The editorial, 'Ban the bags before it's too late' published in The Daily Chronicle on the 27th of May 2009 contends in a predominately, measured tone that the federal government needs to step up its actions and ban plastic bags in order to stop them from causing harm to our native animals and viciously damaging the environment. The editorial is targeted towards the general public, particularly those who have an interest in the environment and battling pollution.

The editorial commences with the generalization that we must 'ban the bags before it's too late,' - a title that provides arguable evidence. Consequently, the audience may agree with the unsupported argument that it will be too late for the environment if we do not act on the issue right now and that the damage will be done. Furthermore, the use of the emotive dysphemisms 'destroy' and 'die' - words which imply an extreme sense of annihilation - emphasize the potentially calamitous outcomes which the sea life will succumb to if the bags aren't removed. This attempts to compound the nuances of the generalization the audience have been pre-positioned with and thus, attempts to pull at the heart strings of readers and forces them to think about the damage the bags are doing to the environment.

By providing irrefutable evidence in the form of statistics, such as that at least "100,000 birds die each year to plastic bags" and that plastic bags last from "20 to a 1000 years", the author attempts to inform the audience of the monstrous damage the plastic bags are causing. Subsequently, by including the reader with the words, 'we,' 'us' and 'our' the author attempts to link the situation to the everyday lives of the audience who use plastic bags. In combination with the repetitively used statistical evidence, this adds to the notion that the audience may feel concerned and responsible about banning the