The pointless plastic bag ban saga continues in NJ (Opinion)

Whenever the government passes a pointless albeit well-intentioned law, the unintended consequences are sometimes destructive, counterproductive and infuriating.

Then again, at other times, they’re just curiously amusing yet annoying as hell. This is the case with the pointless single-use plastic bag and grocery store paper bag ban in New Jersey.

The single-use plastic bags were ending up suffocating turtles or blowing down the street and hanging from trees too often for the virtue-signaling, tree-hugging godless fools to bear. So, they banned supermarkets and other retail outlets from putting your purchased goods into one of those bags.

They also prohibited the use of the standard supermarket and grocery store paper bags, which have been in use for nearly 100 years. We’re not sure exactly why those were banned but it probably has something to do with saving trees even though many people recycle them religiously for fear of the New Jersey recycling police or nosy neighbors.

So, we are left to purchase “reusable“ shopping bags from local retailers or you can buy some online. Forget that they might be germ carriers and incubators for any number of disgusting organisms. Maybe that’s why most cashiers at supermarkets won’t touch them.

Now the process of checking out your groceries has become unduly cumbersome and much lengthier. Thus, the unintended consequence that very few people saw coming…the disappearance of the handheld shopping basket.

One supermarket by me was down to one a couple of weeks ago. You could see the empty caddies that used to hold 20 or 30 of them sitting empty. Now even the caddies are gone and not a basket can be found in the store.

People were using them to bring their items to their car and just kept them. Prohibition always leads to “criminal behavior“ and an unhappy and more miserable population. Bravo! Well done, tree huggers, virtue signalers, environment activists, mindless earth worshiping fools and your willing accomplices and high priests, of course, the New Jersey political establishment.

The turtles thank you. The trees thank you. And whatever retailer that sells me 300 of those same bags you’ve banned for $11 also thank you. I still have at least half of them in my trunk that I use every day when I go to the store.

Opinions expressed in the post above are those of New Jersey 101.5 talk show host Dennis Malloy only.

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