June 22, 2009

Synthetics, Please
FOUND by Easy Fiend in In my mailbox
Someone shoved this in my mailbox the other week. They had me for a moment, then I did a little search and discovered that every, single printed plastic bag I could find in my house had actually been made in China, so screw this crusade.
Grab Bag in Chi Town
Global warming can be solved if we all go to the beach and pick up our trash, and keep the plastic bag-making Americans employed and throwing our shity diapers on the beach to keep solving global warming, and, wait, I'm so full of shit, even I can't keep it straight.
+ June 22, 2009 01:08 AM +
Clover in green pajamas
What are those drawings of?
+ June 22, 2009 01:27 AM +
Why Panic? Go Organic.
Well hmm. the drawing on the left seems to depict a reusable grocery bag. The one on the right seems to be missing a cute widdle punkin face, but I'm pretty sure it's one of those orange, plastic trick-or-treat buckets with a black handle.

Let's all just get up off the couch and go to the beach. Sounds good to me. You bring the dogs, I'll bring the beer.

Was this letter written by a well-intentioned fifth grader? What kind of research backs up that "..over 5000 Americans are losing their jobs.." ? Cite?
+ June 22, 2009 01:33 AM +
baby basil in the herb garden
Funny thing, life...I remember the big hoohah Against paper bags in the 60's and 70's because we were "murdering trees" and polluting the atmosphere to process the celullose (sp?). Plastic bags were supposed to be great because they were reusable and recyclable. (And of course the oil industry would benefit, because plastic is made from...)

Now plastic is the enemy because it pollutes the water and the air to make them and they aren't biodegradable.

Personally I use cloth bags. Deal with it. I'm not changing again.
+ June 22, 2009 01:35 AM +
Dina in oz
Hmm, let's see... one cloth bag or 3829837429 plastic ones? I think I know which one I'd pick.
+ June 22, 2009 01:51 AM +
a in line at Fred Meyer
I was going to criticize the use of "organic" here, but I guess bags can be organic without being from organically grown sources. Damn words with more than one meaning. My brain hurts.
+ June 22, 2009 02:00 AM +
Dog breath in Vernal Utah
I think the left drawing means "no locks" meaning the world should be open for all to use each others stuff. The other drawing is of a fluffy skirt which we all should be wearing so our stuff down there is not locked either. Free the genitalia!
+ June 22, 2009 05:47 AM +
Librarian in the woodwork

The "good" picture is of a gnome wearing a tiny pointed hat, showing his bulbous nose and fluffy white beard.

These forest gnomes are all up in arms about climate change. As the earth warms and kudzu enlarges the territory it has conquered, they will be forced to move further and further north. When they make those moves, the gnomes will have to bag up their belongings; but they are having a hard time deciding just what kinds of bags -- paper, plastic, dyed cotton, hemp -- they should use. (Between you and me, they're probably going with the organic hemp.)
+ June 22, 2009 06:42 AM +
Freonz freak in g hallucinations
The bad picture is a Google Earth shot of a Mustang Shelby backing out of a black garage. And the good picture is an overhead shot of a fuzzy, newly hatched chick.
+ June 22, 2009 07:07 AM +
lost in thought
How is it exactly that picking up our trash will stop global warming?
+ June 22, 2009 07:41 AM +
Feeling in coherent
Sadly, I can think of nothing clever to write here except that I'm glad this is not a repeat.

Maybe I can come up with something when they show it next week.
+ June 22, 2009 07:44 AM +
Erp in Burp
@ Basil:

Cloth bags? But what about the 5,000 American workers who will lose their jobs because you aren't using organic paper bags? (I know it's 5,000, because I read it on the Internet.)

And what about the 8, 320 Chinese plastic bag makers who will also lose their jobs? Do you not care about world peace?

And if you start picking up litter on the beach, aren't you putting some legal migrant litter-picker-upper out of a job?
+ June 22, 2009 08:22 AM +
Librarian in the woodwork

@ Erp ... plus, don't forget the 827 dock workers in California who will lose their jobs if they don't have imported Chinese plastic bags to unload;

and the 12 Food and Drug Administration inspectors who won't have bags to inspect for safety issues;

and the ship captains and crews who won't be floating the bags over here from Shanghai.

Besides which, the enslaved child laborers who sit at sewing machines in central America all day long assembling organic cloth shopping bags for rich American environmentalists to use in lugging home their over-priced designer produce ... those kids are going to be out of work if you switch back to the organic paper OR the petroleum-based plastic.

