How times change, and not just because more Sears, Kmart stores are closing

Earlier this year, the City Council placed a series of referenda on the ballot for the upcoming elections Nov. 6 – including one measure concerning the continued use of plastic straws within the city.

Soon to be obsolete

How ridiculous, many of us quipped. How absurd. Many of us figured it was purely a political move so as to knock more legitimate issues that politicos would prefer not to address off the ballot altogether.

BUT THERE ARE those people who look at all those straws one uses every time they attend a restaurant. Those plastic tubes allowing you to sip your drink, then throw them away.

Where they will wind up in a landfill somewhere, forevermore adding to the planet’s pollution (or at least several hundred years until they finally decompose into nothingness).

That issue popped into my head Thursday when I stumbled across a story concerning the Kroger Co., a supermarket chain that hasn’t been in Chicago proper for decades, but does have some subsidiaries that operate in the Chicago area.

One of which is the Mariano’s chain of up-scale supermarkets that they purchased not long ago. It seems they’re taking on the same environmentally concerned approach to doing business.

BEGINNING NEXT YEAR in Seattle, they’re going to do away with those plastic bags we all have received far too often when grocery shopping. Unless we’re the type who actively go out of our way to choose “paper” whenever asked the eternal question “paper or plastic.”

By 2025, the Kroger people say they want to do away with plastic bags altogether – as though they expect the world of grocery shoppers to start carrying around reusable tote bags every time they go to pick up foodstuffs. Which may make sense on a certain level, but I suspect a certain segment of society will always remain too lazy to think that far ahead when going out to shop for groceries.

Fun? Or hazardous?

In Chicago, we already have what was supposed to be the initiative to discourage plastic bag use – having retailers charge 7 cents per bag on top of the price of the merchandise.

I know some people are too cheap to pay it, but many others just wind up coughing up the cash for the convenience. Which results in lots of the plastic bags accumulating in our humble abodes.

AT LEAST IN my case, the bags do get re-used. My father and step-mother have a pair of dogs and there are times when I wind up with the task of walking them. Which means I carry pockets-full of the plastic bags so I can pick up the poop and not create a health hazard for the neighbors.

Of course, that means the bags wind up going into a trash bin filled with canine caca and will eventually wind up in a landfill that way – where the bags will outlast the poop inside them.

More in the way of change in our society. The day may well come when people won’t be capable of comprehending why we snickered at the thought of laws against straws – or bag bans!

Just like another story I stumbled onto – one involving the closing of yet another Sears store AND a Kmart by year’s end.

THE SEARS IN question is in downstate Bloomington; the city in which I attended college and where I remember often buying typewriter ribbons and occasionally having to take my Sears-model typewriter in for repairs.

While the Kmart is in suburban Steger – a municipality that typically would not have been considered significant-enough to have such a retailer. But the long-time mayor always considered it his major accomplishment of some 40 years in office that he made the trip to Troy, Mich., to persuade corporate types to locate in his village.

Yet another retail vacancy that will need to be filled by year's end

But nothing lasts forever, and soon they will just be memories – and something to be included on those lists to be published in a couple of decades of things that college-age kids of the future never actually experienced in life.

Perhaps also like the straws that some of us of now see merely as a political tactic, rather than a legitimate issue.

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Nobody wants to pay taxes, but they’ll also complain about lack of services

There’s a scene in the 1995 film “My Family” in which actor Jimmy Smits’ character marries a woman from El Salvador to bolster her efforts to avoid deportation, then tries to dismiss his parents’ disapproval of such cynical behavior against the sacred institution of marriage by sarcastically saying, “I’m a god---n revolutionary.”

Who'd have thought political statement being made?

I can’t help but think the same sarcasm applies to many of the people who these days are getting offended over taxes – particularly the one that is drawing the national attention to Chicago in the form of the pop tax.

JUST ON TUESDAY the Chicago Tribune reported about one of the latest lawsuits filed in Cook County Circuit Court. There’s a man from suburban Schaumburg who’s upset that when he went to his local Walgreens store to purchase bottled sparkling water, he was hit with the tax.

He argues the packaging clearly indicates the water is unsweetened, while the so-called pop tax applies to sweetened beverages.

The man who filed his lawsuit last week said he wants a jury trial (probably because he wants a court ruling based in public sentiment rather than the technicalities of the law) and class-action status, which would allow for other people who have objections to the Cook County pop tax to pile on.

Why have one lone person suing someone over the penny per ounce fee the county wants to charge on pop and other sweetened beverages if you can have many?

THIS IS ABOUT people wishing to make a stink over an issue which basically amounts to them feeling a bit cheap and not wanting to pay an additional cost every time they buy their 2-liter bottle of pop (which can come to about $0.65 more).

In the case of Walgreens, the Tribune reports that the company admits it screwed up when coding the products it sells – which means that when the cashier swipes the water bottles at the register, it comes up with the pop tax added on even though it’s not supposed to.

