This is from Red Eft’s blog, Oswegatchie:

I applaud San Francisco for pushing biodegradable, compostable, and recyclable plastic bags.

But really, can’t we learn to bring our own canvas bags when we go shopping or baskets woven from the native grasses of our front yards? I’m no model of alertness, and I’ve made it a habit.

Forgot your bag? Here, we’ll sell you a canvas one, at cost. And more discounts for people who bring them, as some places do now.

I can’t believe I’m talking about plastic bags while bigger fish like the Iraq supplemental are swimming through Congress, but there are better essayists out there on that one.

“I can’t do it!” I blurted today while driving with my husband. “I cannot go on buying bread in plastic bags. Let’s buy all our bread loaves at Bread Alone from now on, and bring ’em home in our own bags.”

Talking of plastic bags, recycling and so forth, I was at the playground with my children yesterday and my foot fell upon some pale film protruding from the mulch. “What’s this, a baggie?” I thought, toeing it. A condom. “Gross. But really, who has sex at the playground next to a busy thoroughfare?” (People who aren’t allowed to have sex at home? I won’t pursue that line of thinking just now.) Later, I got to thinking about condoms as garbage. All the strange places I have seen them. On asphalt, on grass, hanging from chain link fences…do Canada geese choke on them?

“Why am I obsessing about condoms as litter?” I had to ask myself. Condoms contribute to safer sex and zero population growth. As the biggest polluters on the planet, Americans in particular should use lots and lots of condoms, that’s a good thing, even if they don’t biodegrade (the condoms I mean, not the people. At least people still biodegrade!)

The guy who dropped his baggie full of fertilizer in the mulch is, at least, working to reduce. But what about composting and condoms? Seems there’s some disagreement about whether latex ones, best for preventing STDs, help grow seeds after spilling some. More good reading on this from EcoChick.