I don't leave home without one.
Keys, wallet, cell phone, dark glasses, leash . . . and plastic bag.
That's the final entry in my leisure-time checklist.
In my domestic world view, you can never have too many filmy bags close at hand.
At the grocery checkout, I always request plastic, never paper.
If a clerk at the drugstore asks me if I need a sack for a small item, I say, “Yes, thanks.”
If I spot a plastic bag floating around like a white jellyfish – and it's not too filthy – I snag it like it's my lucky day.
Same thing goes for the slick sleeves protecting the daily newspaper. They go right into the bin underneath the kitchen sink.
Every now and then, our supply of bags runs low – and panic sets in. Time to go shopping to restore the essential stockpile.
Frankly, I can't imagine urban life without the convenient bags that conform to the human hand as it grasps – and then quickly reverses into a clean, tidy, knotted sack – what our golden retriever regularly leaves behind with shameless gusto.
If Solana Beach and now Encinitas are true harbingers of San Diego County's future – and I fear they fit that futuristic bill – then my days of copping free poop bags appear to be numbered.
Our coastal paladins are on a crusade to banish from the planet the most useful, flexible, sublime – and cheapest – packaging device in human history.
Yes, there are those who might call this anti-plastic campaign a responsible reaction to an inconvenient truth about the earth's health.
I, on the other hand, call it an atrocity, the mass extermination of a noble species of human invention.
In a (new) word, it's . . . bagocide.
Listen, I've heard all the alarming stats and earnest arguments.
Americans lug home 100 billion plastic bags a year. A scant portion, maybe 5 percent, are recycled into new plastic products. The vast majority of the bags are buried in landfills or float into places where they cause major headaches. What's more, the bags cost retailers $4 billion a year, an expense that's passed on to consumers.
To be sure, Mother Earth has a hard time digesting the flimsy plastic. A single bag takes between 40 and 100,000 years to degrade, depending upon the presence of certain microbes. Thousands of animals, both marine and terrestrial, sicken and die after swallowing the stuff.
In South Africa, plastic bags are derisively called the “national flower.” The mayor of El Paso jokingly referred to them as the Texas city's official flag because of their omnipresence as litter.
Countries and cities around the globe have declared war. Ireland charges a 33-cent tax on each bag, reducing consumption by more than 90 percent. China, not exactly your green exemplar, recently imposed a nationwide ban on all plastic bags, a measure that's expected to save 37 million barrels of oil.
Last year, San Francisco forced large stores to stop handing them out. Last December, Solana Beach caught the cresting wave and outlawed plastic bags with advertising on them.
And now Encinitas, responding to the impassioned call of the Surfrider Foundation, will be considering an ordinance to purge that fair city of the plastic scourge. More than 1,500 people signed a petition urging a ban.
In the brave new green world, it appears, we'll all be shopping Euro-style with our own cloth bags.
Paper? I doubt they'll make the final cut. Paper bags not only cost more (four or five cents apiece as opposed to plastic's one cent) but they generate 70 percent more air pollutants and 50 percent more water pollutants than plastic bags, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Paper requires four times more energy to produce and 85 times as much energy to recycle.
Moreover, paper takes up nine times as much space in landfills – and those old-fashioned receptacles don't exactly degrade overnight.
Trendy compostable sacks made of potato or cornstarch? They cost anywhere between 8 and 13 cents. At the rate my dog goes, rapidly degradable bags could run into real money.
Still, that's the price it appears I'm going to have to pay to remain a responsible dog owner in my sunset years.
But for now, I'll cherish every free bag and value it like stolen gold. I'll hoard the sacks like a survivalist stocking up on bullets and beans.
As best I can, I'll try not to become bitter if my plastic bags are taken away from me.
Thanks to millions of dim-witted litterbugs around the globe, one of the world's greatest practical inventions – first introduced as sandwich bags in '57 and then as all-purpose tote bags in the late '70s – appears to be going the way of the dodo bird.
What a tragedy for mankind as well as his toilet-challenged best friend.
Before it's too late, dog owners and free-market libertarians must form packs, as well as PACs, in support of this threatened industrial species.
Who knows? Sanctuary cities, while imposing and enforcing Draconian anti-litterbug laws, could declare themselves plastic friendly – and proud of it.
Maybe the tide will turn if millions of Americans get off the whale bandwagon and wail in unison:
Save the Bags!
Logan Jenkins: (760) 737-7555; logan.jenkins@uniontrib.com.
