Paper or Plastic?

I am an enemy of the plastic bag! I hate plastic bags. They clutter the land, add toxicity to landfills, choke animals and are creating a continent-sized stew of plastic bags in the pacific ocean.

With that in mind, I only take a plastic bag from a store if the law requires it (NY has a *stupid* law that requires bags for beer) or when I'm purchasing meat at the grocery store. I will even reuse those bags as a place to store other bags until I'm ready to recycle them. So I guess the key is to not use plastic bags or, if you must use them on certain occasions, reuse plastic bags instead of throwing them out.

This can be harder than you think. I've had to practically get in a fight with cashiers over the fact that I don't want a bag. When I'm only purchasing a few items, I'll often ask for no bag at all citing the fact that I was able to carry them to the counter without a bag; but I think the store clerks are trained to push bags onto customers.

Of course, the best solution is to either use no bag at all or to use a reusable bag. My wife and I bought 4 canvas tote bags from Wal-Mart and we will often use them when shopping. (That can cause fights with cashiers too!) But this is a little thing that we can all do to help the environment.