We went through the plastic/paper/canvas dilemma some years back and decided that there were bigger fish to fry in our sustainability efforts. So, we take our purchases home in plastic bags when it seems apppropriate and seem to find enough uses for them that they don't accumulate in great numbers. With apologies to a local industry (Presto), we never buy garbage can liners, sometimes reuse the bags at the store (the Lees checkout doesn't even blink if you happen to hand them an Albertsons bag) and I even use them for foot covers when bike commuting in really wet weather (have you seen how much weatherproof biking booties cost???).

I really came to appreciate how little of a problem plastic grocery bags must be,some years ago when an elementary school collected them as a proto-recycling project. The bag company bought them back, but the teachers had to re-fold the bags and stack them like new to return them and get the "deposit" fee back. When I saw how little space was occupied by a hundred neatly folded plastic grocery bags, I realized that was the speck that was causing us to ignore the log. So, We've been working on the logs instead.

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