If you are a responsible shopper, you head out with cloth bags in tow. You even stash a few extras in your (hybrid) car for those unexpected trips to the (farmer’s) market. Cloth bags aside, however, let us assume that you must choose between either paper or plastic. What do you feel guiltier about, playing a part in deforestation or polluting the environment with bits of plastic that will be here long after we are gone?

I am not perfect. I know, that comes as a complete shock to many of you.*** There are days when, in my mad rush to get out of the house (and away from my kids for the solace that one hour at the grocery store can deliver), I leave my cloth bags behind. Then as I am driving down the road, I begin to wonder which is more detrimental to the environment: wasting gas by turning my car around to make an unnecessary trip back home to retrieve the environmentally friendly bags, or having to make the choice between paper and plastic. Nevertheless, even on my best days when I do remember to tote along my six cloth bags, I end up purchasing more food and sundry items than what can possibly be stuffed inside. (A truly efficient bagger can complete such a challenging task. In my eighteen months of using cloth bags, the feat has been accomplished only once. I then dutifully filled out a customer comment card praising the store for hiring such a talented and meticulous clerk/bagger. Those things make me happy. It doesn’t take much.)

In May of 2007, NBC Nightly News proposed this very quandary of choosing between paper and plastic. My husband and I waited anxiously with baited breath, shushing our children, and biting our nails to stubs in true worrywart fashion. Okay, that last part is a lie. However, my insides flip-flopped with the worry that I was about to be told I had been making the wrong decision all along. I am a paper person, after all, on those occasions when the cloth is left behind, and I will snap and glare if a bagger attempts to sneak a bottle of shampoo into a plastic bag or, God forbid, wrap my gallon of milk in plastic. What is the handle for, anyway? I look at paper bags and see the possibilities beyond their original intent: brown paper for shipping boxes, wrapping paper my kids can decorate, weed “fabric” for the garden, homemade costumes for rainy days.

But as it turns out, you should choose paper or plastic depending on where you live. If you live along the coastline, where wayward plastic bags have a tendency to be caught up by the wind and eventually settle in oceans and lakes, choose paper. Everyone else, choose plastic. Don’t think you are all of a sudden off the hook now; the wiser choice is still cloth. Consider these facts about paper and plastic bags:

“To make all the bags we use each year, it takes 14 million trees for paper and 12 million barrels of oil for plastic. The production of paper bags creates 70 percent more air pollution than plastic, but plastic bags create four times the solid waste — enough to fill the Empire State Building two and a half times. And they can last up to a thousand years.”

In short, what you are really making a choice between, still, is how you would rather pollute the environment, by air, land, or sea (or a combination thereof).

It’s confession time, readers. How do you choose?

***You know I’m kidding. Right?