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Goodbye, Plastic Bags. Hello, Despair.
Kroger, the grocery store chain, recently announced that it will phase out plastic shopping bags by 2025. And somewhere in the smoky backrooms of all the other grocery store chains, where the captains of that industry make decisions that control the lives of millions, (“A truckload of Tough Actin’ Tenactin just drove off a cliff in Switzerland. It’s gougin’ time!”) they’re feeling the pressure to follow suit, and the fear of being left behind at the PR docks. That pressure will build and build and they’ll all do it. I find this news depressing and can’t help but feel this is a big step backward for our society.
Perhaps some of you are too young to remember what life was like before plastic shopping bags. Well, let me paint the picture for you. I warn you, it’s dreary.
See, back then there were only paper bags — pathetic, handle-less paper bags. Every trip to the grocery store was a dance with disaster.
Imagine it’s 1981 and you’re getting ready to leave the grocery store. You’re happy because Beavis, the cashier, erroneously typed in the prices of only six items, and you breezed through the checkout in only 18.5 minutes. But your smile fades as you head to the car because you know the battle is really only half over. What are the are the odds you will actually make to your kitchen with your eggs, your glass bottle of ketchup, your little cans of Vienna sausages all intact and undented? Driving home with no air conditioner, condensation building up on that package of frozen peas by the second, and the hard corner of an ice cream carton pressing against the soft paper? Not high, my friend. Not high.
And once you get home, how many trips from the car to the kitchen will you have to make? You can only safely carry two bags at a time. Is Thanksgiving coming? Did you go shopping for all the stuff you need to host that meal? In that case, you’re looking at an hour and a half to get things brought in. Hopefully, you’re among those parents who decided to have a large number of kids just to help bring in the groceries.
And if it is raining? Well, then you might as well forget even getting to the door. You’re going to spend many, many soggy minutes on your hands and knees, getting soaked, picking up your muddy, cracked items, strewn all down the walkway like the wreckage from a derailed train.
Even if you manage to get all these items back into your disintegrating bags, do you have someone to help you open the door when you get to it? No? Well, you are in for yet another treat. You’re going to have to delicately put one of the bags down, letting it slide down your hip, crouching until it lands, then open the door, then somehow pick the bag back up again. At this point, your Doberman leaps at you and knocks a bag out of your hands. In seconds, he has found the ground beef, torn through the butcher paper, and gobbled it up. While you sink down and sob, the dog goes back for the cheddar cheese block. God only knows where your keys are.
Does this sound like any way to live? But that’s the way it was. Crap was on the ground everywhere and life was dark and sad.
And then, sometime in the early- to mid-’80s, like a miracle, like a rainbow, like an April breeze, came the plastic bag. With handles! Impervious to all moisture! Like steel, but light and flexible. And if you double-bagged? Well then, Good Lord, you could carry a bowling ball in one! Your hands were free to open doors, fight off dogs, neighbor kids, or anything else that threatened to grab your hard earned grocery bounty. In no time, refrigerators and lazy-susans were full again. Sidewalks were free of grocery debris. The misery index plummeted. Communism fell. Alf was a hit show. Mothers started nursing their babies again. Everything came together.
And the secondary uses! Well, they proved just as beneficial. Why, how much have I saved on luggage just by using 20 or 30 grocery bags instead? And the change for those who walk dogs? Revolutionary. If you walk a dog, you know what I’m talking about.
But so much for all that happiness. Picture the awful scenes I have described above and behold your future. And for what? Apparently, a few of these bags end up in the ocean. Maybe every now and then fish gets strangled by one. We’re going to give all this progress up for that fish? What, was that fish going to find the cure for cancer? No, It was just going to get eaten by a bigger fish anyway!
Look, I like a clean earth as much as the next guy, but honestly, is Earth really as great as everybody makes it out to be? The excessive gravity here kinda sucks when you think about it. It’s killed millions. And you know about spitting cobras, right? They spit right in your face and then fatally inject you with poison. We shouldn’t have to put up with that.
I’m just saying there could be better planets out there. Maybe even ones with better-tasting vegetables. Cauliflower tastes like flatulence solidified and everybody knows it. (There, I said it.) Zucchini’s terrible, too.
We should see what other planets have to offer. Who knows what might be waiting for us? Beaches with no jellyfish? Chocolate rain? Maybe through some wormhole that might not even be very far away, right? We just need the motivation to get out there and find it.
But I fear that day has been pushed out again. This news is a real setback and our descendants — our hungry, exhausted, dirty-kneed descendants — will surely curse us for it.
Published in Humor
Indeed, those problems are only problems when recycling a product (paper) that biodegrades rather well, and is produced from a natural crop. A crop that happens to be a huge carbon sink, too. It’s almost like recycling is counterproductive, or something, in the big environmental picture. (-;
Huh? That comparison makes no sense. I’m not imposing anything on anyone, I’m paying for a service.
Suppose I order a Big Mac and fries, and when my order comes out, there are no fries. I ask to see the manager, and he tells me the fryer is leaking oil and making a big mess, so they decided not to make the fries I paid for. Not my problem, buy better equipment. In the meantime, make my fries or give me a refund.
If your equipment can’t handle plastic bags, maybe you need to buy better equipment. Banning plastic bags is not a rational solution.
Here’s another comparison: “Will no one rid me of that troublesome priest?” What happens next is not my problem.
Your comparisons sure seem like non sequiturs to me.
I think they are very sequitur. We don’t usually get to wash our hands of the indirect consequences of our words, deeds, or free market transactions.
Sure we do. If you sign a contract, I expect you to uphold your end of the bargain. Issues with your equipment, suppliers, employees, and so forth are your problem, not mine.
Depends on the contract and the nature of the business. Even in normal business dealings, we don’t always get to write off all of the contractors’ problems as none of our concern. We can try, but it doesn’t always work that way.