Anyone who has known me for longer than five minutes knows I am from Texas. I’m not a “native Texan,” but I am a transplant who calls Texas home. I also don’t recycle. I know, I know, shame on me, but I have a reason.
Several years ago, before all the heightened awareness about “Going Green,” I discovered that the recycled goods I was carefully separating were in fact going to the same landfill as the trash I was NOT sorting. I refused, on principle, to recycle if “it wasn’t going to matter anyway.” Now, before everyone flames me, read on…
I was the commissary this morning and they are really pushing these “green bags” for groceries. They are .70 per bag and reusable. “Hmmm,” I thought. Seems to me if they really wanted me to use them, they’d be free. But, then, I took a closer look. I picked one up and inspected it carefully. It has the appropriate wording to make one feel good about purchasing the bag, “Keep It Green,” “For a Greener World,” etc. It even IS actually green, and with handles. What compelled me to purchase the bags was the fact that they are HUGE. I don’t mean a-little-bigger-than-the-usual-plastic-grocery sack huge, I mean, I got out of the commissary with SIX bags. That’s IT. I made it inside the house from the car in one trip!
When I got home, I thought about my purchase. $4.20 for reusable bags that are green. The plastic bags I opted out of today wouldn’t cost me anything…right? Well, maybe not monetarily, but here IS a cost for using plastic bags.
- Hundreds of thousands of sea turtles, whales and other marine mammals die every year from eating discarded plastic bags mistaken for food.
- Plastic bags don’t biodegrade, they photodegrade, breaking down into smaller and smaller toxic bits contaminating soil and waterways and entering the food web when animals accidentally ingest them.
- Plastic bags are among the 12 items of debris most often found in coastal cleanups, according to the nonprofit Center for Marine Conservation.
Whole Food ™ intends to entirely ban plastic sacks in its stores one week from today—April 22nd, Earth Day. This action alone will keep over 100 million plastic sacks out of the environment between Earth Day and the end of the year. That’s an amazing difference.
I’m now on a mission to “Go Green.” I’m packing my green sacks in the car to use on my next weekly trip to the commissary. This is just the first of many steps for me to becoming a greener, better-educated person.
The bottom line is Bigger Is Better…not just because it saved me carrying time, but because it got me to think, and then research, about what I was doing in the big picture.
9 Comments
Yay Babette!
I am reusable bag friendly…the smallest efforts by individuals collectively impact the world
(this is the tree hugger san franciscan in me…don’t get me started on diapers hahahah)
Going green in my opinion just seems to make more sense! It is practical and it saves money and so many other things/lives as well! I think it is everyone’s duty to contribute to taking care of our environment in the best way they know how! Good for you! Now I am curious about these new bags. I will have to check them out! I love whole foods too and I usually go paper with them. With these new commissary bags I may just have to say no the the paper altogether! HUGS!
One of the spouses in our unit is from Ireland and she has been using this type of bag for YEARS. She has large ones, with wooden handles, and they are OH SO sturdy. While hers are not GREEN (in color), she has, in fact, been using them because in EUROPE, you don’t have a choice. You pay for each plastic bag you use, there. I still have my “frau basket” from Germany. I’m sure I would get many odd looks if I walked into a grocery store HERE with it…but green is green any way you can help!
I have to say though that I alternate between plastic and paper. I use the paper for my cardboard and newspaper recycling. Keeps everything neat and tidy while collecting, and then I can recycle the paper bag WITH the other things. The plastic sacks are for wet clothing, small garbage cans and the like. While they are not biodegradable, at least I feel better knowing I’ve repurposed them at least once.
I love the new commissary bags. I can fit about $150 dollars worth into about 7 of them! As for recycling, every little bit helps. When my city adopted curb side recycling service, I went nuts! How convenient is that? They didn’t even make us separate it, they took it all and sorted it at the recycling center. Now that we are overseas, I can’t tell you how much I miss that! Especially when our trash wasn’t picked up for 6 weeks! When your garbage sits on your curb for that long, and you are accumulating more each day, and running out of places to put it, you are looking at any and every way to reduce the volume your family produces! Yay for recycling!!
You aren’t getting any plastic bag at the grocery in Germany. Better bring a green one or a basket like they do here.
We use cloth bags to do our shopping whenever we remember to bring them.
The comments about Europe got me thinking about our trip to England. When you walk into a London Starbucks, everyone is sitting at a table with a ceramic mug of coffee. Here in the States they default to the paper cup. Oh, and if you asked for a ‘to go’ cup in England, you got a paper cup that started to disintegrate in about twenty minutes!
I know the bags you mean. I can definitely attest to the size. Without exaggeration, I carried 6 (SIX) 2 liter bottles of soda in one bag. (It was for a party.) Not only was it big enough to hold the sodas, but it actually stood up to the weight of them with ease. For me, definitely worth the $0.70 a pop.
I use Whole Foods bags(they are bigger IMO) for all my shopping. I went green before it was fashionable.
Now at most Wal-marts they have bins that are for used plastic bags to recycle. After I have used as many as I can in the bathroom trashcan or to pooperscoop my yard (or on our doggie walks)I take most of the rest back to wal-mart. I also like to keep some extra, since moving is always in the future, they really pad any breakables instead of paper, then unpack and re-use them in your numberous ways again. Just a few ideas for those who still aren’t Jolly Green Giant ~GREEN.