People often make jokes at the expense of the Irish, but this time it seems that they're the smart ones. Starting this week, Irish shoppers will have to pay 15 cents for every plastic bag they use to carry home their shopping. This includes groceries, books, CDs and even takeaway food. Shoppers who provide their own bags will not have to pay the tax, which will be taken by the government and put into an environmental fund.

While I'm not usually for governments introducing taxes to solve problems, I think this is the only way to get people to do something. Take the woman queued infront of me this weekend as an example of the average shopper; she couldn't even understand that the “eight items or less” queue meant eight shopping items, and not eight bags of shopping. Not one person tried to correct her. The checkout girl just rolled her eyes as she scanned the items. The majority of people aren't going to make the right choice on their own, because they simply don't understand what's wrong with what they're doing now.

Just remember that there's no need to wait for the goverment to force us into doing the right thing. We can still choose to use reusable bags made of cloth or heavy plastic for our shopping. Heck, even if you don't care about the environment, cloth bags are much less likely to break and drop heavy cans on your foot. Save your feet; save your environment.