Is It Time to Bag the Plastic?

Many countries and a handful of American cities have more or less done away with plastic shopping bags, by discouraging their use through taxes at checkout counters or outright bans. Walk down the streets of Dublin or Seattle or San Francisco and there is barely a bag in sight.

"It didn't take people very long to accommodate at all," said Dick Lilly, manager for waste prevention in Seattle, where a plastic-bag ban took effect last summer. "Basically overnight those grocery and drugstore bags were gone."

But in much of America we seem more addicted than ever.