I love my smartphone and I appreciate new ways to streamline grocery shopping (“New portable grocery scanners are rolling out in Utah Smith’s stores,” April 25), but I share concerns recent writers have expressed about displaced store employees and other potential complications.

Another big concern for me is: plastic bags? To use the smartphone shopping app, one has to bag one’s purchases in see-through plastic bags? At a time when we know that plastic bags are a scourge on the environment in so many ways, this seems not like progress but instead a big step backward. Surely in creating this new shopping technology, developers could have also provided some type of scanner enabling store security personnel to “see through” reusable grocery bags and allow us to enjoy a speedy shopping experience without increasing plastic waste.

Sharon Rishe, East Millcreek