Paper or Plastic?

Many stores are moving toward asking you to purchase your own cloth bags and use them whenever you go to the store for groceries (or, frankly, other stores). While doing this, over the last few years, many stores have been producing smaller, thinner, lighter plastic bags.

The main reasons that I have gleaned for this change is that the plastic bags are environmentally unfriendly. They don't biodegrade  worth a damn and are filling up our trash and landfills with needless plastic. In addition, all plastics are made from petroleum, so the costs of producing the bags has increased since the oil barrel costs have skyrocketed.

For many years the only choice a person had when going to the grocery store was to get paper bags. Paper bags are tough, hold more than the new sizes of the plastic, and are generally easier to place in your car due to the regular rectangle shaped bottom. In addition to all of these advantages, paper biodegrades fairly easily in landfills, as many insects and some plants like to "feast" on paper and, specifically, the cellulose that makes up a major component of paper. Now, granted, most paper sacks do not have handles, so are a little more awkward to carry. Lastly, while originally paper manufacturers used clear-cutting methods to make their products, that has pretty much gone away. Nearly all paper manufacturers now replant, manage their tree lots in environmental safe ways, and use a ton of recycled material in all their products.

In addition to its use as a grocery carrier, a paper sack can also be used as impromptu drawing paper for children, package wrapping, and cooling trays for cookies. I'm sure many other uses are out there, too, but those are some of what I have used them for.

At my local Albertsons, it turns out, they have the paper bags in a small cupboard in the bagging area of the checkout stand and you just have to ask for them.

Sometimes the old ways are as good, or even better than, the new ones. If you are concerned about the environment and don't want to buy your own bags, try asking for paper at our local grocery store. They may just have the bags handy and you may find them useful to keep after they have served their original purpose.