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Paper or Plastic ? Take a walk along the Chesapeake Bay，and you are likely to see plastic bags floating in the water.They have made their into local waterways and, from there，into the bay，where they can wildlife.Piles of them show up in landfillsand on city streets.Plastic bags also take an environmental tollin the of millions of barrels of oil expended every year to produce them. Enter Annapolis and you will see plastic bags free in department stores and supermarkets.AldermanSam Shropshire has introduced a well-meaning to ban retailers from distributing plastic shopping bags in Marylands capital.Instead, retailers would be required to bags made of recycled paper and to sell reusable bags.The city of Baltimore is a similar measure.Opponents of the ，however, argue that paper bags are harmful, too：They cost more to make, they more resources to transport, and recycling them causes more pollution than recycling plastic.The argument for depriving Annapolis residents their plastic bags is far from accepted.Everyone in this is right about one thing：Disposable shopping bags Of any type are wasteful，and the best outcome would be for customers to bags instead.Annapoliss mayor is investigating how to hand out free, reusable shopping bags to city residents, a proposal that can proceed of whether other bags are banned.A less-expensive alternative would be to encourage retailers to give to customers who bring their own reusable bags.And this policy would be more if stores imitated furniture mega-retailerIkea and charged for disposable bags at the checkout counter.A broad ban on the use of plastic shopping bags is not the answer. | 
