Brown and Boring

Come September 2008, the Municipality ng Los Banos released an ordinance prohibiting the distribution of plastic bags in all LB stores. So now we use brown paperbags instead.

I was there when Mayor Perez declared the provisions in the ordinance, that unless the goods are wet (meat, vegetables, etc), brown paperbags should be used. It’s fair enough, or so I thought.

I’ve had several trips to Robinson’s Town Mall and one major factor that hinders me from buying a lot is the use of brown paperbags. Last month I bought four thick masking tapes at Handyman and in less than five steps from the store, my brown paperbag broke, leaving me with no choice but to hold each masking tape until I got home.

Yesterday I bought a pair of shoes and I asked the salesman to be considerate enough not to put my shoes inside a brown paperbag (with the shoebox) because it’s too much to handle. But the poor salesman cannot hand me a handy plastic bag because it’s against the law. I told him I might as well not buy the shoes since I was also carrying a big brown paperbag containing my month’s groceries. But I bought the shoes and carried all my brown paperbagged stuff home.

Before I thought it was way cool to carry brown paperbags. It’s so Hollywood. In movies, it looks to okay for the actors to carry big brown paperbags. It’s just so Hollywood. But when I was carrying mine yesterday, hey now, it’s NOT cool.

I looked for earth-friendly shopping bags yesterday but all to no avail. Has LB forgotten that shopping bags are way earth friendlier than brown paperbags? Just how many trees are yadda yadda.

I am not against this earth-friendly move. I just hope to find earth-friendlier shopping bags so I won’t be collecting torn brown and boring paperbags at home.