Hold The Carbon

Yes, that’s right, plastic is being celebrated this week by an organization called “Plastindia.”  Rather ironic isn’t it when you consider that New Delhi passed the world’s strongest anti-plastic law recently (too strong actually since it sends people to jail who are caught with a plastic bag).

The New York Times has an insightful article in Wednesday’s edition. The Times reports, “Just last month New Delhi passed a preliminary ban imposing a five-year jail term or a 100,000-rupee fine, about $2,055, on anyone caught carrying or handing out plastic bags. That did not stop 67,000 plastics professionals from convening here last week for Plastindia 2009, a five-day celebration of all things plastic. The trade show was billed as the second-largest plastics convention in the world. (The first, K Fair, is in Germany.)…And whenever they could, they complained about what they considered the unfair prejudice against the plastic bag. ‘Politicians have gone overboard,’ said Arvind M. Mehta, president of the Plastindia Foundation, the trade group sponsoring the conference. ‘Our industry is facing a problem and we have to fight.’ Seated in a makeshift office of four plastic walls behind a faux-wood plastic desk at the convention, Mr. Mehta repeated a line similar to one used by pro-gun groups in the United States: it is not the plastic bag that causes the problems, he said, it is the person who uses it.”

Does it really help your case when you take the talking points of the NRA and put them into action to defend plastic?  Probably not.

Although when you start to put the gun lobby and the plastic lobby in the same boat, perhaps that is a sign of progress and a sign that people are ready to move on from plastic consumption.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 17th, 2009 at 7:07 pm and is filed under Plastic bag, plastic bag legislation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.