“Paper or plastic?” should be replaced with, “Do you have your reusable shopping bag with you?”

The challenge we now face is to replace the throwaway economy with a reduce, reuse, recycle economy. Our earth can no longer tolerate the pollution, the energy use, the disruption from mining, and the deforestation that our throwaway economy requires. It is easy to forget how many throwaway products there are until we actually begin making a list. We have substituted facial tissues for handkerchiefs, disposable paper towels for hand towels, disposable table napkins for cloth napkins, and throwaway beverage containers for refillable ones. In perhaps the ultimate insult, the shopping bags that are used to carry home throwaway products are themselves designed to be discarded, becoming part of the garbage flow. We are literally choking the planet with products, which cannot re-enter the life cycle. If we all take a moment and become conscious of our waste it can be the beginning of an awareness that can affect positive change.

Source: The Earth Policy Reader

A great web link that provides information for recycling plastic bags: http://www.plasticbagrecycling.org/00.0/