To Rebecca Hosking, bag lady is a badge of honor. In 2006, while on Midway Island in the North Pacific, she encountered hundreds of albatross carcasses with plastic bags lodged in their stomachs. Horrified, she returned to her hometown of Modbury, England, and persuaded all of its 43 shopkeepers to agree to a plastic-bag ban — the first of its kind in the U.K. Since then, at least 80 other towns in the U.K. have announced plans to follow suit — helping cut down on the 200 million bags that litter Britain's beaches and parks every year.