The city of Bath has finally stepped up on the environmental front and implemented a long procrastinated plastic bag ban. Not all plastic bags, but those somehow constituting a loosely defined “one time use.” In practice that means those carry-away bags one would normally automatically receive in the checkout line unless a paper preference was requested. Ones often prominently displaying a business’s branding and on closer inspection encouraging one to “Reduce/ Reuse/ Recycle.” Often earth-friendly Green in color and always displaying those three iconic arrows positively circling endlessly, who would ever imagine them as such an insidious environmental menace?

The better question is: “Who ever imagined them as in any way really environmentally friendly despite all overtures towards instilling that impression?” Better still: “How many really preferred them over paper?”

The only displeasure with their elimination that I’ve heard comes from dog owners lamenting loss of a “free” environmentally correct secondary canine use.

That they were ever really “free” is likely a misnomer unless businesses actually failed to pass on that operational cost to customers. The even more hidden and far greater cost was their long ignored irreversible degradation to the planet.

Aside from awareness of that moral imperative, I’ve always opted for paper bags because they’re far more car trunk cooperative in getting from one place to another without spillage or crushing one item under the weight of another. Plastic nevertheless often prevailed due to a momentary lack of vigilance or assertiveness on my part. Asking for “paper please” was always a dicey maneuver in maintaining amiable checkout relations. I definitely have no problem with their exit from that always having to keep your wits about you final customer satisfaction transaction.

Examining those now illegal bags, still saved for multiple actual secondary uses despite not having a dog, their environmentally sensitive packaging appears more disingenuously futile than ever: “This bag contains at least 15% recycled material.” “Please dispose of properly.” “Reuse This Bag, Preserve Our Environment.” “We love that you love the planet.” Some of those disclaimers even claimed a whopping 30 percent recycled content. The elephant in the room always remained: “Why not 100 percent?”

Here in Bath all that kicking of the can is all over with and done, and by all indications this very, very minor environmental correctness concession seems completely surmountable. We’ve collectively bitten another low caliber tree-hugging bullet and survived. The world hasn’t come to an end and shopping continues more or less the same. The long, long road towards saving the planet has been positively shortened by another anguished baby step in that direction.

Bath has encouraged support for its new ordinance by promoting an attractive “free” Bath Bag, similar to those already trending at most retailers. These more substantial “repeat use” carry-aways are innately less throw-away. I now carry an assortment in the back seat of my car, completely ready for use if and when I ever actually manage to bring them with me into a store.

Until then I continue to use paper bags provided or additionally charged. The ones I refold and save for future use boast being 100 percent PCC, Recyclable, and Reusable. Unstated, but environmentally best of all, is that they’re completely compostable. If never reused or recycled, they don’t just “degrade” but will fully break down and become part of the organic life from which they came.

Most alternative carry-away bags are still made of polypropylene, the same hazardous material used in those they are replacing. Nothing’s changed except the new bags will last longer, serve longer, before their eventual environmental impact is made.

Plastic, in any form, can never be environmentally correct. It will always remain unnatural. Even nuclear waste will eventually become harmless. Plastic only becomes more and more harmful as it degrades into smaller and smaller pieces that only appear to become one with the environment. That’s the crucial difference between something being supposedly “biodegradable,” where it’s really only becoming less visible, versus it being actually compostable.

These new polypropylene bags do have similar serviceability to paper ones. They fold down and stand up the same and prevent contents from crushing each other. Oddly, there’s now no mention of their own recycled content, or being plastic at all. No encouragement to recycle them or anything else. I’ve one bag that displays those three circling arrows, but that’s all. The new “repeat use” paper versions still encourage: “Please reuse this bag.” “Made from 100% post-consumer recycled paper.” Inside the top of L.L.Bean’s paper alternative there’s even a list of imaginative reuses.

As to other alternatives, I have a beautiful Biosafety Alliance cloth bag that disappointingly functions exactly like those insubstantial content-crushing plastic ones.

However one deals with the issue of carry-away environmental correctness, brick-and-mortar shopping definitely beats the rising reliance on Internet shopping’s far more egregious environmental assault. The amount of packing necessary to ship many online purchases is often materially larger than the item itself. Even if fully compostable, such excessive packaging is environmentally totally irresponsible.

On the seemingly endless road to real environmental consciousness, we still have a very long way to go.

Gary Anderson lives in Bath.