You've all seen various versions of the reuseable "green" grocery bag. The idea is simple. You bring your own bag with you to the store so you don't have to use the plastic disposeable kind that end up in a landfill and take 500 years to decompose. Sounds good. Sounds responsible. Sounds environmentally friendly. But I have never purchased one of these and have no plans to do so in the near future. Are you shocked? Are you outraged? Are you wondering how I could be so frivolous and irresponsible? Could it be that I care nothing about our planet? Is it that I shy away from being too "trendy" and "for a cause"? Rest assured that none of these are the case. I am very interested in our planet. I am not afraid of being too trendy by using green bags. I don't like the idea of filling up landfills. We recycle glass, aluminum cans, magazines, office paper, plastic and cardboard. We even have to take it to the recycling center ourselves. I turn off the car if I'm going to be waiting more than a minute to avoid excess pollution. But when it comes to plastic grocery bags it is simply a matter of supply and demand. We use plastic grocery bags as liners in the 8 garbage cans in our house. We double line the kitchen one to avoid yucky drips. Because the kitchen can is small it gets emptied about once a day. We have at least one dirty diaper a day, sometimes up to 3 or 4 depending on Annabelle's fiber intake and each of those get thrown out in a bag. The rest of the cans get emptied about once a week. If you add all that up it comes to approximately 30 grocery bags a week. The problem is that we hardly ever bring in 30 bags a week so there is a shortage. We salvage everything we can possibly use including the little plastic produce bags although those don't work very well. We use the packaging from diapers and toilet paper as liners and I even used the plastic covering from two new pillows I bought last week. Once, Ben broke down and actually bought a package of garbage can liners. He was tired of always running out of plastic bags. At the grocery store when they ask if I want my milk in a bag I casually answer, "sure" as if it didn't really matter but in reality I am thinking, "Yes! Another bag." And if they ever double bag groceries I have to keep myself from looking overly delighted. Once we scored big time when a wad of about 10 bags got stuck onto one that we brought home from the store. We've even had friends and family bring us their excess grocery bags. I've been tempted to snag some out of the recycling bin but that just seems wrong since the people that put them there did so in good faith that they would actually be recycled, not just reused. I feel bad that I can't go "green" in this area but I just don't see any other options. At least when our plastic grocery bags go to the landfill they are filled with a bunch of other garbage. Now that's something I can really feel good about.
4 comments:
He he he. Daniel and I both got a good laugh out of this post, Amy. We now know one gift you WOULDN'T appreciate. And if we ever need to cut a deal, we know what we'll need to throw in to win you over :)
No, Amy, we're not horrified!!!!!
We do almost the same thing, although in much smaller numbers. Like you, we put diapers in the grocery bags, and take them out just about every night, but I find that bread bags/produce bags/etc. are good for individual stinky diapers. We do use actual kitchen trash bags in the kitchen, and I don't line every wastebasket if I know that I'll only be putting non-icky stuff in it (like dryer lint). My mom always made me consolidate all small wastebaskets into the main bag (usually the kitchen trash) before taking it out, so that saves bags too (ie, you can use your grocery bags longer). Anyway, this way we have enough bags to both reuse and recycle!
You GO Girl!! You finally voiced what we have been doing for years!!! We have about 6 small trash cans that we use those grocery bags for. We use the skinny plastic bags that the newspaper comes in for stinky diapers. I'm happy to know that the next time we're in Iowa, we can bring you Colorado imported grocery bags. And you'll be thrilled!
Amen sister! One man's trash is indeed another man's treasure. I see now where surplus rations will be appreciated.
--Nancy
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