Angst-ridden because neither option is perfect? Filled with guilt because you are an Alum from the University of California at Santa Cruz or Davis, and thus, you should know better?

Everyone feeling guilty should read this devastating piece by Tierney:

But consider a different perspective-a national, long-term perspective. A. Clark Wiseman, an economist at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Wash., has calculated that if Americans keep generating garbage at current rates for 1,000 years, and if all their garbage is put in a landfill 100 yards deep, by the year 3000 this national garbage heap will fill a square piece of land 35 miles on each side. This doesn't seem a huge imposition in a country the size of America. The garbage would occupy only 5 percent of the area needed for the national array of solar panels proposed by environmentalists. The millennial landfill would fit on one-tenth of 1 percent of the range land now available for grazing in the continental United States. And if it still pains you to think of depriving posterity of that 35-mile square, remember that the loss will be only temporary. Eventually, like previous landfills, the mounds of trash will be covered with grass and become a minuscule addition to the nation's 150,000 square miles of parkland.

We're squandering irreplaceable natural resources. Yes, a lot of trees have been cut down to make today's newspaper. But even more trees will probably be planted in their place. America's supply of timber has been increasing for decades, and the nation's forests have three times more wood today than in 1920. "We're not running out of wood, so why do we worry so much about recycling paper?" asks Jerry Taylor, the director of natural resource studies at the Cato Institute. "Paper is an agricultural product, made from trees grown specifically for paper production. Acting to conserve trees by recycling paper is like acting to conserve cornstalks by cutting back on corn consumption."

Some resources, of course, don't grow back, and it may seem prudent to worry about depleting the earth's finite stores of metals and fossil fuels. It certainly seemed so during the oil shortages of the l970's, when the modern recycling philosophy developed. But the oil scare was temporary, just like all previous scares about resource shortages. The costs of natural resources, both renewable and nonrenewable, have been declining for thousands of years. They've become less scarce over time because humans have continually found new supplies or devised new technologies. Fifty years ago, for instance, tin and copper were said to be in danger of depletion, and conservationists urged mandatory recycling and rationing of these vital metals so that future generations wouldn't be deprived of food containers and telephone wires. But today tin and copper are cheaper than ever. Most food containers don't use any tin. Phone calls travel through fiber-optic cables of glass, which is made from sand-and should the world ever run out of sand, we could dispense with wires together by using cellular phones.

The only resource that has been getting consistently more expensive is human time: the cost of labor has been rising for centuries. An hour of labor today buys a larger quantity of energy or raw materials than ever before. To economists, it's wasteful to expend human labor to save raw materials that are cheap today and will probably be cheaper tomorrow. Even the Worldwatch Institute, an environmental group that strongly favors recycling and has often issued warnings about the earth's dwindling resources, has been persuaded that there are no foreseeable shortages of most minerals. "In retrospect," a Worldwatch report notes, "the question of scarcity may never have been the most important one." It is better to recycle than to throw away. This is the most enduring myth, the one that remains popular even among those who don't believe in the garbage crisis anymore. By now, many experts and public officials acknowledge that America could simply bury its garbage, but they object to this option because it diverts trash from recycling programs. Recycling, which was originally justified as the only solution to a desperate national problem, has become a goal in itself-a goal so important that we must preserve the original problem. It's as if the protagonist of "Pilgrim's Progress," upon being informed that he could drop his sinful burden right there on the road, insisted on clinging to it just so he could continue the pilgrimage to get rid of it. Why is it better to recycle? The usual justifications are that it saves money and protects the environment. These sound reasonable until you actually start handling garbage.

REDUCE. REDUCE is the first part of “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle”. Sheesh.

The price of something is the best signal of whether it's scarce. If it's not, there's usually no need to reduce. Externalities of various kinds can change this calc, of course...but in this case the Mumbai official was clearly looking for a scapegoat. The sewage system is terrible there, but that's because the system is antiquated. It's also because people *litter*, not because they buy plastic bags *per se*.

What's wrong with the ancient indian tradition [ :) ]of taking your own shopping bag to the store ? Its cost in terms of labour hours, use of energy, natural resources, dependance on foreign oil, etc. etc. is negligible compared to the use of paper/plastic.

Yes, the bombay official may be looking for a scapegoat; but, given the poor state of waste management in most indian cities, banning the use of those ubiquitous thin plastic bags which end up everywhere from drains to the intestinal tracts of cows is not that bad an idea.

A critique of the Tierney article :
http://www.environmentaldefense.org/documents/611_ACF17F.htm.

Banning plastic garbage bags was a minor plot point in Monica Ali's Brick Lane (No, its not a spoiler -- but this is: the book ain't that good). When open air drainage is the norm (as in South Asia), plastic bags must be a pain.

GC quoted Tierney saying:

if Americans keep generating garbage at current rates for 1,000 years, and if all their garbage is put in a landfill 100 yards deep, by the year 3000 this national garbage heap will fill a square piece of land 35 miles on each side.

What a load of garbage. Tierney hasn't been to Toronto. Ever since the last TO landfill was used up, every day dozens of trucks rumble from Toronto to Michigan to dump the city's garbage in the USA. There are no available landfill sites in Ontario left.

And the cost of sending garbage to Michigan is higher than the cost of recycling (sometimes). TO also has an advanced composting program, to try to reduce waste, and costs, further.

(There's also the danger that the Americans, who have a habit of breaking treaties and violating trade rules -- ie. softwood lumber -- will, despite NAFTA, stop the inflow of Canadian garbage.)

What Tierney isn't accounting for is transport costs. There may be plenty of landfill space in Montana, but there's a lot less space within a 1 hour radius of NYC.

right on, ashvin. that's why i have my "boat and tote". :D

seriously though, if the problem is litter, then less plastic bags to litter with kind of works, no?

The price of something is the best signal of whether it's scarce. If it's not, there's usually no need to reduce.

Except perhaps the simple satisfaction of having done something efficiently. Wastage may save time, but overconsumption has never been good for the soul.