Exactly. What I always tell vendors when I get a strange look after refusing their plastic bag is that we use it for 5 minutes but it stays in the environment for 1000 years.
They make plastics that biodegrade in a few years. Supposedly even in a landfill they degrade (I've seen this debated, I'm not qualified to figure out who is right). However they are more expensive and so rarely used except when someone wants to make a point about being green.
