Plastic shopping bags. Love ’em. Hate ’em. We use them. But there’s a secret their incredible convenience is hiding. They suck.
They might not have sucked at one point, but they suck now.
And I’d know. I go to the grocery store.
A lot.
Reasons for their suckiness—this has nothing to do California’s plastic shopping bag ban—is that they suck.
Paper bags work better: Better design. More utility. More time I get back in my life.
They also suck less.
Don’t believe me? Love your bin brimming with 12,000 plastic shopping bags? Check this paper bag action.
1. Cat Litter. Not only is going face-first into a powder-filled toilet to filter animal crap through a pee-clumped sieve one of my proudest daily moments, but using a paper shopping bag here works better. It stays open. It stands up by itself. It accepts the litter blobs without collapsing. And, unlike about 50% of the plastic shopping bags I pull from the tangle, paper bags rarely have holes in them.
2. Put trash bags on the list. So, we occasionally run out of garbage bags for the kitchen. You’d think using a plastic shopping bag—just wrap it around the rim of the can—would work. It doesn’t. Because they suck. They’re too small and the plastic isn’t elastic. Paper bags on the other hand, work great. Shove ’em in. Fill ’em up.
3. In the car. Paper shopping bags begin their climb up the superiority ladder before you even get them out of the grocery store. I can load groceries in them easier and faster at the store than the tangle of plastic bags. And I can place them in the cart—and then in the car—better than plastic shopping bags.
Paper’s flat bottom makes them more modular. Fruit is less bruised. And, thank you flat-bottom, they’re less likely to spill on the way home. And, whether it’s a snag on the cart or they just show up that way, I see plastic shopping bags already have holes in them by the time I get to the car.
@#$%^&* seriously?
4. Sociopaths skip this one. Can you use plastic shopping bags for cats? As tempting as that might sound to some of us, please, if your answer is yes, you’re a sociopath. Get help. A paper shopping bag open on the floor is a classic cat diversion.
5. OK, OK, sue me, I’m my age. Yes, I remember covering my school books with paper bags. And you know what? Those damn things lasted all damn year. I reiterate: I can’t even get plastic shopping bags home from the store before they fail. Paper is free and perfect for doodling and illustration with your fave logo.
6. Chestnuts roasting. Things that are better than paper shopping bags for starting a fireplace or fire pit fire: Zero.
7. Storage. So junior has a bunch of little toys. Or you’re saving your Hot Wheels for when you have kids. Or whatever small part stuff you store—do a double bag. Roll the bag closed. Tape it shut. And write on it what’s in there. Try that with a plastic shopping bag. Go ahead. I even did this in my workshop with gun nails I rarely use. The bag lasted for years.
8. No, I’m not staying the night. Paper surpasses plastic shopping bags for what I call ‘light luggage’ situations: Because they’re big enough, they’re great to store muddy gear after soccer or Spartan Race or DIY, because you can put a lot of stuff in there. Shoes, for example, fit.
9. Compost. If you somehow don’t find a second use for your paper bags, they make good compost.
So, I could probably go on. I won’t.
Final score — Paper bags 8. Plastic shopping bags: 0
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John–Love it. Passion duly noted. However, passion duly challenged. Plastic is made from petroleum. The embodied energy is higher than paper. Massive. And they may well be made in China, so they have to travel the ocean in a ship before they never go away. I get that you like how they work, but there’s more to it for me. Yes, it’s a global economy, but I’ve had as many piles of groceries tumble from plastic as paper. Winner: Paper. By the way, the shredder kindling thing…nice work.
This analysis is completely off the charts wrong!
1) I have a “plastic-bag-sized trash can with motion detector lid. I scoop the poop out of the litter box and straight into the plastic bag inside the trash can. It takes days to fill it up. Then I remove the plastic bag (double-bagged in case of a hole) and trash it, place two more plastic bags in the can and I’m ready to go.
2) Ditto for the kitchen. Simple Human makes a plastic-shopping-bag sized container with lid that mounts to the inside door of my under-sink kitchen cabinet. It works perfectly.
3) As for groceries, I’ll take plastic over paper any day. Paper tears at the slightest provocation: sharp corners of a package tear the paper, refrigerated or frozen food that gets the paper wet destroys the paper bag, paper holds much less weight and if your paper bag happens to have handles, they rip.
4) Let’s skip the sociopath reference. Sick.
5) School books? Really? You’re going to cover them with a paper bag that fell apart from that gallon bottle of milk that got the paper wet and spilled all over the ground when you tried to pull it out of your trunk?
6) What’s better for starting my fireplace? The paper in my recycle bin next to my desk, or the paper I pull out of my shredder.
7) Storage: I prefer more structured storage containers that I can stack rather than a bunch of paper bags stuffed onto a shelf.
8) For Pete’s sake, buy a carry-on at Marshall’s. Do you really want to be one of those people walking into a hotel lobby with paper bags under your arm?
9) Compost? See #6 comment about fireplace.
I could go on, but I’ll just add one more benefit of plastic: I can store a dozen of them in my car’s seat-back pocket whereas only about 3 paper bags fit into the same space.
Oh…plastic bags have handles. With those clever plastic bag handle adapters, I can carry much more in plastic bags than the two or three paper bags that I can carry, carefully holding them by the bottoms for fear they will fall apart.
Final score? Who cares. To each his/her own. Just sayin’.