Toting around reusable shopping bags used to be the mark of someone who most people would consider an environment-nut and dismiss as a tree-hugging Earth-lover. But no more. Turns out those folks were just ahead of their time.

The era of the plastic shopping bag is coming to an end, and not a moment too soon. Earlier this month, Brookline, Mass. became the second community in that state to ban plastic shopping bags, joining Nantucket, which instated a ban more than 20 years ago, according to the Associated Press. Now a statewide ban is being sought, and we hope Maine considers following Massachusetts’ lead.

We’ve been fascinated with plastic since the 1950s, for its ease of use and low cost ”“ but now the bill is coming due. It’s tempting to compare a plastic shopping bag to a gun or a car and say it’s not the bag itself that’s the problem, but the way people use them. And while it’s true that those who fail to recycle or even properly dispose of plastic bags are certainly to blame for many of the problems associated with them, the bags themselves are actually the problem in this case.

According to a Washington Post report, the U.S. uses 100 billion plastic shopping bags each year. An estimated 4 billion of those end up as litter ”“ and even those that end up in landfills never biodegrade. Recycling the bags isn’t cost effective, and the unfortunate truth, according to the Post, is that many plastic bags collected for recycling are actually sent off to other countries to be incinerated.

The very nature of plastic bags ”“ lightweight, waterproof, everlasting ”“ makes them a product that needs to be phased out of common use. Plastic bags, one of the most common types of beach trash, are deadly to many types of marine life, such as whales, which mistake them for food, consume them and are weakened or die as a result. The bags can also cover up waterbody floors, smothering food sources and living spaces for aquatic life. They’re even deadly even to human children, as the warning on each sack suggests, who can suffocate if a bag becomes stuck to their nose and mouth. As well, plastic bags are easily picked up by the wind, so they end up littering not only our streets but our trees and buildings.

Some suggest paper as an alternative, but production of paper bags also requires toxic chemicals, and recycling paper actually requires more energy than does plastic. Biodegradable plastic bags pose their own problems for proper disposal and recycling. While paper costs more to ship and produce and the manufacturing process pollutes the environment, paper is still a better choice, as far as animals are concerned, and the paper industry is at least locally sourced in some cases, as opposed to the mostly overseas oil required to make plastic bags.

Our real problem, however, is the “one-use, throw-away” culture that both paper and plastic bags represent, and banning at least the more harmful of the two will be a major step in promoting more sustainable, responsible lifestyles.

Certainly, we have to have some way to carry purchases out of a store and get them home. But who says it has to be disposable? It’s time for a cultural change in which consumers expect that they will be responsible for providing a way to pack up their purchases and carry them off.

Money is always a motivator, and the plastic bag problem is no exception. The figures are in environmentalists’ favor, here, however, since plastic bags cost stores money to provide, and cleaning them up from our beaches and streets is also costly ”“ the environmental costs aside. Eliminate the bags and eliminate the cost. Money talks, so if people become accustomed to having to pay a hefty fee for, say, paper bags at the store, they can be expected to change their habits and start bringing their own reusable bags, boxes or crates.

Let’s take a cue from our neighbor to the south and embrace a plastic bag ban in Maine, to protect the environment and its wildlife and move away from this harmful throw-away culture.