Paper or Plastic? The Duping of the American Consumer
By Beth Isbell
About 20 years or so ago, the American Grocery industry began a campaign to convince the American consumer that paper grocery bags were harming the environment and that plastic bags were a better alternative. They spent millions in advertising, effectively, and succeeded.
Remember their campaign? Forests were being destroyed through clear-cutting, destroying natural habitat. Trees could not be replanted fast enough to meet demand. The environment was being destroyed all for the sake of consumer convenience. We all felt bad.
Now plastic is usually your only option. Most stores don’t even offer paper as an alternative, and those that do, often seem aggravated when you request paper bags instead of following the herd and just gladly and graciously accepting the plastic ones they push on you. If you make no request, you get plastic. If you request paper, you often get grief and frustration. The grocery stores bullied consumers into blindly accepting their cost-cutting ploy, … by deceit.
The truth: Trees are a renewable resource. Forests can be successfully re-planted and managed. To the extent there was any clear-cutting, it was more likely for housing lumber rather than for pulp to manufacture paper bags, and such practices have now been prohibited by law. (Notice this has not been an issue despite the huge new housing boom during the past decade).
The truth: The disposal of plastic bags harms the environment. They don’t deteriorate. Paper bags are absorbed back into the ground, naturally, within a couple of years; plastic bags stay around for hundreds or thousands of years. They are not absorbed into the soil. They are choking our landfills. They destroy scenic beauty along highways and clog cities & their sewers. We now have to spend perhaps billions more to secure more land for landfills to handle the billions and billions of plastic grocery and shopping bags, land which is harder to reclaim and more costly to restore. It is a public nightmare, growing worse, and costing taxpayers billions.
And as you have experienced, plastic bags are a nuisance. I hate getting plastic bags when buying groceries. Inevitably, I load the groceries in the back of my car, and the bags spill and roll around, precious items get crushed, and often I end up finding a can of food or other item I bought months ago hiding under my seat because it had fallen out of a plastic bag. At least the paper bags are square on the bottom and tend to remain stable during transit. Further, despite the explosion of plastic grocery bags, car makers have been inexplicably slow to equip cars with hooks, trays or storage devices designed specifically to prevent these issues.
So what happened here? Pure and simple answer: corporate greed. It is far cheaper to the grocery chains to purchase and supply customers with plastic bags instead of paper bags. The result of this greed is aggravated customers, groceries rolling around our vehicles’ floors, and perhaps, most importantly, the shifting of billions in costs from the stores to the taxpayer.
The grocery stores and plastic bag manufacturers behind this massive duping of the American consumer should be required, by law, to pick up all increased costs of disposal. If they expect the American consumers & taxpayers to bear the cost of their corporate greed, at least they should design plastic bags with square bottoms, or provide some kind of receptacles, to prevent our groceries from spilling all over our cars before we can even get them home.
Next time I go grocery shopping, I'm taking boxes with me to hold all these silly plastic bags! But maybe I'll take cardboard boxes, since I HATE PLASTIC!!!
Plastic Packaging: The Corporate Paycheck Revenge Plan
By Beth Isbell
So while we’re on the subject of plastic, what about all the products that now come wrapped and sealed in industrial grade clear plastic. I guess the thought here is to make the package bigger and harder to open to help prevent shoplifting. You’ve experienced this, when you buy ink cartridges, or a bicycle lock, or countless other products clogging store shelves.
Inevitably, you get the ink cartridge package home and try to open it. First, you try brute strength to rip the package open, breaking your fingernails on the seams which are held together with industrial strength glue or maybe just melted and fused together by some kind of heat warp. Then, you get out the scissors. So you kill your hands vainly attempting to cut through this industrial grade plastic, only to succeed in getting the package partially open, but usually never open enough to actually get the product out. So you resort back to the brute strength approach, only to get your hand half-way wedged in the jagged opening your scissors have created, and then cut yourself of the jagged plastic edge. And, if you’re lucky, you finally get the product out of the package, fifteen minutes later, covered in blood and bandages, only to have to attack the next layer of plastic or hard paper packaging, in which there is yet another plastic package. Ugh.
