I think if we saw more photos like this, it would really drive the point home. I wish more photos like this would circulate; the photos of electronic waste are even more alarming. Massive piles toxic, non-biodegradeable waste would make more of us think twice about how much we consume and waste.

We don't see enough of the results of our culture of disposability.

Americans throw away some 100 billion plastic bags after they've been used to transport a prescription home from the drugstore or a quart of milk from the grocery store.

This makes it sound like people are bringing their shopping home and then throwing the plastic bag straight into the landfill. Is that what it intends to say? Or does that number include garbage bags, and plastic shopping bags used as garbage bags?

Everyone I know uses plastic bags from the grocery store to line trash cans, wrap garbage, and clean up after pets. They are thrown out only once they contain waste. Are these bags considered part of the problem? If so, we'll need to do more than just ban their use in stores. We'll need to change city by-laws and condo regulations that require wrapping garbage in plastic, and we'll need a viable alternative to spare everyone exposure to bugs and smells between garbage days.

I was using the plastic bags from whole foods over and over and over again, until they switched to their new recyclable ones, which you're lucky to get home with (I usually walk) before they tear and are useless. Now I'm getting the paper ones, which seem to hold up a lot better and which I can put into my compost bin when they eventually wear out. So it seems the better choice.

To me these little articles about the specifics of how we are destroying our own habitat are quaint. They simply won't matter because we've chosen are path and will soon be dealing with the effects of:

-Climate change including drought, coastal flooding, mass population displacement

-Diminishing availability of oil & gas which we use to run not only our economy but our entire way of life and all the alternative fuel options we currently have could replace only a fraction of what oil and gas currently do.

-Resource wars, economic collapse from the effects of diminishing Oil & gas availability

-A final collapse of our car based, suburban and megalopolis, and massive corporate farm fed society.

On the bright side, we'll be living in a cleaner world and, after a terrible die off, find a way to survive in smaller communities based on localism. (There is simply no way to jet, truck and car large amounts of people and goods across the world, or the country, on anything but a fossil fuel based system. We haven't imagined it, and the hope that uber nerds will soon figure it out is--well, it's hopeful!

I fly a paraglider. Not the thing that gets towed around the bay behind a boat (that's a parasail), the thing that gets foot-launched from a hill side and goes up only when I can find a thermal - a bubble of heated air rising from the ground. According to FAA regulations I can go as high as 17,999 feet above sea level. I don't get that high very often, but at all altitudes, from a few hundred feet off the sand when flying at the coast to sixteen thousand feet flying in the mountains, a regular flying companion is plastic bags. They weigh about nothing and climb like a rocket in the lightest lift; I've been climbing in a thermal at 1,500 vertical feet per minute and been passed by a cluster of plastic bags headed into space.

Given that they never biodegrade and seem to be able to stay up in the lightest lift I have to wonder where those pieces of air borne litter end up. Since the surface of the Earth is mostly covered by water and thermals don't generate over sea water very well, it seems likely that they end up sinking out into the ocean.

Think about that when you see that filmy bag float by, it could travel thousands of miles in the upper atmosphere and end up killing fish in the ocean.

Ugh.

More businesses should take a tip from the utterly awesome Trader Joe's. Every customer who brings their own bags gets a ticket for a weekly raffle, the prize being $25 in groceries at the store. That is a really great incentive, and costs the store very little.

The only use I have for those plastic bags from the store is to line my garbage containers. When I run low, I ask for the bags on shopping trips. But since I'm single and recycle as much of my trash as I possibly can, I only need to ask for some every three or four months. One trip to the supermarket will do me well for quite a while.

Besides, there's something very cozy about bringing your own bags. It reminds me of shopping with my aunt during my childhood visits to Spain, when we would walk every morning to the market and return with her net bags filled with fresh food.

I agree with talkslowly; the devastating impact of our consumerism on the planet comes across powerfully in photographs. The paper vs. plastic grocery bag issue has been nagging at me for some time now, but I've no choice but to go all-canvas as of tomorrow.

For those who are interested, photographer Chris Jordan has done a couple of series exploring this subject. You can check out his work at:

http://www.chrisjordan.com/

- Running the Numbers: An American Self-Portrait

- Intolerable Beauty: Portraits of American Mass Consumption

"Exploring around our country’s shipping ports and industrial yards, where the accumulated detritus of our consumption is exposed to view like eroded layers in the Grand Canyon, I find evidence of a slow-motion apocalypse in progress. I am appalled by these scenes, and yet also drawn into them with awe and fascination. The immense scale of our consumption can appear desolate, macabre, oddly comical and ironic, and even darkly beautiful; for me its consistent feature is a staggering complexity."

** Hey Salon - speaking of which, how about incorporating a photo essay into the site's offerings once in a while?