The (Plastic) Bag Man
IT’S HARD TO IMAGINE that the attorney Stephen Joseph wasn’t seized by a fit of contrarian glee when he adopted the name “Save the Plastic Bag Coalition” for his organization, back in 2008. After all, most people advocating controversial industrial causes seek out names vague enough to induce a coma. But Joseph and his coalition aren’t hiding; for the past four years, they’ve waged an in-your-face, rhetorical and legal assault on the scientific claims and legislative efforts promoted by the growing legion of would-be bag banners—who regard the ubiquitous single-use plastic bag as an intrusive icon of throw-away consumerism run amok. Almost everything the antibag crusaders think they know about plastic bags, Joseph insists, is flat-out wrong, and whatever legislative solutions they propose will only make the nonexistent problem worse. But when pressed about the coalition’s name, Joseph seems surprised that anyone might find it audacious. “I’m pure passion,” he insists, “but no spin.”
Like beauty and pornography, spin clearly lies in the eye of the beholder. Bag-ban advocates are quick to acknowledge Joseph as a force to be reckoned with. But they complain that he’s guilty of the same rhetorical excesses he charges them with. “To be effective, you need to be credible,” says the antiplastic-bagger Andy Keller, who appears at bag-banning rallies throughout California dressed in a “Bag Monster” costume. “But Joseph and the industry don’t even acknowledge there is a problem.”
Indeed he doesn’t. Other than collecting as litter on the highway—which Joseph abhors—plastic bags, he insists, pose no environmental threat. They occupy negligible space in landfills; they don’t get blown out to sea; and to the extent that plastics are killing sea life, he charges, the real culprit is abandoned plastic fishing nets, not shopping bags. But Joseph takes his argument one step further: he claims that plastic bags are, in fact, environmentally superior to paper bags, and better even than the increasingly fashionable reusable bags as well. The latter, he contends, are too resource-intensive, not to mention unsanitary. As for paper bags, when they biodegrade in landfills, he notes, they give off methane gas, which is far more destructive to the climate than mere carbon dioxide. By contrast, Joseph points out on his website, plastic molecules don’t break down for at least 500 years. Because of this, he concludes, plastic bags should be valued rather than vilified; they function as mini carbon traps that cumulatively help stabilize global climate conditions. “It’s the perfect solution: no emissions,” he exclaims. “Heavenly!”