All right, you win, ban plastic bags, let’s move on

Sunday mornings, 9 a.m., you will find me picking up groceries at ShopRite. We spend the extra

$5 for the shop-from-home experience. It’s glorious. Not only are the days of walking around the supermarket over, but now I get a solid 45 minutes, back and forth, of quiet Sunday morning time.

Have I mentioned it’s glorious?

Then I get home, unload the car, and my wife then puts everything away. (Me? I go to the “bathroom” to (“do something everyone does but somehow it’s immature if I actually write it here”) but I’m not really doing that thing I’m actually “setting DraftKings lineups.” Anyway …)

Anyway, this past Sunday was different. Everyone had somewhere to be, so I was charged with not only getting the groceries (glorious!) but also putting them away (what about DraftKings?).

But I managed. I powered through. I put everything where it is supposed to be in the kitchen. I was proud of myself. My method is simple: Everything gets taken out of the bags and put on the countertops and kitchen table, the empty bags go to the floor. And … wow. There sure were a lot of plastic bags. Probably

30. Maybe more. Enough that I couldn’t sweep them all up in my arms in one fell swoop.

But again: I powered through and picked up every last plastic bag. Then I promptly tossed them in the trash, where they will end up in a dump, and then, in 1,000 years, they will decompose, assuming they didn’t blow away and get eaten by a seal.

And … ah, just ban ‘em already. You win. Save the seals. Whatever.

Honestly, I was in the “I don’t care about plastic bags one way or another” camp until I found out the other day plastic bags cannot go in the recycling. For real. Had no idea. Go ahead, check for yourself at the Mercer County Improvement Authority’s website. Plastic bags are not recyclable. (The list is fascinating with everything else that’s not recyclable: Pizza boxes, drinking glasses, aerosol cans, paper plates, and baking pans all surprised me.)

So that’s that as far as I’m concerned. Single use plastic bags may as well be banned. As long as paper bags remain street legal, I’m fine with it.

Of course, New Jersey is poised - if a proposed bill goes through, though there are a few doubts to become the plastic ban capital of America. Not only will single use plastic bags be banned, but so will plastic cups, Styrofoam containers, and all other manner of plastic. (Straws will be allowed, but only if you specifically ask for one.)

Is the proposed law too wideranging? Almost certainly. Is it the way we’re headed as a nation? One hundred percent. Is it because we’re indoctrinating our children to believe plastic is a problem? You betcha. Does that make it wrong? Not really, as plastic is, at minimum, a bit of a problem.

And the simple fact is if we could give up a little bit of comfort in an effort to make the world a theoretically better place, than we should probably do it. Will losing plastic bags ruin my life? Won’t even be a blip. (Again, as long as paper is still legal. If they ban paper bags, as has been discussed, then it’s pitchfork and torches time. I’m not ready to commit to having dozens of reusable bags scattered around my life. I don’t have the bandwidth for that.)

So yeah. Go ahead, legislature, ban plastic bags and assorted plastic stuff. Sign the bill, Gov. Murphy. I’m done with plastics, although please note I will continue to use plastic bags in an effort to make my life easier until the ban is in place. Sorry, seals. Truly. Talk to Darwin, you don’t like it.