The Bag Scam
In Maine shopping bags have been outlawed. Specifically, as of July 1, 2021, “If a single-use carry-out bag is provided, it must be a recycled paper bag. In addition, retail establishments must charge a fee of at least 5¢ per carry-out bag for recycled paper bags and any reusable carry-out bags that are made of plastic."
Maine is joined by its spirit animals California, New Jersey, New York, Oregon and Vermont in this cumbersome charade, along with the ban on plastic straws.
Politicians pass stupid laws to look virtuous. Voters who don't think things through vote for Good Things. And capitalism, by which I mean "capitalism” as currently practiced in the United States, can make lemonade out of absolutely anything.
Just today at my local Target, the Christmas crush was on. A packed store of people wandering glassy eyed through aisles of useless garbage manufactured and shipped from overseas. Three whole aisles for Christmas themed candy. Poorly made slippers. Household items with clever finishes that make them look good quality.
Despite having thirty or so cashier stations, Target (and every other large retailer) only opens a fraction of them even at their busiest. Customers are encouraged to join the dispiriting self checkout queue, where shoppers form a winding line that spans the front of the store as they wait for one of three functioning self checkout stations. Because at least one is always out of order.
Cashiers here are trained to ask, “Do you want a bag?” when you don't place lovingly folded reusable shopping bags on the conveyor like a nun smoothing the overlay cloth on an altar.
You are charged between $.05-$.10 a bag, and guess where the money goes?
To the retailer.
Of course big retailers are going to support Green Theater. Why wouldn't they? They can sell us cheap reusable bags made in Vietnam, and punish the people who want a regular bag by making them pay for it.
You can go bagless. No one is forcing you to buy bags. But then you're stuck transporting everything individually. Try this at the grocery store. It can take three of us four trips to bring everything inside if we don't pay the $.50 or so for the needed number of bags.
It's nonsense. Why are we doing this?
Worried about landfills and ocean plastics and carbon emissions? Stop importing billions of dollars worth of shit from China and elsewhere. No one needs plastic dreidels filled with chewing gum, melamine dishes with naughty Santas, four hundred varieties of scented wax melts, reindeer fidget poppers, or rubber ducks shaped like snowmen. No one even wants this shit. It's just thrown away, eventually if not immediately. Unsold inventory makes it through secondary and tertiary channels, to Big Lots and Goodwill stores and, finally, to landfills.
If we do need reindeer fidget poppers that badly, make them in Iowa or something.
How many trucks carry an ugly fake leather jacket (“vegan" lmao) between the port at Long Beach and the landfill during the life of the product? How much fossil fuel goes into the manufacture of "vegan” leather jackets? Oh that's right, we don't know. Because we aren't accountable for the carbon emissions of Myanmar.
I'm tired of the preachy lectures from companies and government types. The slick propaganda ad campaigns. We all know who's making the money on these “green" initiatives, coming and going.
My family of three has a smaller carbon footprint than one of Nancy Pelosi's refrigerators. When I buy something, I want a bloody bag.