Barrie Advance

September 23, 2009


I’m now thoroughly convinced that the idea of charging 5 cents for plastic shopping bags is a flop; not a complete failure, but a flop. I’ll give you my reasons, but first a little background into my shopping habits.

For years, I’ve been shopping at places like No Frills and Price Chopper, where they had the idea of charging for bags a long time ago. When shopping at these stores, I would either bring my own plastic bags (not reusable cloth bags, but plastic bags), use one of the cardboard boxes they leave for you at the front of the store, or pay the 5 cents. I would even bring my own plastic bags to other supermarkets and stores, like A & P, Walmart or the local convenience store. If I bought something I could easily carry, I would decline a bag.

I wasn’t doing this to save the environment as I use shopping bags as garbage bags. I was doing it because I had a mountain of plastic bags at home and didn’t need anymore filling up the cupboards in my house. I would even take some of them to supermarkets that had collection bins for unwanted plastic bags.

Now I find myself with the opposite problem of running low on bags for my trash cans. Although I have gone out and bought numerous reusable cloth bags, any time I am in a store that still gives out free plastic bags, I readily accept them.  Doesn’t this seem counter-productive? Bottom line, I still need plastic bags in some form or another. I can get by not using plastic bags in my dry-waste trash cans, but the wet waste, including the kitty litter, requires some kind of bag.

I think a better, more environmentally responsible solution would have been to re-introduce paper bags at shopping centres. Any one my age (40s and up) will remember bringing groceries home in paper bags.

Wouldn’t that be the better way?