Living Without Plastic Grocery Bags

Could you live without plastic grocery bags?   We used to back when I was growing up with no problem. We used paper bags only that we called Hamady sacks (named after our much loved local grocery store).

Just let me say right away, those paper bags were not perfect.   Sometimes they would break and everything would fall at your feet.  Hopefully it was not the sack with the eggs in it!   Then if it was raining, well let's just say you might have a soggy mess.   Those baggers too could really load a paper bag.  They would put a bag inside a bag and make it really heavy to carry.

Then all of sudden around the 70's we were told that we needed to save trees and the plastic grocery bag was born.   Can you imagine?   We never dreamed of what that would lead to, plastic bags that never break down and living forever in our ocean and farm fields,
                               
                                    PAPER OR PLASTIC?

Would you like paper or plastic became a common question at the grocery store,  Oh, I was a stickler at first and stood my ground.  I wanted my paper bags.  I was born and raised on paper and looked at the bagger like, are you kidding?  Then it happened, I went in one day to the store and there were no paper bags to be found just plastic.  I think the paper bags were there but outside of the customers view.   Plastic was better and cheaper, they said, and remember the trees?  There was no choice and I had to succumb to what everyone else already seemed to be doing.

It was hard to get used to but then slowly, I began to like it.  Totally different from using paper bags, the baggers sometimes put hardly anything in them.   Changing to using plastic bag came with a few problems though, like, what to do with all these bags when you get them home?   It created a storage problem in the home because we couldn't just throw them away, we needed to reuse them.  We all had plastic bags that were stored in plastic bags in a closet somewhere.   Women saw a solution and started sewing plastic bag holders that now you can even buy.

You might ask what brought all this to my mind?   Well Oahu, Hawaii's law banning use of plastic bags comes in to effect on Sunday.   So the residents of Oahu will either use paper or bring their own reusable bag.

Living without plastic bags is in the people of Oahu's very near future.   Could you do it?  I wonder if I could.  Maybe I should try or a least reduce the amount of plastic bags in my house.

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This post has been linked to Our Simple Homestead Blog HOp, Motivation Monday at Life in the Balance,  Good Morning Mondays at Darling Down Diaries, Waste Less Wednesday,