All of this simply to get to the ink cartridge inside, which you and your printer can’t live without. Then, you dispose of all this packaging only to clog our landfills to the choking point.
So is all this hard plastic packaging really necessary to prevent or discourage theft? No. Think about it. If they packaged the ink cartridge in a big paper box, it would serve the same purpose without destroying either the environment or your hands. Or, they could just keep smaller items, easily put in pockets, behind a counter or under lock and key or at the check-out.
So then why all this hard-shell dangerous packaging? My theory, corporate executives must have hidden cameras installed in our homes and offices where they sit around, drinking cognac and scotch, smoking expensive cigars, laughing their asses off at our feeble attempts to open up all of this packaging. Perhaps they place bets on how long it will take us to succeed, or whether we’ll be injured while opening the package and the nature and extent of our injuries. If this isn’t the case, then the reasons behind all of these industrial grade plastic packaging danger traps are lost in the crevices of all of the finger cuts or drowned in the blood pools they create.
So what’s the solution? Perhaps we can pass a law requiring that all executives of every company which chooses to employ such packaging be issued their weekly, bi-weekly or monthly paychecks wrapped inside of the hard plastic packaging that their company uses for its products. If they were forced to regularly have to open their own packaging in order to deposit their check, perhaps they would free the rest of us of having to endure this dangerous indignity forever. If nothing else, it would be fitting justice, wouldn’t it? Imagine. Legions of corporate executives having to spend an inordinate amount of time, effort and blood to open their paycheck package. If God has a sense of humor (think duckbill platypus), then maybe, just maybe, someday …
Plastic Bags and Plastic Packaging - 2 columns for 1 price!
A humorously serious look at life’s trials & tribulations,
American politics, religion, and other social madnesses by Beth Isbell.
American politics, religion, and other social madnesses by Beth Isbell.
Moderator: roxybeast
Jump to
- Community
- ↳ Introductions
- ↳ Announcements, Help, Banners, Books
- ↳ Studio8 Announcements
- ↳ Cenacle's Announcements
- ↳ Help & Feedback
- ↳ Banners
- ↳ S8 Community Books
- ↳ Radio8
- Creative Writing
- ↳ Poetry
- ↳ ~GO!
- ↳ Haiku
- ↳ Stories & Essays
- Visual Arts & Multi-Media
- ↳ Arts Center
- ↳ Paintings & Drawings
- ↳ Digital Art
- ↳ Photography
- ↳ Sculpture, Collage, etc.
- ↳ Artstalk
- ↳ Other Arts Sites
- ↳ Music, Spoken Word & Video
- Discussion
- ↳ General Discussion
- ↳ Culture, Politics, Philosophy
- ↳ Rant, Rage & Laugh
- Member Forums
- ↳ Artlogs & Studios
- ↳ Chat Spot
- ↳ Mingo's Lingo
- ↳ Asylum for the Terminally Vain
- ↳ The Luck of a Dame
- ↳ judih's Inner Jams
- ↳ Arcadia's Place
- ↳ Flying Horse Cafe
- ↳ Infinity Sideways
- ↳ Columnists
- ↳ Sunday Stream
- ↳ Life in the Horse Lane
- Archives
- ↳ Archived Community Word Jams: 2004 - 2019
- ↳ # 55 - Solstice through New Years 2019 Light-the-World Word Jam
- ↳ #54 - Healing Jam!
- ↳ #53 - Showers to Flowers Jam - April & May 2016
- ↳ #52 - 2016 Welcome Word Jam!
- ↳ #51– 2015 Annual Spring Equinox Poetry Jam
- ↳ #50 - Solstice to New Years Word Jam - 2014-2015!
- ↳ #49 - 1-Day Xtreme Jam!
