Plastic bags meant for the landfill were being carried away by the wind, littering the countryside for dozens of miles. The bags could be found virtually everywhere you can imagine. Trees, waterways and even tangled around the neck of Rhode Island wildlife. This was part of a public relations effort to increase awareness of the problem by asking people to tie their bags in a knot before discarding to prevent them from leaving the landfill. This was the first step in an effort to discourage the use of plastic bags all together.