It irks me no end. California,
and more specifically, San Francisco, is once again ahead of the
cultural curve. The state that brought us hippies, gay marriage and
the “governator” is proposing a revolutionary, albeit pragmatic and
simple, answer to the paper vs. plastic-bag quandary at check-out
counters.
“Paper or plastic?” It’s the fundamental
question of our shopping era. The stuff of silly television
commercials, talk-show monologues and environmental arguments.
Slay a tree or add to the wildlife-choking,
landfill-glutting, oil-industry-fueling juggernaut? It’s a
rock-and-hard-place ethical dilemma on a landscape littered with
them.
Which car do I drive, and how many? Push mower vs.
power? Live in town or commute from the country? Water the Kentucky
bluegrass or plant some sage and rocks? Accept organic-sticker
shock or buy cheaper and maybe toxic?
But it’s that bag
dilemma from K-Mart to Safeway that epitomizes the
how-do-I-live-responsibly, and the how-can-we-cope-with-how-we-live
conundrum. Problem is, we make the choice more difficult than it
needs to be, because the answer is very clear if you think about it
for more than two minutes: Neither.
San Francisco
officials are considering charging consumers 17 cents every time
they check out with a shopping bag supplied by the store. While the
rest of the country obsesses over who can go to bed together and
whether a woman must bear an unwanted child, folks on the bay are
coping with some real issues. Hit us in the pocketbook, they say.
The idea is simple. Every time you buy a razor or
toothpaste or sandwich, already packaged to the hilt, residents
will ante up for the superfluous bag, or choose not to bother. Just
maybe, just as we all should have been doing right along, consumers
will get in the habit of bringing their own bags.
In San
Francisco alone, customers tote home 50 million bags every year,
which adds up to an annual cleanup cost at the dump of $8.4
million. And that doesn’t factor in the other environmental costs
of those seemingly indestructible plastic sacks.
“We need
to change people’s patterns,” says incoming City Supervisor Ross
Mirkarimi.
I admit that this change in habit took me
awhile. Some years back, I started amassing a collection of canvas
tote bags — gifts, convention center giveaways, library book
bags, souvenirs. It wasn’t long before my family had half a dozen
or more. But though we hung them conveniently on a hook by the back
door, I repeatedly found myself bagless in the grocery store.
It took 15 or 20 of these little confrontations with
ingrained habit before I started to grab bags on the way to
wherever my shopping needs took me. It’s gotten to the point that I
can’t find a paper or plastic bag around the house when I need to
line a garbage can. Plastic bags still arrive in quantity with
loaves of bread and other products, but at least I’m free of the
cheap, awkward and flimsy brand favored by grocery and discount
stores. Canvas bags also never break, no matter how many cans you
fill them with, and they come in handy on almost a daily basis for
trips to the pool or gym or picnic site.
Perhaps, in San
Francisco, there will be some habit changes on the other side of
the checkout counter. With money involved, cashiers will be more
likely to ask whether a bag is necessary. Do you really need a bag
to carry that toothbrush all the way to the parking lot?
Perhaps, too, cashiers will have the temerity to suggest that if
people are outraged, they should bring their own next time. And
maybe, across the panorama of environmental issues from water use
to subdivision sprawl to gas guzzlers, we’ll recognize that a stiff
uppercut to the pocketbook is the most effective way to change
destructive habits. What’s even more motivating, San Franciscans
will gain the smug right to boast that because of them, there is
less plastic blowing around the landscape, throttling wildlife,
eddying at sea and reminding us of our profligate ways.
Admit it, it’s time to jump on the bandwagon, or endure the
intolerable self-righteousness emanating from California.
Alan Kesselheim is a contributor to Writers on the Range,
a service of High Country News (hcn.org). He
writes and shops in Bozeman, Montana.
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