Provincetown has put on its town meeting warrant a ban on single-use plastic bags. Stores will be required to furnish paper. The Cape tip community would be the first on the block to make this virtuous move. They would join Nantucket and that other Edge City, San Francisco.
The only trouble is that paper, though less likely to wrap itself around bushes or sealife, is otherwise just as bad environmentally as plastic. Some say worse. You can look it up online. People think that when they opt for paper over plastic they are doing all they can to save the planet, but they’re wrong.
The only really sensible thing to do is to prohibit both paper and plastic single- use bags and instead bring your own re-usable bag. It’s a no-brainer actually. In France they’ve been doing it for years. Supermarkets sell for a pittance attractive bags you take home as souvenirs, as well as to use in our backward stores here.
Provincetown: why not leapfrog the ban on plastic, and go directly to the real solution?
Being a lazy sort myself the counter arguments come to me easily: Oh, come on, I just don’t want to be bothered having to think about remembering to bring my bags from the car. Just one more thing I have to think about. So much easier to have the store do it. Yadda yadda.
In a world with such large problems it hurts your head to think about it, this is something simple and sensible we can do with bigger consequences than we may think.
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