JULY 20, 2021. Western Head, Nova Scotia. Grocery Bags.

When my Mother was young growing up in Victoria, British Columbia, she and her younger brother Joe often rode their bicycles to the grocery store for their Mother. She told me that they always took a container with them to bring back the purchases. The grocery store did not supply bags. You brought your own in 1911. When I was a child, the groceries always came home in a brown paper bag which my Mother always kept. We used those bage to cover our books to protect them. And we used the sturdy brown bags to wrap packages for mailing. And we played school and made pictures with those bags. Then someone decided that too many trees were being cut down in order to bring back our groceries with sturdy brown bags so the stores were encouraged to use plastic bags. For the stores all was well because the thin plastic bags were cheaper than the paper bags. But them the plastic bags began turning up in the ocean and being swallowed by sharks and whales. Now the authorities are prohibiting the use of plastic bags for groceries. Instead we consumers must buy our own containers, which we must bring to the grocery stores in order to carry home our purchasers. If we forget, the stores charge for the use of a plastic bag. In other words, we have come full circle from my Mother's days until now. The big question is whether or not this is progress?