There was a brief moment in time when a plastic bag blowing in the wind was a thing of high art.

That moment occurred in September of 1999 with the release of the film American Beauty, in which two morose teenagers fall in love watching video footage of a white grocery bag “dancing” in the air on a gusty day.

But that time has passed. These days, plastic bags do not turn up in Oscar winning films about American ennui but in the stomachs of whales.

Last year Norwegian researchers euthanized a distressed beached whale and upon conducting an autopsy of the mammal, they found 30 plastic bags in its intestinal system.

Early this month another whale died as a result of human pollution; this one in southern Thailand after it swallowed a total of 80 plastic bags.

This news is obviously disturbing but it isn’t all that surprising.

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A study published in 2014 by the science journal, PLOS One, determined that “plastic pollution is ubiquitous throughout the marine environment” and researchers estimated that “at least 5.25 trillion plastic particles weighing 268,940 tons are currently floating at sea.”

This month’s cover of National Geographic depicts what appears at first glance to be a photo of a massive iceberg sitting in the ocean.

But a second look reveals that the white cap protruding from the water is not the tip of a berg but the pointy underside of a lonely plastic bag floating at sea.

Thanks in no small part to striking images like these and other doomsday predictions around climate change, the tide of public opinion is turning on the issue of single-use plastics. Not only are restaurants around the world ditching plastic straws in greater numbers (I recently requested one at my local coffee shop and was told “we don’t have those anymore”), governments are seriously considering phasing out the classic grocery bag too. Small but mighty Prince Edward Island may become the first Canadian province to officially prohibit retailers from distributing plastic bags after a private member’s bill passed third reading in the provincial legislature this month.

If it becomes law, that bill, the Plastic Bag Reduction Act, will eventually forbid stores from handing out conventional plastic grocery bags. Beginning July 1, P.E.I. shoppers will be charged 15 cents per P.B. Next year that fee will increase to 25 cents. Come 2020, a full-blown ban will take effect and businesses that do not comply may be fined.

Good for P.E.I. It’s time the rest of the country followed suit and did away with the traditional plastic grocery bag — in particular, the City of Toronto, which voted to institute a plastic bag ban a few years ago but ultimately scrapped it. I don’t say this as a deeply committed environmentalist who is on top of her recycling and composting but as a person who loves plastic bags, and plastic straws, and plastic water bottles, and all the shiny things that are killing our planet, but who recognizes that plastic is simply too convenient a material to quit without the help of state intervention.

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For environmentally conscious people like my mother-in-law who inspects every item before it enters the recycling bin to make sure it belongs, plastic bag bans and other so-called state-nanny tactics are unnecessary. But for the rest of us — the irresponsible majority who regularly forget their canvas bags at home or don’t bother using them at all — proposals like the Plastic Bag Reduction Act are our best hope at becoming halfway decent inhabitants of the human earth.

A study co-authored by researchers at the University of Montreal found that 61 per cent of Canadians believe the earth is getting warmer “partly or mostly because of human activities.” But even the most genuinely held belief does not translate to practical change in a person’s everyday behaviour. Policy, however, does. If we aren’t forced to ditch single use plastic we will continue to use it — even if using it means paying stupidly high prices for it.

Some may doubt the effectiveness of plastic bag bans, pointing to research indicating that the bags don’t account for the majority of ocean pollution and that their alternative — canvas bags — can attract dangerous bacteria. But even if said research is one hundred per cent accurate, it doesn’t disqualify the fact that plastic bags are awful for our environment and deadly for our animals. Are there bigger problems facing the natural world? Perhaps. But if we aren’t forced to confront this one, it’s unlikely we’ll take any of them seriously until it’s too late.

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