"Neither, thank you."
For years, I have been bringing canvas bags into the supermarket. They are strong, durable, can be put into the wash along with the laundry, and usually have an Earth friendly image of a wolf or a tree or something printed on the front. It has made sense to me all along. Why chop down trees for paper bags, or crowd the landfills with plastic ones which will be there for thousands of years? Canvas bags can be kept in the car so they are always handy when there is a need to pop into the store for groceries, or supplies, or whatever. (Even better, I stash one or two in my knapsack when I am on the bicycle.)
Try it for a few weeks, and you will discover for yourself how easy it is to do without the ubiquitous plastic bags. Some people keep them somewhere in the house, for lining trash bins or for walking the dog. Certainly they can be put to good use more than once, although many people throw them away without even thinking about it. What's even more mindless is the way so many cashiers double the bags and then fill them with only two or three items. It's alarming to stand and watch the employees at the register go through an endless supply of plastic. More often than not, the customers leave the store with several times as many bags than they need.
As a teenager, I worked at the A&P and learned how to bag groceries efficiently. (Forming a rectangle at the base with cans or sturdy boxes, then filling the center with odd shaped items. Heaviest on the bottom, lightest on top.) The idea was to save the store money by using fewer bags. Now there is a much bigger idea, and the responsibility is shared by the costumer.
Some stores (like Trader Joe's) still use paper bags. That's better in some ways, but not ideal. Those bags can be brought back to the store and reused, although most people don't know that and toss them into the recycling without a second thought. Like paper plates. Why wash a dish when paper can be recycled? The answer is simple. Not creating waste in the first place is preferable to recycling.
Same is true for plastic. Sure, it's better to reuse a bag several times, but best not to need it at all. That small trash bin by your desk, for example. If you refrain from tossing out liquids (which makes no sense anyway, as long as there is a sink in the house,) that bin does not need to be lined. If it should get dirty in time, well then it can easily be cleaned.
Technology may one day bring us to the point where we can live in a way that is completely harmless to the planet. Until then, an environmental awareness is not a difficult thing to achieve. We are, each one of us, already making small decisions in the course of the day which have a cumulative effect on the health of the planet. It might not be possible to live in this world at this time without doing some harm to the environment, but that is no reason not to try to minimize the damage. Simply by being more aware.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDBtCb61Sd4
