I did a post on Twitter yesterday about being annoyed at Radio Shack (The Source by Circuit City but it will always be Radio Shack to me) for telling me that if I wanted a bag for my stuff, I’d have to pay 5 cents for the bag. This is an unfortunate trend that we’ve begun to see in store after store after store. Let me tell you, it’s something that seriously annoys and irritates me. I’ll probably piss a few people off with this rant, but here’s my take on the whole thing.
First off, let me say that the so called principle behind this does have its merits. The entire point of charging for these bags is to encourage people to use more environmentally friendly bags that can be used over and over again and not end up in landfills causing an adverse affect on the environment. I have no problem with taking steps to try and help mother nature and recycle and all of that stuff. I sort my garbage, recycle my bottles, and do my own little part. That all makes perfect sense to me. The problem seems to be that now companies have seen a way to gouge the consumer even further all in the name of the environment.
Does anyone here remember back in the days when you’d go into some stores and get prompted by the clerk for “paper or plastic” when you needed a bag? I do. It seemed that for ages we used brown paper bags to put all of our stuff in. Over time, it seemed that those were replaced by plastic bags and the paper bags disappeared. Anyone know why? I don’t. I suspect it has to do with the fact that plastic was cheaper to produce, had built in handles, and in many cases, the materials were stronger so they could hold heavier loads in each bag. Environmentalists would say that producing the brown paper bags is bad because it uses paper, which is derived from trees, so therefore we’re cutting down our natural resources causing more environmental impact.
The same however could be said for plastics. Although trees don’t suffer, the manufacturing plants that produce the bags emit tons of carbon into the atmosphere causing just as much damage as cutting down trees. We can replant trees,. it’s a bit harder to re-grow our atmosphere.
So, because governments are now getting more and more strict about the environment, and companies are trying to do their part, we are now seeing these reusable shopping bags. This is not a new concept. Sears used to have little machines in the store that for a quarter you could buy a paper bag that had handles and was quite sturdy. It didn’t however seem to be a big deal back then, but since the environment is all the rave these days, they are now.
Now, Tamara has bought a bunch of the Sobey’s bags and I like them. They hold more and are a hell of a lot easier to carry my food in so I don’t mind using them. What bothers me is that places like Superstore and other stores now, are basically forcing you to buy more expensive bags and if you won’t, they’ll charge you for the other ones so regardless of how much food you need to buy, they are now sucking more money out of your pocket and claiming that the environment is the reason.
Basically they are saying that you are welcome to buy anything in our store, but if you want to leave the store with our goods, you need to pay for the bag they come in as well. You can buy the more expensive 99cent bags which hold more, or we will nickel and dime you for every bag you use.
For me, this is absolutely NOT about the environment. This is about some accountant or money guy behind the scenes who realized there was a huge opportunity to sucker the consumer. Let’s tell them that plastic bags are horrible for the environment and that if you want to “hurt” the environment, we’re going to make you pay for every one of them. If you want to help them, you can pay %2000 more for a single bag and reuse that bag. They won’t tell you that the average person will forget their bags at home, or that those bags produce far more carbon emissions to produce than a regular bag, and the last thing I heard about them recently is that many are made in sweatshops in foreign countries. Tell me, does this sound like something that is good for the environment, or people in general?
If it really is the environment that is the driving factor, why is it we can’t simply bring back paper bags? These are far more environmentally friendly, they biodegrade easily, and can be recycled far easier than ANY plastic bag. Remember folks, even if you do remember to bring your reusable bags, companies are pumping those out by the millions and even though they aren’t making as many as they are the regular bags, they are using far more materials and time to produce them. So ultimately at the end of the day, the reusing of those bags probably doesn’t help much at all.
That brings me to the “big” picture of this rant. Months ago I responded to a letter in the local paper about how one guy suggested that if the government cared about the environment, they would ban drive-thrus. I said it was ridiculous because you’d also have to ban red-lights, stop signs, yield signs, and other forms of traffic control. I said that the man’s heart was in the right place about wanting to help the environment but this nickel and dime crap is not the way to do it.
The bottom line is that ultimately the real cause of the problems we have with our environment has to do with one simple word: oil. Oil is ultimately the fuel for almost everything around us. Pretty much anything that has a motor or engine of any kind uses some sort of oil, regardless of the variation. All of those manufacturing plants, trucks, cars, boats, airplanes, etc, all run on some variant of oil, and the waste produced by the use of oil is what causes the environmental issues we see most prominently. Yes, there are issues due to landfills, etc, but ultimately it’s the carbon release issue that’s the biggest problem. Global warming right?
Oil powers the world and because it is an unhealthy form of fuel, we have a lot of problems with our environment. The problem is that because oil powers the world, it has made a great deal of people very wealthy and they are very aware that if the use of oil was to cease, their wealth would be diminished. If you think about it, with all of the technology we have today, why does it seem SO difficult to produce a car that can run on a reusable fuel such as water? The technology exists but it either gets suppressed or just made so expensive that it’s basically impossible to market to a mass audience.
The catch is, either one of two things are going to happen: 1) The damage to our environment made by the consumption of oil products will become so bad that it is not reversable. Many say that is already the case and many say it’s nowhere near as bad as they make it out to be. Who knows. But if we cross that line, eventually the planet would be too hot to live on and we’d start seeing major effects of that. Hell, we see that now with the melting of ice shelves, etc. 2) We run out of oil. Oil is a product that has an expiration date. At some point in the future, oil companies are going to have a harder time finding oil until eventually all the wells are dried up and the world tumbles into an energy crisis that the oil companies created.
Anyways, the point of this rant was not to go off on the oil companies, but to hammer home a point. Nickel and diming our way into fixing the environment is not going to have the type of impact that we need. Some would argue that every little bit helps and I do believe that. I just think that there must be a better way to help the environment out then asking consumers to shell out more cash when we’re already taxed high enough. To me, whether it’s a carbon tax that the government issues, or having to pay out the 5cents for a bag, it’s the same thing. You might as well have another tax because that’s exactly what it is.
I’m all for helping the environment but I already get gouged for everything I buy so why is it that now I have to pay for the bags I buy my goods in?
