What's NOT wrong with this TV ad?

An ad against soda taxes is bad enough, but check out the plastic bag consumption.

If you are anything like me (an obsessive compulsive re-user/recycler), watching TV can be difficult. Any show that features someone with writer’s block invariably includes a scene involving the actor wadding up a piece of paper (who types anymore?) and throwing it away in the garbage can.  And then there are the reality shows, where you realize the rest of the country really doesn’t get it.

But this ad takes the cake. (Check it out here.)

I’m not talking about the absurdity of the SODA INDUSTRY trying to convince us that a few cents tax on soda will strain the food budgets for American families.  Or that soda and food should actually be equated.  Or even the subversive link between this tax on soda and the closure of main-street businesses. 

No, what chaps me the most about this ad is not only that this “American family” is unloading bag after bag of groceries in plastic bags, but they actually have a bag for a single bottle of soda.

It's estimated that nearly 12 million barrels of oil are required to make the 100 billion plastic shopping bags Americans go through annually. I could go on and on about the problem with plastic bags, but this is just one more reminder that there is so much to do around reducing Americans' consumption of packaging – especially single-use shopping bags – and how big of a task it will be to change the status quo.