Plastic fantastic

It's wonderful to watch something steadily gather momentum until, Bam, it reaches a tipping point and explodes into the public mainstream. I've been vaguely warbling on about banning plastic bags for years. Then came Modbury in May last year, and it's been a speedy ride since then. We went to stay with friends in Hay-on-Wye on December 1st, when they launched Plastic Bag Free Hay. Weeks later, a campaign was started in Melksham.
We wrote to the supermarkets, then went to see their managers, who greeted the initiative with enthusiasm (they have to pay for the bags after all). We tried to make Feb 14th PBF; plastered the town with posters, then stood around handing out leaflets and used bags.
Most people were polite; many were even enthusiastic; a few refused to take our recycled bags: 'They don't work as well as new ones', 'I don't hold with that. You sort out China first.' (Just two days later, China announced they were banning bags). But I still felt like a fringe act, a faintly irritating do-gooder aiming my sharpened lance at people's guilt boils.
Then, just two weeks later, the Daily Mail wades in with its campaign to ban the bag. M & S immediately jumps aboard, closely followed by a panting Gordon Brown. With a few pages of well-aimed righteousness, we'd been promoted to the main stage.
Halleluja, I suppose. Some environmentalists have been muttering about Green Wash, and I can see their point. At the grand table of things, plastic bags are bird feed: they'll have minimal impact on the planet's march into the furnace.
But I'm not with them. At best, the ban will get people thinking about the planet. And once they've taken the first, small step, the next will be easier, and the next, and maybe, one day, they'll break into a run?
At worst, we'll have got rid of plastic; seabirds and turtles will be relieved of a dangerous menace, and our hedges will be able to grow, unadorned by flapping plastic.