By Jim Schuh

When the supermarket checkout clerk asks, “Paper or plastic?” what is your response? In recent times, many of us think the answer should be, “plastic.”

We’ve been told that the plastic that makes up some of the shopping bags is biodegradable and we figure that’s better than chopping down trees to make paper sacks. The supermarket operators would rather have us use plastic because it cost them less. But some municipalities have banned plastic bags outright, while some others levy a fee on them. One argument that favors plastic bags is that many people re-use them for garbage or cleaning up after a dog.

Many paper grocery bags today contain an offer of a five-cent discount if we take them along on our next food-buying visit to the supermarket and re-use them. Maybe some of us in these parts think we should be using paper bags because that helps the paper industry and supports jobs.

What do Americans think? The Gallup asked the “paper or plastic” question, and I was somewhat surprised at the results. Gallup found about three-quarters of us feel paper shopping bags do less harm to the environment. Just 22 percent say plastic is less harmful.

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