“She buys "mixed salad greens" for seven dollars a bag, triple-washed with who knows what. And to get this stuff home, which is only two blocks away from the grocery store, Jennica throws all of it into plastic bags. There is a husk on her corn, corn that Jennica's store sells in April.. there is a rind on her grapefruit, grapefruit that gets flown in from Florida... but still, Jennica puts the corn and the citrus into plastic bags. Her supposedly organic red peppers, which cost six dollars a pound, come in a foam tray under shrink-wrap, but she puts them in a plastic bag. And then the checkout girl puts all of Jennica's little plastic parcels into two or three more big white plastic bags, and then Jennica walks the two blocks home, where she unpacks all the bags and then trows them in the same trash bin where her corn husks and citrus rinds go.”

“There are plastic bags with zippers on them. I've seen them in commercials," Dragos said to her. He snapped his fingers, trying to remember the name. "You put food in them.""Ziploc bags?" she asked in a cautious voice.He pointed at her. "Yes. I want one.”

“Oh- and grab the plastic bag over by my suitcase."I slug down the last of the coffee and get up. The bag contains panty hose. I put them on her desk."They're for you.""You want me to look homeless, desperate, but also kind of fabulous?”

“Panda gazed at her plastic-bag pregnancy. “Here I am, about to be a father, and the sex wasn’t even that good.” She fought the urge to apologize.”

“Spray a book with insect spray, drop it in a bag, add some mothballs and seal it. Put it in another bag and seal it. Another. The packages piled up on the floor, each a book sealed in four plastic envelopes.”

“And Man created the plastic bag and the tin and aluminum can and the cellophane wrapper and the paper plate, and this was good because Man could then take his automobile and buy all his food in one place and He could save that which was good to eat in the refrigerator and throw away that which had no further use. And soon the earth was covered with plastic bags and aluminum cans and paper plates and disposable bottles and there was nowhere to sit down or walk, and Man shook his head and cried: "Look at this Godawful mess.”