Small changes in our mundane lives can stimulate a surprising array of emotions – love, anger, defiance, even shame. Take the five cents it now costs Torontonians to take home anything they buy – books, fresh fish, running shoes – in a plastic bag.

"I hate those guys," says a man in a grey T-shirt charging out of the Loblaws grocery store on Dupont St. with a jar of mayonnaise in one hand, paper products in the other. Those guys?

He waves vaguely to the store. "Charging five cents!"

Lucy, a part-time teacher, begs that her last name not be used because her children, keen recyclers, will be embarrassed if she publicly expresses her fondness for plastic grocery bags.

"I love them," she says. She has left her reusable bags in the car and emerged with a cartload of groceries bagged in plastic.

"I find them extremely convenient and I have many uses for them at home. Somebody told me they can be composted (that's not true) – but either way, I love them."

Since the City of Toronto imposed the fee June 1, we've altered the way we shop – there's a whole new anthropology of commercial exchanges.

Customers leave shops with arms loaded – cherries, chips and baguettes – refusing to pay five cents for a bag. They are motivated by a nobility of purpose – they think they're saving the earth – or a curmudgeonly resistance to paying for something that was once free.

Sometimes they're just carrying a couple of sandwiches, as a man in a Tilley hat, white pants – a faintly nautical look – emerging from All the Best Fine Foods on a posh section of Yonge St., did last week. Why was he bagless? "I don't like spending five cents," he snapped.

Most people are surprisingly uninhibited striding across parking lots balancing groceries like Cirque du Soleil aerialists. They shoulder kitty litter and paper towels, juggle avocados and lemons. Some wave their receipts as they exit proving they're responsible citizens who have spurned plastic but still paid for the goods.

Logistical problems lay ahead: with arms full, how to open the car door? Retired teacher Ann Marshall put her milk and bread on the roof of her car – she'd left her reusable bags on the passenger seat – and said, "I use plastic bags but I don't want to pay for them. You feel nickeled and dimed as a senior."

Three weeks into the new regime, it's not known how many shoppers have made the switch. It appears many have. Of the major grocery chains, only Loblaw Companies Limited, Canada's largest grocer, has released figures on the decline in plastic bag use – 75 per cent fewer since launching its nationwide reduction program April 22. Metro and Sobeys have noted a drop – no numbers available – while reusable bag sales have increased fivefold and threefold respectively.

At the same time, shoppers have abandoned brand loyalty in shopping bags. You see Fiesta Farms bags at Loblaws. Sobeys bags at Metro. Some use bags as cultural markers, identifying shoppers' wider, more interesting lives as travellers (Centre du Rasoir in Paris), readers (Harvard Book Store) or handy men or women (Lee Valley Tools).

Some shoppers question if the five-cent fee is a deterrent or a penalty. Lawyer and mother of two Tierney Grieve is annoyed, she says, pushing a cartload of groceries in plastic bags to her car where she has defiantly left her reusable bags. "People judge you," she says.

She needs the plastic to line rubbish bins at home. "There's a lot of social pressure to demonstrate how socially conscious we are," says Grieve. "Screw it. I need some bags."

Nor is she happy about the five-cent fee, though the large chains are donating part of the fee collected to environmental organizations. "I'd like to know what the charities are."

Loblaws plans to give $1 million a year over three years to the World Wildlife Fund-Canada. Any leftover funds will be used to reconfigure checkout stations, retrain cashiers and post reminder notices. (A word on reconfiguring: Instead of placing items into plastic bags stretched on racks, the groceries accumulate on the counter in a muddle so the clerk can sort them and pack the different shaped reusable bags more efficiently.)

Metro is donating $2 million toward an environmental stewardship program in schools in Ontario and Quebec for the 2009/10 school year. Sobeys Ontario is funding grants of up to $20,000 to support Earth Day Canada projects.

"I want to do the right thing, but what do I do about my garbage?" says Grieve. "Black cloth bags are not going to solve my bathroom and kitchen problem."

Not only grocery shoppers face the question – would you like a plastic bag? – at the cash desk. Clerks at bookstores, takeout food stores and clothing stores are asking, too.

At Indigo Books and Music on Bloor St. W., where fees collected go to an environmental fund, a clerk estimates 75 per cent of customers are declining plastic bags.

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One of them is Monique Macbeth, shopping with her granddaughter. "Plastic bags, they literally last forever. But they will soon be a thing of the past. In Europe they use string bags and shopping baskets."

At the landmark gourmet food store, Dinah's Cupboard in Yorkville, manager Glenn Beech guesses customers rarely take plastic bags, no more than 10 to 15 bags a week. "It's not the five cents. It's just a reminder, `oh, yeah, we're not supposed to be wasting bags.' People are retraining themselves."

The effect of this new consciousness also ripples through Ontario's business community. Plastic bag manufacturers are feeling the pinch and laying off staff, part attributable to the recession, part because of the fee for bags.

Fadhil Yousif, who runs Grand Plastics, a Brampton family business, says orders have dropped 75 per cent in the past two weeks. He used to make 100,000 to 150,000 bags a day. Last week, he stopped his machines.

"The stores are scared to stock their normal orders; they don't know if they can move them," he said.

"I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm waiting to see what happens in the next two weeks."

At the Canadian Plastics Industry Association, Cathy Cirko praises the plastic bag while lamenting the terrible timing – a recession – in imposing what she calls a "tax." "It's not only affecting manufacturers of plastic products, but it does put a negative image on all plastics." She argues the City of Toronto should have expanded its recycling program and warns that the fee will have a negative impact on the recycling industry in Ontario.

Bags cost one to two cents to make, yet the businesses are charging five cents, she says.

Shopping bags account for less than 1 per cent of landfill and up to 70 percent of plastic bags are reused, she says.

"It's a profit grab. At the end of the day are we making sensible environmental decisions?"

Still many people embrace the idea of reducing the use of plastic. Customers at Olliffe Fine Meats on Yonge St. bring their own bags and many use the smart red folding bags given away when the store opened.

But the five-cent fee can cause uncomfortable moments.

What happens when you ring up a purchase and then inquire if the customer would like a plastic bag?

"It's Rosedale," says Sam Gundy. "It's awkward to ask for a nickel after the transaction."