Today was the first day that plastic bags in stores are illegal in my town. I picked up some groceries this morning and didn’t have enough to need a bag, but would have paid the ten cents for a paper one. I always asked for paper anyway, because I preferred it, I had uses for the bags at home, and when it comes down to it, they’re from a renewable resource and can be easily recycled with the newspapers.

The clerks were not sure how to deal with the situation, and I got the impression that today was the first some of them had heard of it. The shiny new self-scanning checkout lines were empty. They had formerly had racks of plastic bags there for buyers to use, but there is no mechanism for charging for a paper one. There was a rack of reusable ones you could grab and buy.

I’m supposed to bring my own bags, but I don’t like the idea of having to continuously clean reusable cloth ones. Food poisoning issues have come up in cities that have had this law for a while now. Oddly, nobody seems to have paid attention to the environmental impact of constantly washing cloth bags.

As with the other restrictions on my choices, this was not a big problem on its own. Just one more little decision taken out of my hands.