The youth of Sydney, whose share accommodation houses used to be their forum for political reform have been transformed into despots where at least one individual is leading the revolt against the plastic bag. The recycling bin that was once home to the odd bottle top now is systematically sorted according to colour and character. Is this, however, the best way forward to achieving harmony with our surroundings?

When the myriad of people make the transition from fine academic institutions like the University of Sydney back to their parents' basement, they generally take with them a profound weight of social and environmental awareness. Repetitious monologues on the evils of large corporations, the plight of the environment, the over'population time bomb, and how good it is to be gay have indoctrinated this opinion for the better. However this, coupled with the fuel of socialism and the typical exuberance of youth has made a trip to the supermarket not the experience it once was.

These socially and environmentally aware seem to have directed their fury toward the plastic bag. Those few remaining individuals who don't take their Green recycled shopping bag with them to the supermarket are despised for their callus disregard for the environment. Even the checkout person, who has been directly responsible for propagating the plastic bag for 50 years now looks at you with scorn. Personally, while I'm standing in the checkout queue with my eight items or less I can actually feel them staring at me, all for not having some appropriate receptacle to transport my shopping.

As a result, in my share accommodation house in Newtown, I currently have about 30 recycled shopping bags. I have so many because I never remember to take them when I go shopping. This puts me into a cold sweat at the checkout so I grab another Green one, to the relief of my fellow patrons. 30 however, is a lot of bags and I don't know what to do with them all; There seems to be no mechanism to recycle them and to be honest, I now miss the plastic bag.

So here are the stats, and while statistics can be used to prove practically everything, they can be taken out of context to illustrate relative contributions of certain components. Plastic bags do not consume a large amount of natural or energy resources, nor are they responsible for any significant amount of Australia's litter stream. According to Environment Australia, only 2% of the total plastic used in Australia are used in plastic bags. Similarly, plastic bags in Australia are responsible for no more than 2% of total observable rubbish.

What were people doing with all their shopping bags that they would bring home? For me, they were used as garbage bags, which now, because of my fear of carrying plastic in public, have been replaced by tough black plastic, and for the remainder of the bags that I didn't use, I recycled (which is the essence of the Green shopper). This leads me further.

Another DIY environmental vogue is recycling. To minimise the cost of this practice to the community, we divide our garbage into cardboard and plastic, glass and aluminium. This then gets collected separately and returned at what most would assume to be a minimal cost to the environment. People make as much effort in this regard as they can, and it's my belief that this is a good thing.

Lets take a brief look at recycling. Recycling is appealing because it takes waste material that would normally go to landfill or be burnt, and places it back into the production cycle, reducing the amount of raw material required (and therefore simplistically saving the environment). The process does however, require the allocation of resources: power must be used to process the recycled material, water to wash it, trucks to transport it, and few people to sort it. While the figures vary according to sources and material, between 20-80% of common household recycling ends up in landfill anyway. This is however of little consequence, as the merits do outweigh the added environmental, if not economic benefits. The problem with recycling is that it creates a degree of apathy towards other environmental issues.

The apathy referred to is a consequence of leaving society with a false sense of contribution. Because we go to such lengths to sort our rubbish, we won't bother to want to pay that little extra to get renewable energy power, or we might feel comfortable with buying a bigger car that sucks more fuel (though perhaps that might be a stretch). Similarly, the process of curb-side recycling drags our attention away from what should be more important issues, such as purchasing products that have less packaging, larger reusable containers, or products that have high return in the recycling loop. Very little attention is paid to these issues nor are any incentives provided to encourage this.

Is it the point of this article to have recycling banned and replaced by another, equally as insignificant component? Certainly not! The point of this article is to broaden an outlook into what we are attempting to do by recycling. In any existence in a developed world, we have an impact on the environment we live in. The aim of that existence should be to minimise our impact, our demand for natural resources, and to pay the true cost of materials according to their environmental, economic and social impact.

Don't buy products with excess packaging. Don't buy products that will not recycle easily. Educate communities and encourage them to participate. Use renewable electricity and buy products that were created from renewable electricity. Read your newspaper online and buy a Green shopping bag if you must, but leave me my plastic bag. Sure they kill the odd dolphin, and don't sink as quickly as car tires but there are better ways to vent your frustration at the environmentally ignorant.