The Plastic Bag Conundrum

Since moving to the St. Louis general area, I feel as though I’ve experienced a complete 180 degree shift in the use of plastic bags. So much so that I decided to to write about the oddities I have observed in both places I’ve recently lived.

Now, growing up you could choose paper or plastic bags at the store. Walmart tended to have all plastic on those cool lazy susan-esque devices where you could put your things in a bag, and spin to get another bag when your first bag was full. I think my hometown still uses plastic bags at the grocery store in the self-checkout station, but growing up I was not totally aware of any debates for or against the use of plastic bags.

Fast forward to life in Seattle. I’m sure most of you reading this can guess (given the odd ban on plastic straws in the city limits) that plastic bags are almost never seen. There are none in grocery stores, so paper is your only option, even in self-checkout, and you will be charged anywhere from 5-10 cents in an effort to force people to bring their own bags to the store. Now, my roommate and I found that paper bags made great recycling bags, so they could serve a duel purpose when we brought them home. The downside of this is, of course, the rain. Granted, the bags need to get pretty wet for them to fall apart and you can double bag, but if you are caught in a downpour at a non-covered bus stop, you might have a problem.

I now live in a place that almost seems to immortalize the plastic bag to uses far beyond its capability. Just the other day, I bought a large package of paper towels at a store, and the dutiful checkout lady tried to shove them in a plastic bag that was half the size of the package, despite my plea that I didn’t need a bag for an already well-protected item. Then, she proceeded to double bag the rest of my purchase even though the items were not heavy or bulky enough to warrant that. Now, the plastic bag does have its uses, especially when traveling, so like paper bags, they can be reused or generally recycled. However, I’ve noticed a zeal to overuse the plastic bag rather than to use it sensibly and therefore have more leftover bags than I could use in the near future (the example above is one of many I could have chosen).

Now, the point of this post is not to start a debate on paper vs. plastic (they both have issues with breaking and capacity, also please don’t pick a fight about it, thanks!), but rather to share a quirky observation of the last 6 weeks or so. I have gone from a place that is quick to ban the plastic bag to a place that is quick to overuse the plastic bag, and I find this quite funny!