Plastic Bags

Calif. rejects ban on plastic shopping bags

I like plastic bags for my groceries (when my wife forgets the permanent bags she buys). Some people like paper ones. However, having lived out in the country often with places with open dumps where you might see 100 plastic bags caught and blowing in the wind on any given day there you can often see the real problem of plastic bags. Or if you are sailing out in the ocean and see a see animal caught in a plastic bag or fishing line or something like that you can see first hand the problem of plastic bags. And there are places when I visited India in 1985 where it almost seems like there were miles of plastic bags stuck on things because there wasn't some  volunteer group then picking up along a specific roadway all the time like there tends to be in the U.S. in places like California.

However, I have also seen clear cut regions of forests throughout the forests of California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Colorado, Idaho and many other western states. And if it were up to me I would like to see no more trees cut down for paper bags and I think paper is being reduced just by using computers for email and online news and online magazines.

So, would I prefer after everything I have observed throughout my life paper or plastic? Give me plastic! At least then they don't have to kill a tree for it. Because paper is only recycled usually once if then and plastic if recycled can be recycled almost forever. And you don't have to kill anything to make plastic. All the things that died to make oil(from which all plastic is made), (all the organisms) have already been dead for thousands to millions of years.

Begin quote from wikipedia using the word "Plastic"
There are two types of plastics: thermoplastics and thermosetting polymers. Thermoplastics will soften and melt if enough heat is applied; examples are polyethylene, polystyrene, polyvinyl chloride and polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE)^[3]. Thermosets can melt and take shape once; after they have solidified, they stay solid.
The raw materials needed to make most plastics come from petroleum and natural gas.^{[4]
end quote from wikipedia under the search word "plastic"}