For the Sunday Edition

Hello Michael,
I was listening to the iPod version of your story about the plastic bag in the tree outside your house, and your observations about the need for people to cut back on their use of plastic bags. For several years my wife and I have used cloth bags when we shop for groceries. In fact, I can’t recall the last time groceries or other shopping purchases were brought home in a plastic bag, and as we have no dog, there is no need for us to have plastic bags on hand for scooping purposes although I will confess to using them for cleaning out the cat litter used by our two cats. All things being equal, we really ought to be a household pretty much devoid of plastic bags. And yet. On the inside of the pantry door we have one of those tube-shaped containers sold by IKEA designed to store plastic bags, and that tube is always crammed full to over-flowing. Every time I take a bag out to clean the cat litter, or on rare occasions to dispose of wet garbage, I expect to see the level of bags in the tube drop. But it doesn’t. Like the storied magic purse that produces an unlimited amount of coins, this tube apparently generates its own endless supply of plastic bags, mocking our attempts at eliminating the wicked things from our lives. Perhaps – as with the question of where do all the vanished socks go when they disappear from the clothes dryer - the answer to the question of where do plastic bags go when they are blow down the street or out of people’s trees is that they mysteriously wind up in tubes such as ours all over the country to continue their malignant presence in our consumer driven world. I would love to get rid of the tube, but I confess I’m a little afraid of it now. If I didn’t have the tube, where else in my house would all those plastic bags show up?Please help. The cats are doing the best they can, but it’s not enough.
Otte Rosenkrantz
London, Ontario