And since it’s programmed to do that, the cashier has no authority, or ability, to take it off. Walgreens officials say they’re working to fix the situation. Which is about all we should expect to happen.

PRECKWINKLE: Arousing cheapskate anger?

I think the people who are hoping to go after Walgreens as a way of attacking the pop tax itself are just more interested in hearing themselves yell and scream. Of course, they’ll scream even louder whenever government fails to provide the services they expect as part of their life’s routines.

THEY’RE BEING ‘REVOLUTIONARIES’ against the issue of about 20 cents being added on to the cost of a single-serving sized plastic pop bottle. All of which is meant to help balance out the Cook County government budget.

Maybe it’s because I’ve been making an effort for the past year or so to reduce the amount of carbonated beverages I consume (I enjoy an occasional Coca-Cola too much to totally give up the habit, but it certainly doesn’t have to be a daily purchase), but this particular pop tax just strikes me as being yet another increase in the cost of daily life. Nothing is as cheap as it used to be when I was younger.

Yet some people are determined to carry out this petty fee and their disagreement to an extreme. Maybe it’s because the more serious taxes are too complex for them to go after.

Similar to how some Chicago residents get all worked up over being charged 7 cents for the cost of a plastic bag whenever they buy something.

PERSONALLY, I VIEW that fee as a cost of convenience for not having to carry my own bags to the store. Although for those who have their own canvas totes or whatnot to bring with them when they shop, more power to them!

Yes, I’m aware of the new poll showing 87 percent of those questioned hate the pop tax. Then again, how many people are going to do anything about it? This is one tax that gradually is going to become a part of the daily routine – no matter how much some retail groups try to challenge it in court and how petty Cook County gets with their counter-lawsuits against them.

Personally, I’d feel like a phony revolutionary if I claimed I was opposed to either of these taxes (pop or plastic bags) on some high-minded principle involving the legitimacy of taxation.

It would be more honest if the people who are complaining were to just come out and tell the truth – they’re feeling cheap!

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What if we’re too lazy to change shopping habits by bringing own bags?

I got my first look this weekend at those new plastic bags that supermarkets like Jewel will be encouraging people to use because they’re more durable than the flimsy plastic bags that have become ever so common in our society.

These bags aren't 'nice' any more in Chicago

My reaction was to think these bags are barely more durable than the ones we’re already using (except for those people who always went out of their way to ask for “paper” instead of “plastic”).

I’M NOT SURE I’m going to go out of my way to save these bags and keep reusing them, just because they won’t tear after one use like the current plastic bags.

I’m wondering how many people are going to rant and rage in coming weeks about being forced to use these new bags. How long until someone tries to create a Constitutional dilemma about whether their rights are being trampled just because someone wants to try to bolster the environment and the amount of trash that winds up spending decades sitting in a landfill somewhere?

In my case, I was in a suburban-based Jewel supermarket when I saw the new bags. Which means that, unlike Chicago, nobody was forcing anybody to use them. Jewel officials merely put them out as a suggested alternative.

Unlike city residents who won’t be offered the flimsy bags, even if by chance they’d rather have them.

PERSONALLY, I HAVE a hard time getting worked up about this issue.

When I go grocery shopping, the last thing I want to think about are the bags that I’m going to use to haul my goods away.

Although I’ll admit that when I did think about this issue, I’m inclined to ask for a paper bag. Unless it’s literally just an item or two – in which case I’ll just take the flimsy plastic.

Decades of Chicago trash are buried under this mound at the city's far southern edge

I’m fortunate enough to live one block from a Jewel supermarket, so I can literally walk to the store and save the cost of using gasoline if all I need is a couple of items. Along with the reduction in fumes the automobile emits into the air.

I’M INCLINED TO think that’s my contribution to the better environment – rather than having to keep in mind the need to bring my own bags so I can package my own goods and carry them away.

The supporters of this change – which took effect in Chicago on Saturday – say it’s just a matter of encouraging people to change the way they think about things.

The day will come, they say, when it will seem strange that people didn’t bring their own bags with them whenever they shopped for food.

Which is why some aldermen in Chicago say they’re concerned that the new ordinance they approved is already in need of revision. They think these new plastic bags of slightly more durable plastic are going to be treated the way we’ve become used to treating the flimsy, old plastic bags.

THEY’LL GET DUMPED into the trash can and ultimately wind up in a landfill somewhere. Although because they’re of a thicker layer of plastic, it will take even longer for them to deteriorate.

Who knows; Chicago may well celebrate its Tri-centennial in 2136 with someone thinking they’re being an archeologist by digging into a landfill – and finding an intact plastic bag that someone tossed into the trashcan this weekend.

Will that turn this weekend’s waste into the next century’s historic artifact?

Because I don’t care if someone says these new bags are capable of being used up to 125 times – I can’t think of anyone who would want to use it that many times before moving on to another.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: One of the customs of Cubans living in Havana is that people carry around flimsy plastic bags with them, on the off-chance that they stumble across a store that is carrying some goods they happen to actually desire. Somehow, this is one custom I can’t see catching on in the United States.