Hows my little bagger?

Paper or Plastic?
Since moving south I think I can safely say I've only heard this phrase only a small handful of times. Which is amazing since I frequent places that give me this option. As someone who likes to think of himself as an environmentally conscious individual I I like to think I give the best answer. As usual though, this isn't such simple answer to come to.

A little research on the interwebs will tell you, quickly neither is the correct answer. One should choose a reusable canvas bag, screw both paper and plastic. Sadly as most of you know I forget things all the time, including my canvas bags. So what to choose? Let me guide you quickly:

If you have two items or less, proudly tell your clerk, I don't need a bag for those, Look! I've got two able hands and only two things here. Save a bag and please hand my things to me. This goes especially for Best Buy because if you buy just one DVD or CD they throw them into a little bag and won't think twice! You have to catch them early though, I've caught more than a few clerks throwing the (not quite used) bag into their trash can after I said I don't need a bag for this, thus defeating my bag saving effort. This is frustrating.

Sadly at most retail stores you can only have plastic and that is a crying shame because who doesn't like options.

For the pure environmentalist, you should go out and educate yourself on your bag choices from the grocery store. Broken down simply, Paper is the natural one to assume is better choice but it requires trees to be turned to pulp, washing, bleaching, heating, and printing. While a tree is a renewable resource and the bag can be infinitely recycled it is a very energy intensive process to create(or recreate) one. A plastic bag is actually slightly less energy intensive to create, but it comes from a non-renewable resource and takes ages to biodegrade, and can only be recycled once or twice. (don't forget, reusing it is a good thing, but quite different than recycling).

So this naturally leaves the canvas bag, it can be used probably for 200+ shopping visits, they aren't that expensive and you can feel really good about saving some landfill space. Not to mention, many stores are beginning to offer an albeit small discount for using said reusable bag. I believe Target gives you 3 cents off your entire purchase.

My observations while actually using the canvas bag are amazingly striking. Generally when I go to the grocery store or Wal-Mart, I notice clerks stuffing 1-3 items in most plastic bags. AMAZING! counting out cereal boxes, I think the average plastic bag could hold at LEAST 5-7 items. A Paper bag is generally more thoughtfully packed, and when loaded to the max with I would guess up to 12 items. A canvass bag though, present one of those to a clerk and they look at them like puzzles waiting to be solved. I would say every clerk honestly tries to efficiently pack a canvas bag significantly better than I have ever seen with paper and easily for plastic.

So remember kids: Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. If you keep those three 'R's in mind the next time you are leaving your local supermarket you can easily help our environment.