A story about plastic bags

https://www.ecopackzh.com/air-column-bag.html

I have a few small trash bins scattered around my home — the kind that tuck neatly into corners or under bathroom sinks.

They don’t fill up quickly, just catching the occasional tissue or empty wrapper, so I only need to empty them every so often. I usually line them with plastic shopping bags — yes, those single-use ones we all know are bad for the planet. The ones you end up with after a shopping trip when you’ve once again left your reusable bags at home.

But instead of tossing those bags straight into the trash, I reuse them as liners for my tiny garbage cans. It’s my way of keeping the bins clean. When one’s full, I tie up the plastic bag, toss it in the main trash outside, and replace it with another slightly guilt-inducing bag. It’s a routine I’ve stuck to for most of my adult life.

That is, until recently.

Now, thanks to a new fee, I’ve started to pause before saying yes to a bag — especially when I’m only buying a single item. If I’ve managed to carry it around the store without even grabbing a basket, do I really need a plastic bag to get it from the checkout to my car and then to my house?

Turns out, I don’t. And because of that, my plastic bag usage has dropped. A lot.

Part of me wants to say it’s because I care about the environment — and I do, at least in theory — but if I’m being honest, it was the fee that pushed me. So thank you, Duluth. Or rather, thank you to the people behind the city. After all, cities don’t pass laws — people do. Someone came up with the idea, wrote it into a proposal, others agreed, and eventually it became a rule. A whole chain of individuals brought that small change to life.

There are, of course, bigger laws than a five-cent bag fee that shape our daily behavior — even when we don’t realize it. That’s the power of policy: to subtly influence the choices we make. And though most laws are buried in dry legal language and seem distant or abstract, they still affect us, quietly guiding the way we live.

A few years ago, Duluth started charging five cents per plastic bag. It’s not enough to ruin anyone financially, but just enough to make me wince when I forget to bring my own — and it’s that tiny sting that’s made all the difference.