Plastic Crusader: Can Stiv Wilson Ban the Plastic Bag in Oregon?

Willamette Week:

The Willamette Week profiles Stiv Wilson, who's fighting to limit plastic grocery bags:

Eighteen years after his Missoula bust, [Stiv] Wilson is on the verge of either a stunning victory or a shattering defeat in a battle he’s been waging for four years. With Hass’ help, he is seeking to ban from Oregon the ubiquitous plastic grocery bags that clog recycling machines, obstruct city sewers and take centuries to decompose. Oregonians use about a billion of them each year.

Wilson began pushing for a ban in 2007 after visiting a remote Oregon beach. He had parked his Vanagon off U.S. 101, picked up his surfboard and hiked for an hour south of Cape Lookout—only to find a stretch of sand littered with plastic lighters, toothbrushes, polyethylene sinks and bottles, some of them with Chinese characters.

Now Wilson has devoted himself full-time to fighting plastic pollution, sailing 14,000 nautical miles in the past year to document the stain of plastic on Earth’s oceans.

Read the full article here. Discuss below.

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