I ran over to the grocery store to pick up a ream of typing paper (technically speaking: did not actually run, paper isn’t for the typewriter) and some sodas. Ended up buying four items. The young man bagging at the end of the counter put my items in three separate bags, and the soda six-pack was left out completely.
Lucky, I guess. Could have been four items in four separate bags.
Even at that, he was struggling to figure it out, because the ream of paper was bulky and wouldn’t set up correctly. He ended up spreading them all over the bottom of a shopping buggy for me to roll out. I guess I was looking pretty weak (even though I’d just carried the four items up to the checkout).
I reached into the paper bag and said, “let’s try this.” I stood the paper on edge, set the sodas in beside and dropped the two plastic bags on top. “Works for me,” he replied.
Bagging was an art form when I was his age, back before they invented plastic.
Try this one: Paper or Plastic? by Daniel Imhoff: The deceptively simple supermarket choice echoed in the title looms large in a society on a collision course with the planet’s life-support systems. Do we clearcut forests, process pulp, and bleach it with chlorine to make paper bags? or refining hydrocarbon into handy plastics? About half the total volume of America’s municipal solid waste is packaging.