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Let’s say you go to the grocery store and buy a pineapple. Why are you buying a pineapple? They’re delicious.

You get in line to pay for your pineapple. The clerk says, “Paper or plastic?”

Paper or plastic? Hmmm…

What should you say? What things should you think about before you answer?

Let’s think about paper first.

The paper bag, like most paper, is made from trees. People cut down the trees, grind them up, and make paper from the pulp. We don’t want to cut down too many trees, though, because trees help the environment. They make oxygen that we need to breathe. They provide a place for animals to live. We can plant new trees to replace the ones we cut down, but we still should save as many trees as we can.

The paper bag might be made of recycled paper. That’s paper that has been used more than once. That means that we didn’t have to cut down more trees to make it. Recycling paper still requires energy, though. Paper is also quite heavy, which means that moving it around on trucks takes a lot of energy too.

Maybe we shouldn’t get a paper bag.

What about plastic?

Plastic is not made from living things like paper is. Plastic is made by people. It never existed before people created it. If we don’t have to cut down any trees to make it, is that better? Not really.

The trouble with plastic is that it’s not part of nature. It doesn’t fit into any ecosystem. Nothing can eat it, so when it goes in the trash, it never goes away. Plastics last for hundreds or even thousands of years. And because plastics are lightweight and blow around in the wind easily, a lot of them end up in the ocean.

We definitely don’t want any plastic to be here! (Image credit: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Pacific Region)

Maybe we shouldn’t get a plastic bag either, then.

What should we do?

There is another question that the checkout clerk might forget to ask: “Did you bring your own bag?”

A Reusable Bag!

The best way to take your groceries home is in your own bag. You can use it as many times as you like. You never have to throw it away!

Do you need a bag to bring to the store? You can make one out of an old t-shirt!