When it comes to plastics, what goes around sure does come around.
Not only does the stuff tend to live on long after we have any use for it, but we also like to drag it out and punch it around every now and again.

Consider the assault on plastic grocery bags that's become a cause for environmentalists in Maine and around the world.

The bag backlash made news this week when Whole Foods Market announced that its stores will be plastic bag-free by Earth Day, April 22.

A Maine lawmaker and the Maine Grocers Association, meanwhile, are pushing the use of reusable bags as a way to keep plastic ones out of circulation.

It might sound familiar. Way back in 1989, Maine's Legislature adopted a law requiring all stores in the state to use paper bags instead of plastic ones, unless a customer specifically asked for plastic.

The reasons were similar to those driving the plastic bag backlash today.

The bags littered communities and the ocean, choking sea turtles and other wildlife that mistook them for tasty jellyfish. Now, of course, the bags also are maligned for consuming valuable oil and contributing to global warming.

Plastics, in general, were just as much a political punching bag in the late 1980s and early 1990s as they are now.

Plastic debris in the world's oceans and on beaches was the focus of cleanups and an international treaty.

Maine's anti-plastic bag law lasted only about a year, recalls Rep. Herb Adams, D-Portland.

Adams was a naive freshman legislator when he sponsored the grocery bag bill nearly 20 years ago.

"It was my first experience with a well-financed national lobby," Adams said of the plastic industry's backlash. "They came back the next session and beat the paper out of me."

Adams appreciates the way history is often recycled, and he dug up his original bill this week.

He also unearthed a 1991 study of the grocery bag issue by the Maine Waste Management Agency.

Before the law, nearly 70 percent of customers left stores with plastic bags. But they apparently were not attached to them, as only 13 percent asked for plastic instead of paper after the law took effect.

The study also pointed out that paper bags, while having some environmental advantages, are not a great solution, either.

They're heavier and bulkier, which adds up to greater environmental impacts from transportation, it said.

The report's bottom line: "The best way to reduce and minimize the environmental impacts of paper and plastic checkout bags is to encourage consumers to refuse unnecessary bags and to choose, and use, reusable bags."

Nothing's more recyclable than a good idea.

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