- ↳ #48- The Blues & Good News New Years Jam
- ↳ #47 - The Survival Holiday Jam
- ↳ #46 - March Free Poetry Jam
- ↳ March Free Poetry Jam
- ↳ #45 - Solstice through New Years Light-the-World Word & Image Jam
- ↳ #44 - Block Party - A Spring Poetry & Image Jam
- ↳ #43 - Mid-Winter Word Jam 2011
- ↳ #42 - Spirit of Love Art & Poetry Jam
- ↳ #41 - Summer's End to Autumn Transition Jam
- ↳ #40 - The Annual Spring Equinox Jam
- ↳ #39- The 2009 Solstice thru New Years 2010 Word Jam
- ↳ #37 - Solstice 2008 thru New Years 2009 Light-the-World Jam
- ↳ #38 - The M(Earth) Word Jam
- ↳ #36- The Leaves & Arrivals Autumn Word Jam
- ↳ #35 - Close-ups of Summer Jam
- ↳ #34 - The I Can't Wait Word Jam - Part 1
- ↳ #33 - The I Can't Wait Word Jam - part 2
- ↳ #32 - Solstice to New Years Jam 2008!
- ↳ #31 - The Instant Gratification Gratitude Jam
- ↳ #30 - An April Shower of Words
- ↳ #29 - Portrait of Love Art Jam
- ↳ #28 - The January Ringing in 2007 New Years Party Jam
- ↳ #27 - 2nd Annual Winter Holi-Dazed & EnLightened Word Jam
- ↳ #26 - 8 Images in Search of a Poet
- ↳ #25 - B&W & Read All Over Jam
- ↳ #24 - The Unannounced Summer Solstice Poetry Jam
- ↳ #23 - Spring Poetry & Image Jam
- ↳ #22 - Let Me GO! Image & Word Jam
- ↳ #21 - The 2nd Annual Spring Equinox Word Jam
- ↳ #20 - Connecting Branches – A Treeku Word Jam
- ↳ #19 - 2006 New Year Jam
- ↳ #18 - The Winter Holi-Dazed & EnLightened Word Jam
- ↳ #17 - Image Jams
- ↳ #16 - The I Can't Wait Word Jam!
- ↳ #15 - The Summer Home, Summer Not Travelogue Jam
- ↳ #14 - Online Improv Play Green Room
- ↳ #13 - "Ward Nine - Frontal Lobotomy" - An Improv Play
- ↳ #12 - Major Minor Madcap Mayhem Word Jam
- ↳ #11 - The Low-Key Weekend Jam
- ↳ #10 - The 1st Annual Spring Equinox Word Jam
- ↳ #9 - Big Time Poetry Melt Word Jam
- ↳ #8 - The January Knock Yer Socks Off Jam
- ↳ #7 - 2005 New Years Party
- ↳ #6 - Saved - It's a Miracle!
- ↳ #6 - Now! More than ever - 8 Day Miracle Jam
- ↳ #5 - When the 9 Strikes!
- ↳ #4 - 2004 Election Party
- ↳ #3 - Kick out da Jams, Man!
- ↳ #2 - Jam it out!... Let's GO!
- ↳ #1 - Kick out da word jam
- ↳ Archives
- ↳ Retired Forums
- ↳ Eyewitness Reports
- ↳ Postips & e-sources
- ↳ Interviews & Articles
- ↳ Rejection Slip?
- ↳ Trailerpark
- ↳ Performance Arts
- ↳ Duets
- ↳ Workshop & Prompts
- ↳ Image Jams & Photo Travelogue
- ↳ Literature & Film
- ↳ Variations
- ↳ Retired Columns & Artlogs
- ↳ Cathouse
- ↳ Remnants of Madness
- ↳ For Pete's Sake!
- ↳ Pit of Crazy
- ↳ Pic This
- ↳ Poetry Cut-Ups
- ↳ Ronnie GETS it!
- ↳ Things Nobody Wants to Hear
- ↳ Ask da Biotch! - Advice Column
- ↳ Inspiration Station
- ↳ A New Kind Of Random
- ↳ The Anti-Academy
- ↳ Mouse Droppings
- ↳ Mystic Arts
- ↳ Open Mike Soundoff
- ↳ The Pregnant Pope
- In Memoriam
- ↳ To Honor our Departed Site Members
- ↳ Lightning Rod
- ↳ Photos of Lightning Rod
- ↳ The Poet's Eye by Lightning Rod
- ↳ Norman Mallory
- ↳ ZlatKomix (artwork by Norman Mallory)
- ↳ Constantine
- ↳ Constantinople – (A collection of Constantine's poetry)
Who is online
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 5 guests