Recently while our family was out shopping I picked up a stack of 10 reusable shopping bags and tossed them in our cart.

My wife looked down at them and then shot me an incredulous glance.

"Reusable shopping bags?" she asked as her eyebrows arched upward.

I told her that I thought it made sense.

After all, you don’t buy a new pickup truck for every load of hay, do you?

All these bags just end up taking space in a landfill somewhere and they can take a very long time to biodegrade.

Plus, petroleum products are used to make the bags, and we all know that’s in short supply these days.

My thinking is that if we can reduce the demand, then the price of oil and therefore gas – will go down.

And there’s another good reason.

The reusable ones just work better. They are sturdier and easier to carry. Have you ever had one of those flimsy plastic bags come apart on you and cause all your canned goods to scatter all over the driveway? I have, and it’s no fun.

I heard recently on the radio that the debate rages on over which type of bags are more "planet-friendly." Apparently, although paper bags degrade quicker, they also are heavier and therefore require more fuel to transport, which means they have a larger "carbon footprint" than their plastic counterparts.

Instead I opt for the reusable variety, because it just seems to make more sense.

This means I’m going to have to change my habits, though.

I’ve never had to take bags into a store before, and it’s going to take some effort for me to start remembering to do this. Change of any kind, I suppose, requires focused effort.

I think the reason my wife was so surprised is that she often hears me rail against the wacko liberal environmental extremists.

I’m a pretty conservative guy. I believe in the free market and in fact, I believe in applying freedom to just about everything. Many environmentalists, however, feel like it is perfectly okay to infringe upon that freedom in order "save the planet" or "save the snail darter" or whatever. Ninety-nine percent of the time I think these folks are flat wrong – just plain out of their nut brain minds, actually. I think excessive and unnecessary environmental regulation is a large factor in why you and I are paying close to $4 per gallon at the pump these days, but these environmental extremists do constitute a large and highly organized political force.

However, there is that one percent of the time when these folks – you know the ones… You see them shopping at Whole Foods in their Birkenstocks and hemp belts… There is that one percent of the time when they are actually right.

And when it comes to reusable shopping bags, it irks me to say it, but I guess me and them are on the same side.

Why?

Because I think using them is less wasteful, it will reduce pollution and most importantly – it just makes sense.