IN THE 1967 film The Graduate, Dustin Hoffman's character, Benjamin Braddock, receives a single word of advice about his future from a well-meaning friend of his parents: "Plastics." Our fearless, environment-saving duo of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Environment Minister Peter Garrett were 10 and 14 respectively when the film came out, and it seems plausible that they sucked this message in with their generational DNA but were too young to recognise its satirical intent. Their retreat last Thursday from the promise to phase out plastic bags by next year is a quasi-comedic punchline to six years of political wrangling over the fate of the staggering 4.8 billion bags used by Australians last year that wound up either in landfill, festering in kitchen drawers, or impersonating jellyfish in the bay. Six years of debate, culminating in six hours of discussion at an all-Labor love-in of federal and state environment ministers. And