MUNDOMATERIAL

A while ago a friend asked me to wrote about plastic bags, current alternatives and the different measures that have being taken to reduce their consumption. Although plastic is present in many applications, bags have being the target of many attacks from environmental groups and have been object of boycotts, prohibitions and campaigns to reduce their consumption. No one doubts their usefulness but we use too many and throw them too soon. Plastic bags are easily replaced by another type of bags or objects that allow us to bring home our groceries. The most used plastic bags are made of low density polyethylene, LDPE, a material derived of oil, which is not compostable. They can be recycled, but with big difficulties and little economic gain,which is why recycling is uncommon. Plastic bags end up, in the best of the cases, in an incinerator or in a dump. In the worst cases, they finish being thrown in the fields or in water, polluting the environment and creating many problems for the... 
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Explaining why consumism should worry us all is not an obvious task, but Annie Leonard achieves it with apparent ease in her video. I find particularly interesting the way she differentiates between cost and price payed by the final consumer for a product, something I’ve struggled to explain many times. I think we give too much importance to what we pay when we buy something, but too little to the environmental and human cost that a product may have. I have no doubt that to start changing our understanding of life, business and manufacturing first we have to understand where things come from, how they are produced and if we really need them. Another interesting concept mentioned in the vide is how industry, to sell more and more, has transformed durable products into perishable ones. Something that started with pens or disposable coffee cups and is now happening with mobiles, computers and televisions, which have a much higher environmental impact. Certain groups have started to... 
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