The coronavirus seems to be turning everything upside down.
Suddenly, truckers and farmers are more important than diversity counselors. Who’d have thought it?
And now grocery stores are worrying that those reusable bags are not as sanitary as those single-use plastic bags that greenies have succeeded in banning.
In a turnaround, Weis Markets will no longer allow reusable bags in their stores. A local TV station in Harrisonburg, Pa., reports that the grocery chain had “safety concerns.”
Weis is not the only concerned grocer:
Giant Foods say the (reusable) bags are allowed, but the cashiers or baggers will not touch your reusable bags, you’ll have to bag your own groceries. They say they are constantly cleaning common areas like checkout locations and carts.
“In the state of crisis we’re in, we all need to be safe for everybody so having the throwaway bags I think is best,” said Dana Harfield.
Ironically in some states the plastic throwaway bags like these have already been banned. So, there is no choice but for customers to bring in their own.
It’s a tough call for some who thought they were helping to save the environment by skipping these bags. Now, by using them you could be saving your neighbors from coronavirus.
John Tierney has been arguing against the “perverse panic over plastic” that led to the banning of single-use plastic bags, ironically, seems to be harming the planet and the public. Both Rachel di Carlo Currie and I have taken note of Tierney’s work on this subject.
Aside from sanitation concerns of reusable bags, they apparently create more environmental problems than those thin, easy to dispose of single-use plastic bags.
In a subsequent City Journal piece, Tierney argued that we are “greening our way to infection.”