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. This icon of modern convenience has a dark side that the world is only now beginning to wake up to. It is a fairly well-known fact that plastic bags, made from petroleum, are not biodegradable, meaning that even when disposed of properly, they will sit in a landfill without changing form for hundreds of years, certainly far longer than its life in our households. More disturbingly, however, are those plastic bags that are not disposed of properly and end up wafting across the landscape, snagging on fences, descending into the detritus at the bottom of drainage ditches or settling into the sea where they may eventually sink to the bottom, draping themselves over the creatures and their food supply that reside there. According to the UN Environment Program, there are 46,000 pieces of plastic litter floating in every square mile of ocean and there's only one way that they got there. Americans alone throw away some 100 billion bags each year. That is the equivalent of dumping nearly 12 million barrels of oil. There are no figures on Saudi consumption of plastic bags but it is a safe bet that on a per capita basis the rate is just as high as in America. After all, how many times have you bought five items in a supermarket and gone home carrying five bags? Individual cities around the world have enacted ordinances regulating the use of plastic bags in stores. In Thailand, it has become a fad to go “green” and carry reusable cloth bags to the markets. Just because Saudi Arabia is the world's largest oil producer does not give it carte blanche to use that resource frivolously and destructively. Any drive through Jeddah should give consumers a start as they encounter discarded plastic bags in every nook and cranny. Those traveling from city to city will find the same thing in the middle of the desert miles away from any urban center. The plastic bag is ubiquitous, but it is far from a necessary evil of modernization. It is time for the people and the government to join forces and rid the Kingdom of this blight. A few well-voiced complaints and a well-placed, enforced regulation or two is all that is necessary to clean up the streets and improve life in the Kingdom and its environs. __
