Don’t get caught without your baggie … 🛄

Like many New Yorkers, I grumbled a lot about the plastic bag ban when I got to the store and didn’t bring enough bags in.

I don’t mind using reusable bags that much — I used to use them a lot when I first started out on my own — but then fell back into the habit of plastic bags. Disposable plastic bags don’t get dirty or worn out, you don’t have to remember to bring the multiple ones to the store, you can use them for storing camp trash before chucking them into the campfire or bringing them back to store for recycling.

I get the benefits of using less plastic bags on urban litter. Plastic bags blow out of landfills, out car windows, blow out trash cans and various other locations. The more I looked around over the past few months the more plastic bags I’ve seen blowing in the trees and in the bushes. They don’t break down well in the natural environment unless of course a landscape burns over in wildfire. They can clog sewer pipes, trap wildlife, provide breeding grounds for mosquitoes and certainly are unsightly in trees.

That said plastic shopping bags are such an inconsequential part of the waste stream. I’ve been researching buying a box myself and it looks like you can get a box of 1,000 grocery style plastic bags for under $20 and the box they come in has a shipping size of 6 inches deep including the cardboard packaging they come in. Even if a typical family uses and discards 1,500 bags a year it’s tiny compared to the rest of the plastic package discarded day to day or oil used to fuel the automobile on the way to and from the grocery store. Or even all the plastic that is landfill when you discard your old automobile.

I’m fine with using reusable bags but it’s a pain to have to know how many bags you will need before you go shopping. But I guess you just need to bring a few extra. I’ll probably get that box of plastic bags, and keep a bunch in my truck and toss some in my pocket so I have them. I think it’s silly but that’s just part of living in a silly state like New York.