In 1000 years whether people still exist or not the plastic bag that shoppers drug mart gave me after buying a bag of doritos, a cherry coke, and some starbursts will still be here. This isn't good because of the environment and the polar bears, and acid rain, and the ozone layer and Mars rovers. But I don’t really care. Obviously, I do and I should, because of the polar bears. However when you consider the global problems related to climate change, is plastic bags really the top of our list. It's because of how easy and obvious this problem is to solve that it has been fixed. In every store in Ottawa bringing your own reusable bags is not just an option but sort of expected. It's for exactly these reasons I decided to review them. Plastic bags are a small mistake that we kind of fixed quickly and efficiently but will stick around forever. 

 

Now that I’ve gotten the boring and sad parts out of the way I can focus on what I like about plastic bags and why they’re the most underrated piece of trash. Wherever you go, I guarantee you you can find a plastic bag, blowing in the wind, on the floor, in a trash can, or holding stuff like they're supposed to, you can make a game out of it. It would be a boring game but you still could. Arguably, plastic bags are the most common single item in our day to day life. Plastic bags. This is supposed to be bad and not good for the polar bears, but I can't help but enjoy it. Every supermarket has their own with their own designs and logos which change over time. It gives designers another thing to care about and work on. The plastic bag does not need to be intricately or well designed and often isn’t. For example, Giant Tiger, which uses a disgusting shade of yellow with an ugly drawing of a tiger. But sometimes they are designed well, my favorites being the dollarama and shoppers bags which use a sleek minimalist design but still demonstrate upfront what store this person bought they’re stuff from. This is the best part of plastic bags, they can be good. I Wonder how much time the person who was tasked to design the plastic bags for their company took, and if they genuinely cared about and were satisfied with the product. It wouldn’t surprise me if they didn't and just copy and pasted the logo onto the bag before sending it off to the factory. Giant Tiger certainly did. But this would disappoint me. 

 

In contrast the newer bags are made of cloth, fabric or recycled materials. This gives them a justified reason to exist. You use them, put them in your home somewhere and use them again. Plastic bags do not do this. After using a plastic bag you throw it in the trash and it eventually gets shipped off into a landfill in Malaysia (where they deserve to be in the case of Giant Tiger bags). This means plastic bags exist way past their use. After 20 minutes of work they sit untouched for thousands of years rotting away. This is a strange existence for anything but I can't help but admire it. Imagine if Lebron James continued to play basketball as long as he possibly could, way after he's even useful, averaging 0 points a game, before his heart gives out on him while he’s on the court. Wouldn't that be weird? Why would they allow him to keep going? I'd watch every game though.

 

In conclusion, in old western movies two cowboys face each other in preparation for a duel, while a tumbleweed rolls through. In modern days an amateur rapper and an obese rat face off against each other behind a gas station, and a plastic bag, NOT a giant tiger one, rolls through. So put some respect on the name of plastic bags.