incredibly creative creatures and adapt so easily to new situations that I’m confident we’ll find all sorts of ways to circumvent any small inconvenience we might encounter. Think of our grandparents---they lived without plastic bags and they were just as happy. It is an unambiguously good thing to do and if we push ourselves a little bit by the authority of the gov’t we could be the first major city in the area to establish such a precedent.