Business: Throw It Away

Alarmed by the suffocation of 55 children this year by plastic bags, the plastics industry last week launched a million dollar common-sense campaign to preserve safety, along with its 3 billion-bag-a-year business (estimated $30 million in sales). In full-page advertisements in 117 major newspapers across the nation, the industry warned: “Never keep a plastic bag after it has served its intended usefulness. Destroy it: tear it up and throw it away.”

Since some 70% of the country’s 55,000 dry cleaners have switched to plastic bags, the industry is geared to turn out the thin, transparent film coverings, and does not want to switch back to paper. What worries many of the 35 producers of plastic bags is that laws will be passed banning the use of the bags. New York City now requires that warning labels be placed on plastic bags, and other restrictive legislation is pending in various states.

Despite the deaths (most have been infants who smothered on plastic bags misused as crib mattress covers), cleaners across the country report that consumers overwhelmingly prefer plastic to paper for covering shirts and suits. After the 27 members of the Knoxville, Tenn. Laundry and Dry Cleaners Association agreed publicly to discontinue plastic bags and shelve $100,000 worth of bag-processing equipment, they found that customers (by a 50-to-1 margin) demanded the bags.

What the plastics industry is after is a porous bag that 1) will not cling to the face, 2) will not generate static electricity. Some manufacturers have turned to making combination plastic and paper bags, while other key producers, such as National Distillers’ Kordite Corp., are returning to the heavier, more expensive plastic they first used to make bags three years ago. They believe that heavier-gauge bags are less dangerous because they do not cling to the skin as readily. In the search for a safer product. Technical Tape Corp., New Rochelle, N.Y., a major producer of plastic bags, has devised a corrugated plastic with thousands of tiny air corridors that permit breathing.

But most of all, the plastic makers are counting on public education. Says Harry Benberg, president of New York’s Spotless Stores (200 stores): “Plastic bags are something new, and people have got to learn about them the way they learned about matches, razor blades and guns.”