A plastic-free Oregon?

One man’s crusade

By Culinate staff

March 24, 2011

Plastic bags. Several cities and supermarket chains around the country have banned them. To detractors, the issue seems like a tempest in a plastic teapot, but to supporters, banning the bag is just one campaign in the battle against the global plastic pollution problem.

Alt-paper Willamette Week recently profiled one of those supporters, Stiv Wilson, describing his efforts to rid Oregon of plastic bags with a bill in the state’s legislature. Noted, also, was the fact that oceanic plastic pollution has become the latest scientific and political controversy: are our oceans really as full of plastic detritus as activists would have us believe?

Whether or not there are Texas-sized pools of plastic out there, as one activist noted, “our fundamental message is still that there’s way too much trash.”