Statistics students Mary Oakes (left) and Maria Alejandra Cuartes tally plastic bags at South Bend’s Bagfest. (Photo: Michelle Verges)

Time to recycle, but she quickly learned that no state or local agency provided the service, said Verges, a psychology professor at Indiana University-South Bend. Frustrated, she began to imagine an event highlighting the economic and environmental impact of these everyday objects, where people would contribute their plastic bags for the cause. The idea was unusual enough to get people’s attention among her university colleagues and friends, but support was needed.

Verges started a campaign to spread the word about a plastic bag festival, dubbed Bagfest. She wrote the essay last fall and began a Weblog, where there’s a running tally on how many bags consumers use in North America. Verges found an ally in Steve Antonetti, district manager for Wal-Mart Stores Inc., in South Bend. He volunteered to be a speaker, and offered to send volunteers to Bagfest and take the donated bags to the retailer’s recycling facility in Bentonville, Ark. The festival featured exhibitors, and experts like Antonetti participated in a panel discussion.

Plastic bags are no small problem. Between 500 million and one trillion plastic bags are consumed worldwide each year, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reports. They escape our trash bins and catch on the limbs of trees, scatter along the roadways and foul the waterways, natural areas and the wildlife that live there.

Some plastic bags escape the trash and get snared on trees. (© iStock.com)

The big draw was Elizabeth Royte, author of the book Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash, who gave the keynote address. She described the yearlong journey she took with her trash, from the curb into the vast waste stream that stretched across states and even oceans. Although, she encourages recycling, current efforts "are not keeping up with our population or consumption," Royte said. After reducing, reusing and recycling, the fourth "r" ought to be redesigning, making goods that are meant to be reused over and over again, not just discarded. One thing consumers can do is "think about what kind of waste the item is going to make before you buy it."

After her talk, a steady stream of people dropped off their plastic bags in the cafeteria at the I.U.-South Bend campus, where Bagfest was held. Students from Verges’ statistics class counted the bags, and the Wal-Mart volunteers tossed them in a pile, that eventually reached the cafeteria’s ceiling.

In that one afternoon, Bagfest netted more than 74,000 plastic bags, which a Wal-Mart truck hauled off for recycling.

Resources:

• Michelle Verges’ Weblog: www.conserveplasticbags.blogspot.com
• Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash by Elizabeth Royte, Little, Brown and Company; Royte Web site: http://www.booknoise.net

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