I worked as a courtesy clerk in 1985 when plastic grocery bags came on the scene.

No self-respecting courtesy clerk liked them; I hated those bags; they were so difficult to work with. Plastic bags  didn’t have nice, rectangular bases and thick paper walls. The innovative plastic grocery bag really messed up my grocery-bagging rhythm…so much so that I began to loathe the job I very much enjoyed for over a year.

Yes, I really did enjoy that job…call me weird.

Brown paper bags were ideal for organizing the groceries as they came down the grocery checker’s conveyor belt. Now I suddenly had to give customers a choice:  “Would you like paper, or plastic?” I should have asked what I really meant: “Would you like your groceries bagged quickly and neatly, or clumsily and disorderly?” Or better yet, “Do you want your groceries to remain bagged until you get home, or were you hoping to round them up off your car floor and re-bag them so you can get them into your house?”

Without the foresight to reason that these bags would become an environmental headache, my disdain for them was purely about the potential mess each one would contain. Not even the convenience of the handles won me over.

I left that job for one at the mall.

Within a couple of years it was no longer the industry standard to offer the choice to the customer; the customer had to ask for paper bags specifically or leave with the plastic ones.

Everything has changed again and most stores have their own versions of the reusable shopping bag which offers the awesome practicality of rectangular space for packing AND handles for carrying. Yay!

In an effort to reduce the number of plastic bags spending eternity in landfills, cities across the country are considering per-bag charges for customers who choose them. Yay again!

Each time I see the same plastic bag in the ditch along I-5 , obviously caught on something because the wind doesn’t move it along, I feel doubly irritated…first at the unsightly litter, then at the reminder that our global addiction to convenience always costs far too much as to be worthwhile.

The reusable bags I bought have paid themselves off: not only do I not pay for using the stores’ plastic bags, I get a 5¢ “rebate” for each reusable bag I use on my grocery orders.

I can’t think of any reason to buck this new trend. I hope the plastic grocery bag goes the way of the 8-track tape.

© Alexa Lopez, 2009