Last week San Francisco announced that it was to outlaw plastic bags from large supermarket chains, the first such law of any city in the US. Ireland has recently seen the fourth anniversary of a 15c plastic bag tax which saw the number of bags being put into circulation falling dramatically. Since then the number has been on the up again, from less than 85 million in 2003 to at least 113 million in 2005, prompting calls for a doubling of the tax and tighter implementation. Yesterday’s Guardian examined the trade in plastic bags, produced, and recycled, in China at high environmental cost. The article contained the extraordinary estimate that the US requires 12 million barrels of oil to manufacture the billion plastic bags used by consumers annually, and noted the UK used 17 billion bags a year. What better example of the profilate waste of the hydrocarbon economy? To put that in perspective 12 million barrels would have driven the US industrial and military machine for three days during the Second World War (or every three years the US uses as much oil on plastic bags as 1% of the oil it used to fight and survive the Second World War). In a generation or less people will look back in disbelief at the idea that on eve of the catastrophic oil depletion crisis such waste could be justified rather than taking a bag to the shops! The North American petrochemical industry is already feeling the pinch with both increasing oil prices and, specific to the continent, the looming gas depletion crisis, chemical manufacturers are migrating to the Middle East.