From now on, I'm walking to the grocery store and only buying what I can carry home in my pockets and hands. No bags for me!
+ June 22, 2009 10:03 AM +
Terrie-Is-So-Very in totally-unique-ville
Is that Cartman?
+ June 22, 2009 10:16 AM +
Flargy in New Haven, CT
The versatility of plastic bags is vastly underappreciated. Run out of diapers? Slap one on your kid. Improvised plastic bag diaper now shity? Throw it in the little trash can lined with - you guessed it - another plastic bag! Shity diaper reaalllly stinky? Affix a plastic bag to your nose and mouth until the job is done (WARNING! SUFFOCATION HAZARD!)
+ June 22, 2009 10:26 AM +
silentcogs in spooner
I made a paper bag once...
+ June 22, 2009 10:38 AM +
Muse on the Loose
Conservative Ed liked to get all his propaganda out there. He made lots of signs like this one. Among his posters were "Stop Using Organic Bags," "Stop Picking Up Trash," "Stop Voting," "Stop Being Pro-Choice," "Stop Ridiculing Joe the Plumber," and so on. He didn't know or care that when you take plastic bags and put them in the "To Be Recycled" bucket at the supermarket, they're actually taken to India and incinerated. Who cares about the Earth if Americans are going to lose their jobs?
+ June 22, 2009 10:56 AM +
Terrie-Is-So-Very in totally-unique-ville
When we put them in the recycle bin, they should take them back to China and have underpaid, but grateful to have a job at all slave labor crochet them into re-usable bags and sell them back to us.
+ June 22, 2009 12:12 PM +
orinoco womble in wimbledon burrow
Oh but they do, Terrie! Except instead of crocheting them, they are heat-pressed into 1/8 in thick layers, bleached in a process that is horrendous for their environment, made into permanent totes, and then screen-printed with beautiful photos of vanishing wildlife, at a cost of about 8 cents a piece. Then the printed shopping totes are sold in European supermarkets for 1 to 2 Euros a piece.
+ June 22, 2009 12:25 PM +
Just me in my house
What a load of BS. Nancy Pelosi must have written this.
+ June 22, 2009 12:58 PM +
Hiplainsdrifter in South Portland, Maine

I think they really meant stop using bags period - use boxes instead.
+ June 22, 2009 01:52 PM +
Chas1ngM3m0ries in Andover
Oh, my...
+ June 22, 2009 01:55 PM +
gleaming in my cube
Google "North Pacific garbage patch"/"North pacific gyre" for a great reason this note is total B.S.
+ June 22, 2009 02:54 PM +
Matt in my cubicle
Project mayhem?
+ June 22, 2009 03:57 PM +
Beth in cognito
God, I love humanity.
When I read this, all I can think is...HOW are we even smart enough to make bags!? Lets stop bickering for a moment and celebrate the marvel of our ridiculous society...we've gone to the moon(or havent if you're with the conspiracy believers but hell, in my opinion that would be even more impressive!) and yet can still produce beautifully hilarious things like this! I love us!
PS - I actually just cried laughing at the comment that the bad bag was an overhead shot of a baby chick HAAAAAH!
+ June 22, 2009 04:31 PM +
Mike in Miami, FL
You just can't win. If only they had some sort of renewable, recyclable container that is biodegradable... Oh yeah, PAPER BAGS, but they made us get rid of them for something worse!
+ June 22, 2009 05:20 PM +
kamentoro
Global warming is a dilemma, we still need exploit this earth to create wealth.
+ June 22, 2009 08:52 PM +
Hehehe...
Highplains drifter said 'box'.
+ June 22, 2009 09:48 PM +
you people are f' in crazy
Boxes are paper and shitty is spelled with two t's, and why can't anyone address how picking up trash could stop global warming? Or is it just too ridiculous to contemplate?
+ June 22, 2009 10:18 PM +
mona lisa in the louvre
you people, it's too ridiculous to contemplate. Yet we do anyway.
+ June 23, 2009 07:54 AM +
EARTH FIRST!! (we'll fuck up the other planets later.)

`





+ June 24, 2009 09:06 AM +
Sarah in the plastic factory
My boyfriend used to manage a plastic factory, and he said that they actually bought all of their grocery bags from China - it was cheaper to ship them there and resell them than to manufacture them. I'd be surprised to find out that China has the cutting-edge plastic technology required to make these new biodegradeable bags. heh.
+ June 24, 2009 11:47 AM +
Librarian in the woodwork

What biodegradable plastic often means, though, is "breaks up into tiny, tiny, tiny pieces of plastic" and NOT "breaks up into atoms and molecules that occur in nature." That's not 'biodegradable' in the traditional sense. Or the healthy one.
+ June 24, 2009 02:35 PM +
Too many beers in side me
Padlocks bad. Lawn Dwarfs, good.
+ June 25, 2009 08:08 AM +
To little to late in Parma, OH
You know all those plastic milk jugs, soda bottles, etc.? They pollute billions of gallons water being rinsed out before they are recycled, which means melted down, releasing toxins into the air, then reformed (using millions of gallons of fossil fuel to power the machinery). All this so we wouldn't break a glass bottle on the kitchen floor. NOW THAT'S WHAT I CALL PROGRESS, DAMN IT!
+ June 25, 2009 08:16 AM +
photodegradable chopping bag in the sun
Well, and also so we can have those awesomely cool milk bottle boat competitions. Those are hella fun.
+ June 25, 2009 10:06 AM +

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