Here is an article from Salon.com that will make you think twice when asked…paper or plastic?
The most ubiquitous consumer item on Earth, the lowly plastic bag is an environmental scourge like none other, sapping the life out of our oceans and thwarting our attempts to recycle it.
By Katharine Mieszkowski
Aug. 10, 2007 | OAKLAND, Calif. — On a foggy Tuesday morning, kids out of school for summer break are learning to sail on the waters of Lake Merritt. A great egret hunts for fish, while dozens of cormorants perch, drying their wings. But we’re not here to bird-watch or go boating. Twice a week volunteers with the Lake Merritt Institute gather on these shores of the nation’s oldest national wildlife refuge to fish trash out of the water, and one of their prime targets is plastic bags. Armed with gloves and nets with long handles, like the kind you’d use to fish leaves out of a backyard swimming pool, we take to the shores to seek our watery prey.