Bush’s Niece Endorses Plastic Bag Recycling

wonder if she gets a cut of the proceeds?
she got airtime for this yesterday--cnn I think.



http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/05/bushs-niece-endorses-plastic-bag-recycling/
November 5, 2007, 1:04 pm
Bush’s Niece Endorses Plastic Bag Recycling

By Sewell Chan
Lauren BushLauren Bush promoting her other bag-based campaign, the FEED bag, last month. Sales of the cotton and burlap carryall she designed benefit the United Nations World Food Program. (Photo: Riccardo S. Savi/Getty Images)

A City Council bill that would require supermarkets and other large retail stores to collect, transport and recycle the plastic carryout bags they give to customers received an endorsement today from an unusual source: Lauren Bush, a fashion model and a niece of President Bush.

Ms. Bush, 23, appeared at the Whole Foods Market in the Lower East Side this morning with the City Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn, who supports the legislation, which was introduced last week by Councilman Peter F. Vallone Jr., a Queens Democrat. At a news conference, Ms. Bush, who graduated from Princeton last year, said her interest in plastic bags began about four years ago, when she learned about their impact on the environment. Ms. Bush told reporters:

The average American uses between 300 and 700 bags a year. To give you a visual of that number, if everyone in the U.S. were to make a giant chain with their plastic bag, it would wrap around the earth 760 times. That’s just the American annual consumption of plastic bags. And on top of that, plastic bags don’t biodegrade. They only break down into tiny toxic little bits that pollute the soil and our waterways. This process is called photodegrade and it takes around 1,000 years for these bags to break down in our landfills. It is for these reasons that I support this legislation in City Council. I think it is important for New Yorkers to recycle plastic bags and buy reusable bags.


Ms. Bush has focused her philanthropic efforts on hunger and the environment; she has been an honorary spokeswoman for the United Nations World Food Program. At today’s news conference, she promoted the FEED Bag, a reusable cloth bag that costs $60 and enables the food program to feed a child for one full school year.

Can't believe she'd promote non-plastic.. non-oil.

I don't really care about the source (though this one is surprising), but anyone encouraging resource conservation, reuse, and feeding hungry people gets a positive note in my book.

I wonder if she get invited to Kennebunkport.

Anyone promoting conservation should be applauded.

Not all of them are horrible; some of them are actually quite tolerable. To be a decent person and know that you share DNA...with that. It must be godawful.