China's Bag Lady: Mary O'Loughlin

Bag Lady Mary O’Loughlin has something important to say and we all need to listen to her. Mary is no less than a Fulbright Scholar who has spent the last year “studying the implications and effects of China’s plastic bag policy”.

Did you know that China had a plastic bag policy? Yes, apparently so, and since 2008!

Now, Mary spent an entire year in China sponsored by the US State Department (read: at US taxpayer expense), to study China's Plastic Bag Policy and her conclusions were based upon “observation, surveys, interviews, and extensive document reviews”. Mary discovered that Chinese consumers were using almost as many plastic bags this past year as they had when the policy was implemented in 2008.

SAY WHAT?

Yes, at the time, in 2008, China was consuming 3 billion plastic bags per day! Today, after implementing a policy that allows retailers to charge its customers for the plastic bags they use and keep any profit they make from selling them, China is still using 3 billion plastic bags per day!

Imagine that! A retailer in China can actually make a profit by charging its customers for a plastic bag, and the rate of plastic bag use has not diminished in two years. DUH! Why does it take a year and a Fulbright Scholar to determine that China is still using 3 billion plastic bags a day, when there is a clear profit motive for the retailer?

Why is the American taxpayer funding this insanity? Granted, 3 billion plastic bags a day translates into 37 million barrels of oil a year, but hey! that’s China’s problem. Why does it take an entire year to make that assessment by a Fulbright Scholar?

Mary, please tell US that you were really working as a spy trying to enlist the “Green Grocer of China” as an informant for the CIA and NOT pissing away American taxpayer dollars! 

America, is it any wonder that China is eating our lunch (excuse the pun) globally, when our “best and brightest China scholars” are counting plastic, fucking, bags, and taking an entire year to do it?! Hillery please say it isn’t so!!! How much did this insanity cost US?