Saving the planet

Tonight we were at Whole Foods.

This is where many of the "save the earth", "buy organic", ONLY eat real food types of people go. We shop there sporadically. Usually for vitamins and for my guilty addiction to peppermint soy milk.
Tonight the cuter half and I went to see if peppermint soy milk was at Whole Foods yet. Usually I buy a case of it....and that is enough that if I am generous the boy and the cuter half can have a sip or two of it as well.

There was something we noticed this evening. For all the holistic, organic save the earth types that were there.....we were the ONLY ones with our reusable bags. I think we brought in about 5 or 6 bags. Normally they will charge us for a box if we buy a case of the soy milk so I thought it would be better just to have our own bags with us.

Yup, reusable bags.
You know the ones right...the ugly green ones that are 10 for $.99 after rebate at Menards, or the freebees from the bank, hospital, insurance company or grocery store. Shove the bags in the trunk of your car and then forget you have them.....at least that is what most people do.
This is a habit, you have to make the effort to REMEMBER that the bags are in the trunk of your car and get them out before you go into the grocery store. Depending on where we are we may bring in 5-6 bags...we may bring more....at Target we bring in about 8 bags. This doesn't mean we are using all these bags....most of the time we may only use 2-4 bags a trip but we figure it is better to over estimate.
Wash these bags every once in a while, you may have to toss one or two after the dryer but you can recycle them when you are done and get some more bags later- Menards usually has the best deal on them and these are a good size.
DID you know you can get $.05 a recycleble bag at Target, $.10 at Whole Foods....Trader Joe's will put your name in for a drawing for a gift card depending on how many bags you use....

Now we do things unprecidented (shocker) and we may use meds on our kid and we may shop at rummage sales but WE USE OUR OWN BAGS.

People stick their noses up at us when we do but you know what (you should see them at Carsons when we have a coupon or more- the b--- behind me today was more than extremely rude about having to wait to get our coupons right- total cob up her butt that is for sure)....
We have used reusable bags for several years. We like them. We even got some for my Mom when she had a car. She complained when she gave them back to me. I told her to keep a few but she didn't want to....
These bags are sturdy, they don't get nasty when it is too hot or too cold....there are even some with lining and zippers for frozen foods and we use them too.

The hardest part is "teaching"baggers how to bag with them. At our old grocery store we had "Mr. Heavy-Packer" and then the ones who wouldn't want to use the resuable and still put everything in plastic AND then put the stuff in our bags (??) usually we line things up on the check out line HOW we want it bagged and after a few tries the baggers actually almost get it right....most of the time.

DID you know
http://www.reusethisbag.com/why.asp
FACT: About 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are used worldwide every year
FACT: Plastic industry trade associations were unable to provide estimates of plastic bag use in the United States. However, based on studies of plastic bag use in other nations, the environmental group Californians Against Waste estimates Americans use 84 billion plastic bags annually.
FACT: Last September, more than 354,000 bags -- most of them plastic -- were collected during an international cleanup of costal areas in the United States and 100 other countries, according to the Ocean Conservancy

This is only a little bit of information. I am thinking if the hoi-paloi would get off their patotties and use the reusable bags there would be a cultural revolution and it could start wtih the snooties at the holistic grocerty store.

Even the HuffPost did an article about using recyclable bags....this article pointed out that using paper only bags isn't much better than plastic and the only thing that is really good is to go recyclable all the way. Although cute one and I are not there yet we are pretty darn close.

There are people who bring their own tupperware and rubbermaid to the grocery store for the deli counter. We haven't gone that far.
We do recycle, we do take our cans to be recycled...

Several months ago we got new "family cards" and have a new phone number. Rather than have the cards tossed and remade I am taking the time to do this mindless job of writing the new number on the cards that we already have. Nothing else has changed but.....why throw them out. The cards are still good except for the one number. Why waste the paper and if I am sitting there in the family room with nuthin' to do I may as well do that.....

Going back to the bag thing...
If you are going to spend the $$ on organic, at least be HONEST and bring your own bags. It looks stupid to be going to a place like Whole Foods, or Trader Joes or the grocery store without your own bags. You can say "Hey I am eating organic and saving the planet" or get off your duff and actually do it....




Comments

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    Glad you like the blog. This is one of the better posts about recycling.

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