Paper or Plastic? How about salmonella?

Some of you may remember the old days when groceries left the grocery store in paper bags. Sometimes the contents were so heavy it required double bags.

Then the environmental movement got into the picture and protested that too many trees were being cut down every year to make paper bags and insisted we go to something else.

So grocery stores changed to plastic bags. It was a major inconvenience because the thin plastic containers did not hold their shape in the trunk and would cause them to collapse to spill their contents making the cans of soup roll around on the drive home!

After a time, people got used to the plastic and worked around their shortcomings. Some, like me, even preferred them over paper because almost all of the groceries could be carried up in one load to the kitchen by looping the handles of multiple bags in one hand.

Now that paper is pretty much out of the picture, plastic has become the villain. Probably because these bags are a product of the "evil oil companies", environmentalists are now targeting them for extinction.

Nowhere else is environmental luncay more apparent than in San Francisco where the Mayor has outlawed water in plastic bottles because it causes too much pollution. Never mind the fact that we have this expensive federal and state recycling program in place that adds taxes to all our products! No, no, now the City is poised to outlaw plastic bags in grocery stores by adding a tax for using them.

What's the solution? Go to any grocery store in the Bay Area and you will now see reuasable cloth tote bags with the store's logo printed on them that YOU CAN BUY to carry home your groceries. Can you believe it?

I am already paying for my groceries which have a "tax" built into the price of the items to cover the cost of the bagging materials, and now they want me to BUY my own tote bags? And this is going to save the planet from global warming? GIVE ME A BREAK!

And what if, in my trip to the car, the dozen eggs in my bag accidentally get broken and leak into the bottom? Can anyone say salmonella? Sure, I am smart enough to know that I need to wash it out. But what about the poor and uneducated?

For them we'll need to set up a bureau of tote bag safety to hold classes to teach people the ins and outs of carrying groceries. Don't laugh. Big government liberals will try to implement something like this. Coming soon to a grocery store near you!

Mick O.