Here’s a story from yesterday’s Montreal Gazette. Its so well written that I’m just reproducing most of it verbatim.

It tells us of 2 kids who died in Sikkim when their house was swept away in a mudslide (Sikkim’s a little mountain kingdom tucked away at the North East corner of India. I’m told it’s one of the most beautiful places under the sun).

Cause of death: plastic bags.

Thousands of plastic bags, thrown away on the ground, had accumulated, creating a barrier that prevented rainwater run-off. The ground, swollen with water, gave way, crushing the children’s house with them inside.

Sikkim’s solution was to ban plastic bags. Any retailer found giving a customer a plastic bag faces a $110 fine, a large sum of money in this impoverished part of the world. Any store-owner found guilty of a second infraction loses his licence to operate a retail operation, shutting the store.

Unsurprisingly, plastic bags have vanished from Sikkim. Shoppers use jute or thick, reusable bags. Newspaper is used for wrapping goods.

The idea that a government in the developed world would order a store closed if the customer is provided with a plastic bag is unthinkable - however beneficial it would be to the environment if plastic bags were never used by anyone ever again.

The volume of plastic bags used in Quebec alone is mind-boggling. We use at least 1.4 billion plastic bags a year. The bags are used usually just once, for a period of about 20 minutes. They then take 400 years to disintegrate.

Maybe it’s unreasonable to expect Quebec to follow Sikkim’s example and ban plastic bags. But, surely, Quebec consumers could take the tiny state’s example to heart and start using their own reusable bags to carry home their groceries.

Reusable cloth bags are more economical than most people think they are. Write to us and we’ll give you a pleasant surprise.

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