Good Deeds Gone Bad

I drive around with a big bag of plastic bags in the back of my car. I collect them from my ex-wife (who would otherwise put them in the garbage), my kids and even friends. I feel a sense of accomplishment whenever I deposit them in the plastic-bag recycling bins that are now popping up everywhere. Of course I wish I could make the transition to reusable fabric shopping bags, but I'm just not organized to have the bags handy when I decide it's time to go shopping. I rationalize this behavior under the rubric of, "It's a guy thing," letting my dumb-ass heterosexuality get me off the hook, but this is really just a fancy denial of my essential laziness and becoming a fabric bag shopper is now a goal I hope to achieve in the next year. Recently I read that the recession has led to a collapse in the price of recycled plastic and that huge container loads of shredded plastic bags--not to mention plastic water and soda bottles--are sitting idle, without anywhere to go. The futility of that is just mind-boggling. How are we supposed to get involved on a micro level when the end result is that nothing changes? I've given up bottled water, but I won't stop drinking diet soda. Who's going to be the plastic-recyling guru that figures this out?