New Grocery Sacks Only With Paper

With the shifts in the economy, one local grocery store closed, was bought and reopened again last week under a new name. I liked the old store, so I stopped in Friday to see what the new store was about.

To my relief, things were shelved in the same place as the old store. I found what I was looking for with no problem. The biggest differences were all new faces, new floor tile and new shopping carts.

What surprised me, however, is that this new grocery uses only paper bags to sack up your groceries for you. The familiar - and missed – paper bag smell drifted to my nose as I carried all my purchases in one bag cradled in the crook of my elbow. Ah, the nostalgia. There are other uses for paper grocery bags too, like cutting them up for school book covers.

And I was stunned. Wasn’t the point of switching to plastic to save the trees? Trees are still a limited and dying resource! Are those bags made with recycled paper? I looked all over the bag when I got home, and found nothing stamped on the bag whatsoever. No recycle symbol.

Of course, there’s a large downside to using plastic as shopping bags too. All they do is fill landfills with something that takes years and years to decompose. Other uses? Not many, though I have lined garbage pails with them. But, that looks tacky.

So now, the old argument resumes: Paper or plastic?

Have you seen any stores using paper bags again? A penny for your thoughts!