Darn That Plarn

I recently learned something while checking out one of the people associated with one of my Facebook friends from Chicago. The woman was associated with a Ning.com social network regarding environmentalism. One of the bloggers on that site had written an article about how she had knitted a purse making what was known as "plarn". Plarn is yarn made from recycled plastic shopping bags.

I thought that was interesting, since Bellingham had recently outlawed plastic shopping bags at grocery stores and other such places. I already thought the Bellingham bag ban was STUPID, and inimical to the interests of poor people, since folks who can't afford to buy plastic trash bags all of the time have often used those shopping bags for that purpose in the past, and since those bags usually came free of charge as a byproduct of the sales process.

Maybe instead of making plastic trash bags illegal, we need to teach people how to make better use of them, such as using them as trash bags, and knitting useful new products made of plarn. I'm just sayin'.

Those who are curious about the stupid Bellingham bag ban can read about it at the page marked by this link. If you feel, as I do, that that ban was stupid, then let Seth Fleet know about it, via an e-mail to seth@openaccess.org.