Follow-up: Grocery Bags

As I posted about earlier, San Francisco has been considering a ban on plastic grocery bags. As of yesterday, city leaders approved the ban. If you take the time to read the article, which is quite short, let me know if I am just overreacting or if the attitude that it would be a shame if grocers didn't use the more expensive corn-based biodegradable plastic bags because environmentalists find them the best option infuriating:

"Craig Noble, a spokesman for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said it would be disappointing if grocers rejected the biodegradable plastic bag option, since more trees would have to be cut down if paper bag use increases.

"The new breed of bags 'offers consumers a way out of a false choice, a way out of the paper or plastic dilemma,' Noble said."

"The paper or plastic dilemma"!? Since when did grocery stores not allow consumers to bring their own canvas bags to use if they saw fit? I've seen many people do it at many different stores. If anything, grocery stores encourage it because it is that much less money they have to spend on buying bags. The supposed "false choice" is not caused by a lack of other options - it's caused by people who "care" about the environment enough to complain about things but not enough to get over their laziness or cheapness and obtain an alternative solution. These people seem to be saying either "it's too difficult for a consumer to do this on their own" or "it's too expensive for a consumer to do this on their own, so let's make the grocery stores foot the bill."