Every time I go home to Tennessee to visit family, I’m shocked at how wasteful they are with plastic bags. If you buy a small cart load of groceries/whatever at Wal-Mart, they have a big rotating carousel of bags for the cashier to drop items into and they’ll consistently use every bag slot rather than putting everything into a couple of bags. They’ve sent me home with 6 bags before, each holding only 1 or 2 items.

I’ve had convenience stores try to give me a bag for a candy bar. It’s one item and I’m going to eat it now. What am I going to do with this bag? There’s always a look of confusion when I ask for items not to be bagged. It’s just such a foreign thing.

I’m glad that my city has instituted a bag fee and banned plastic bags. A lot of places don’t actually seem to charge per bag as they’re supposed to, but even so the number of people bringing bags is much higher now and the number of bags used is way lower. And none of them are throwaway plastic.