Same in Seattle. Plastic bags are almost nowhere to be found and paper costs $.05. The question is no longer “paper or plastic?” but “do you need a bag?”
That’s not a 'biner. This is a 'biner!
You can carry ALL of your groceries home!
If we’re going there, I could just get a Sherpa, but last I knew they refuse to help in removing dog crap from the back yard.
To continue the hijack, I don’t do self-service on political grounds. It is a clear attempt to reduce costs by reducing the workforce (and of course the reduced costs are not passed over to the consumer). I’d rather people had jobs. Hell, I’d pay more for people to have jobs.
To attract roaches I suppose there has to be a roach around.
Challenge accepted. I can tie one in less than a second. But I never said I untied plastic bags. When I need one tied and I get it home I just rip it.
How many paper bags can you carry? I’ve carried up to 12 in each hand using plastic, and I can do it in the rain with no fear of bag collapse.
Storage? With untied plastic (BTW I never said I tied them all, I suggested it to keep items inside)I can store 50 or more in a small space, try that with paper.
Hah, but you’ve got to tie four for every paper bag I get, and if you rip the tied bags they are useless for anything else.
At least two per hand… which equates to at least 8 per hand plastic. It isn’t like I’ve never had plastic bags before… I really don’t think I could carry 12 in one hand if they are loaded with normal groceries.
It doesn’t usually rain in my garage.
I never seem to have more than 4 or 5 paper bags on hand at any given time… and that is all I need. I probably have over 200 plastic ones stuffed into an old cookie jar, and we seem to add more than we use each week.
Don’t kid yourself - those bags are not recycled. They’re tossed into the dumpster with the rest of the garbage.
I get paper bags whenever I can, but I do reuse my plastic bags too. I use them as trash can liners, and also take them to thrift stores and the library book store for them to use.
I don’t generally use those reusable bags when shopping, but if I find a cardboard box lying around, I take it (if the stocker says it’s OK - sometimes it isn’t) and ask that my items be “bagged” in it.
Meanwhile, 50 or so miles away, pretty much every Safeway in the Fairfield / Vallejo / Benicia area doesn’t even have paper bags (or at least it appears that way). Then again, I switched to the reusable bags they sell a long time ago; among other things, they fit far more than the plastic ones and have handles that don’t rip off, unlike the paper ones. Even when I go on vacation and will probably go to a supermarket once while I’m there, if they have the reusable bags with handles, I will get one for no reason other than it is much easier to carry - especially if my hotel is something like 1/2 mile away and I didn’t rent a car, which I usually don’t do.
There is one instance where I will ask for plastic: when getting raw meat from the deli, I will have the bagger put the package in a plastic bag, and then the bag goes into my normal bag - otherwise the meat’s juices have a tendency to leak over everything else.
I didn’t know paper grocery bags still existed. I probably haven’t seen one in over ten years.
Absolutely they do around me. I’ve made them into textbook covers for my son for ages, just as my mom did for me back when the earth was young. Now that he’s out of the house, I save the paper bags for my brother’s kids for their bookcovers. I really need to remember to drop those off one of these days or they’ll graduate first.
I used to use the plastic bags to carry my lunch. Whenever I tried to use a lunchbox or similar, I’d leave it at work half the time. I just tossed the bag and brought another each day. Never ran out.
Um… when the earth was young, we kids made our own book covers from paper bags.
“Mom, will you make me a book cover?”
“No.”
I never bothered to ask, I knew I’d make my own book covers.
I just got paper bags yesterday when shopping (they suited what I was bringing home better than plastic, and I had a re-use purpose already in mind for them).
I really don’t think any grocery store around here has paper bags. I may have to do some research about this. 
During my school years, starting in the 50’s, local businesses gave the schools big sheets of brown paper with ads. And cutting guides so we could tailor them for each book. We used our own paste…
Concerning grocery bags, I have a fine collection of reusable ones & usually have one in my purse. Paper grocery bags are fairly rare here–except at Whole Foods. Where you get a discount for bringing your own bags, but I guess it’s better to kill trees than use bags made from nasty petroleum byproducts.
If circumstances force me to use plastic bags, I’ve got a carrier (not this model, but similar), that lets me carry several heavy bags comfortably.
I don’t know where you live, but I’m in northern California, and was at Raley’s.
I like my bloody organs in plastic. But I love those cool paper bags with handles (Sprouts and Whole Foods offer them here).
I also always buy a long loaf of bread to stick out of the bag to make sure people know I was grocery shopping. Every. Single. Time.
Call me a hippie all you want - four totes, two on each shoulder, and my hands are free. Then I walk home from the store. Generally it’s only one or two, but I’ve done four. That shit’s heavy, man.
I use a commuter bag every day, and there’s plenty of room in there to carry a tote at all times, so I’m always ready to go to the store with my own bag. For people who “forget” to take the bags back out to the car, just hang them from the doorknob as soon as they’re unpacked from your trip to the store. You can’t open the door to leave for the car again without touching the bags you need to take out to the car.
I agree about the self checkout - they can stuff it - with one exception and that’s after midnight when there’s only one checker present. If the checker opens the self-checkouts I can get outta there fast doing my own (still grumbling that I should be getting some kind of discount), or if the checker decides to run his/her own line then I’m stuck there in a single line, no one’s opening another register. Even worse at the first of the month when everyone with Link cards is stocking up.
The scale at my grocery has a tare feature - there’s a button on the screen to select “I brought my own bag” before you do anything else. Press that, wait for it to say to place the bag on the scale, put it on with one handle over the plastic bag holder to keep it open and standing, then press the “done” button and it tares the scale so it doesn’t think your bag is an extra item.
Hippie
Yeah… definitely a Hippie 