Shopping Bag Innovation: You’re Doing It Wrong

When it comes to new ideas in the world of the disposable shopping bag, innovation is crucial — that is to say, new ideas on how to reduce energy expenditure or waste is about as favorable as you can get. So can somebody please tell IBM that this is not what we had in mind?

On Tuesday, IBM was granted US Patent No. 7,407,089 for storing a preference for paper or plastic grocery bags on customer cards and displaying a picture of said preference after a card is scanned. The invention, Big Blue explains, eliminates the ‘unnecessary inconvenience for both the customer and the cashier’ that results when ‘Paper or Plastic?’ must be asked. The patent claims also cover affixing a cute sticker of a paper or plastic bag to a customer card to indicate packaging preferences.

Hmm. Obviously glaring is that, once again, the idea forces in the false-dichotomy of “paper-or-plastic.” But even beyond that: I realize that social anxiety disorder is more of a pressing concern than ever these days, but what does that say about our society when the simple, split-second human interaction of voicing a preference is seen as enough of a nuisance that we must find technology to eliminate it? Does it really kill us to have to mention where we would like our groceries stored for transfer? Second, what about the sticker on the customer card? Would it just be affixed to your standard Ralphs or Vons or whatever member discount card, or would you need your own customer card simply for travel-toting preferences? Even just the manufacturing of the cute preference stickers alone seems egregiously wasteful, to say nothing of if a whole new plastic card were required.

There’s no need to get too up in arms yet — it’s merely a patent at this stage, and not every patent winds up in production. That said, it still feels like a grand waste of time and resources to have had the patent produced. Do we not have better things to think about and research than a question that seems to grow less and less relevant every day? I should really hope so.

Thursday, August 7th, 2008 at 8:31 am and is filed under The Daily. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.