It’s just too easy. You buy dozens of products at your local grocery store and transport them all to your kitchen cabinets via packaging materials that are convenient, strong and utterly disposable. The plastic bags are always there, waiting at the end of the check out counter, empty and seemingly eager to be filled with your supermarket bounty.

For shoppers, the whole process is completely hassle free. In fact, you don’t even have to ask for plastic bags — you actually have to ask not to be given plastic bags.

And herein lies the problem.

We’re accustomed to thinking of shopping bags as nothing more than an afterthought — if, of course, we even think about them at all. This is because the harm and the danger that those flimsy little bags impose is far too removed from our everyday lives to really make a lasting impact on daily routines and our rush to get home and start dinner.

But not only does it take fossil fuels to produce the plastic in plastic bags, it takes even more energy to burn plastic waste into anything resembling something even remotely reusable. And still, very little of the discarded plastic makes it that far.

According to Greenpeace, there is currently a “trash vortex” somewhere in the North Pacific. It’s the size of Texas and contains roughly six kilos of plastic for every kilo of natural plankton. Sea creatures throughout the world, from narwhals to sea turtles, are being found with pieces of plastic in their digestive tracts.

The reason why Southampton Town is seeking legislation to ban plastic bags from grocery stores and retail shops is to help the environment. It has nothing to do with making the shopping experience more difficult for consumers, or storeowners. In fact, paper bags will be made available in their stead.

This is where some storeowners take issue.

According to figures given by Tom Cullen, VP of the King Kullen supermarket chain, fully recyclable paper bags cost about $0.08 a piece. This is a huge up tick from the current price of plastic, at $0.0168 a bag. Especially for a large supermarket chain like King Kullen, which services millions of customers a month.

So, for a smaller market that perhaps sees an average of 30 customers per day (hypothetically), all of whom use two bags each time they shop, that’s roughly $28 per month in expenses — for plastic. For paper, that total jumps to $134.

The increase is significant, yes. But the problem, as we see it, is that the supermarkets are looking at the bag ban as an added expense, rather than a sales opportunity.

To effectively eliminate the reliance on all single-use bags — be they paper or plastic — in our supermarkets, we advocate that stores not dole out bags for free, but rather come up with a system that will quickly train consumers to walk through the doors armed with their own. So we suggest that local stores put an added cost on all bags and require consumers who don’t come prepared to buy them at check out. So if King Kullen is looking at paying $0.08 per paper bag, they could charge something like $0.20 per bag and make a tidy profit. As a consumer, if I’ve forgotten my bags, shame on me. But hey, 10 bags of groceries, $2 extra for the bags I need to get them home, sure, I’ll pay that. Once or twice. Then I’ll certainly remember to bring my own next time. For summer visitors who don’t know to come prepared, it’s hardly an amount that will break their bank — this is the Hamptons after all — and if they’re out here for any length of time, they’ll quickly catch on too.

It’s really a no-brainer. We, as consumers, need to get in the habit of bringing reusable bags to the store with us whenever we shop. Cotton, burlap, heavy duty plastic, whatever, as long as they’re used over and over. Period. Being asked to pay extra for store-provided bags not only seems reasonable, it achieves two goals: eliminating the financial burden on business owners (and maybe even providing them with a tidy profit), while simultaneously prompting all of us to think twice before we consume.

This may all sound like a hardship to American shoppers who are used to the current system of double bagging. But ask anyone who has spent time in Europe and they will tell you, bringing your own bags to the store becomes second nature in no time — especially after you’ve plunked down a few Euros as a penalty for having forgotten them on the first few visits.

In these hard economic times, we hope this practice will cause people to pre-plan their shopping routines. Break old habits. Be a conscious consumer. Keep the bags in your trunk and you’ll never be caught off-guard again.

And anyway, wouldn’t it be nice to get rid of that ever-expanding stash of plastic bags under your kitchen sink? And just think, if you’re limited to filling just the bags that you bring along, maybe you’ll think twice about what you put in your shopping cart and eliminate those unnecessary junk food items that will only take up valuable space and go right to your waist.

See, we’re really doing you — and the whales — a favor.

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