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It ain't easy being green

Papa's got a brand new bag... and a whole bunch of old bags, a trunkful of reusable bags and a bagful of questions. A little over a week ago, to celebrate the New Year, Italy banned plastic shopping bags.

Papa's got a brand new bag... and a whole bunch of old bags, a trunkful of reusable bags and a bagful of questions.

A little over a week ago, to celebrate the New Year, Italy banned plastic shopping bags. In a country where successive governments can't get people to stop smoking and start wearing seat belts, this move constitutes a bold cultural experiment.

Italy isn't alone, of course, though it is the first EU country to go bagless. Any number of municipalities and even large cities, San Francisco for example, have banned the bag and many others, Whistler for example, are exploring the possibility.

China - yes, China - has taken an increasingly popular middle road: charging consumers for plastic bags, about a nickel apiece. I don't think they call it a nickel though. While that's social engineering on a massive scale, Washington, D.C. and Toronto have taken the same route. D.C.'s seen demand for bags drop around 85 per cent. Loblaw's in Toronto reports similar numbers. Interestingly, Toronto's new mayor, who announced he'd roll back virtually all progressive social and environmental initiatives, has backed off on repealing the bag fee... but he is exploring how to divert the revenue, from the stores who collect and keep it now, to the city.

Like all bold social initiatives, banning plastic bags has its champions and its detractors. I'm stuck in the middle with, I suspect, you. Banning seems too simplistic and, well, jackbooted. Doing nothing will accomplish just that though - nothing. And while plastic shopping bags are far, far from the most urgent environmental peril we face, they make an easily-understood posterchild for the changes we need to begin embracing in more than just symbolic ways if we have a hope in hell of staunching our headlong rush towards making the planet uninhabitable for the human species, which is, after all, what we really seem to care about.

Reluctantly, I join the fray. Reluctantly because frankly, my dear, I don't, other than academically, give a damn. I think we long ago passed the tipping point on this issue and much of what we do amounts to the proverbial rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. As much as I'd like to stick around to see how Armageddon plays out, I've grown old enough to realize we'll still have clean-ish air and water for the actuarial remainder of my life and, not having bred, I'll leave you to worry about your own progeny, who, if you're like so many sustainable people in this town, you probably drove four blocks to school in your SUV.

But then, the sad fact is, we're all eco-hypocrites. At least all of us fortunate enough to have been born into first world, North American wealth and relative luxury and, let's be honest, all of us living in Tiny Town. Sustainable resort municipality may well be an oxymoron achieved only through the complete demolition of any widely accepted meaning of the word sustainable and massive, collective rationalization.

Doing something is, however, better than doing nothing, so the common wisdom goes. And like most peoples' common response, I do what I can, which is shorthand for I do what I want. That includes using a bewildering variety of reusable totes, reusing the plastic bags I do occasionally bring home for household garbage, composting, recycling, keeping the thermostats down, turning off lights, shovelling snow off the solar panel, caulking, choosing local when possible, driving a small car, flossing, brushing and, likely, eating Zippy the Dog when he dies. Grok.

That doesn't make me less an eco-hypocrite. At best it greenwashes my conscience... which, truth be told, doesn't really need much washing of any colour.

But that's not good enough for people bent on banning bags. Not good enough for AWARE, who's been "... working towards the reduction and eventual elimination of plastic bags in Whistler since 2007." AWARE wants to make Whistler "... plastic bag free."

Well, okay. But why just target plastic grocery bags? And why eliminate them entirely? What of the law of unintended consequences?

When I walk into Nesters - and I'm not picking on Nesters; it's just where I shop most often - I ramble around the produce section. If I'm buying oranges or apples, carrots or potatoes, I'll toss them in the basket. But if I'm buying brussels spouts, it gets a little out of control. I put them in a plastic bag. Sometimes it's a plastic bag I've brought with me, inside the bewildering variety of totes; sometimes it's virgin plastic.

Mushrooms go in the paper bags, which are way worse than plastic, but mushrooms don't do well in plastic. They do even worse in the bottom of a canvas tote and I don't want to explain to Bruce why I'm filling my pockets with them to save the environment.

I might buy some wild B.C. salmon that is admittedly over packaged with double styro trays, multiple nappies and wrapped in plastic wrap, but the alternative is...? The organic milk I buy is in a plastic jug; the cheese wrapped in plastic, ditto the tortilla chips.

Seems the only major concentration of plastic I avoid is the aisle full of plastic garbage bags. That's because I re-use my occasional plastic grocery bags for garbage, of which I produce little after composting and recycling. To me, there's something comically ironic about a committed eco-saviour stuffing a box of virgin Glad Kitchen Catchers into their "I'm a Green Bag" canvas bag. Am I missing something here?

And there's that pesky law of unintended consequences. Ban plastic grocery bags and I buy brand new, one-use garbage bags made of... plastic. This makes no sense to me. Neither does the race to the bottom to produce ever more cheaper totes, a race that has seen recalls of reusable bags - made and shipped halfway around the globe from China - that contain lead. Things are never as simple as they seem.

The holy triumvirate Reduce-Reuse-Recycle does not embrace Buy New. If a nickel-a-bag eco-fee jogs peoples' memories enough to remind them to grab the totes out of their trunk and reduce consumption of plastic bags by 85 per cent, that seems like a good start. If we can take their social training to another level - reusing the plastic bags they do collect instead of using new bags - I'm guessing we'll be on the outskirts of Nirvana.

So buy a garbage can that uses shopping bags for liners. Use your old bags to pick up after your dog. Take your lunch in them. Make them the new chic bottle-bag when you schlep wine over to your friend's house for dinner. Clean 'em and recycle 'em when they wear out.

And, as a public service, why not have the muni go 50-50 with the stores on the nickel-a-bag tax, er, fee. More blood for the vampire.