An observation, in honor of Earth Day

[jducoeur]

So I've pretty much bought into the bring-your-own-bag thing. Whole Foods does a very nice job of indoctrinating its customers into the idea: they don't give you any guff about bringing your own bag, give you a small kickback for doing so, and sell really nice reusable bags at the register. And as of a few weeks ago, they've dropped the standard plastic bags entirely -- it's either paper, or bring your own.

That said, it just makes one more aware of how much throwaway packaging one goes through in standard shopping, and Whole Foods isn't especially exemplary in that regard. I mean, it's good to get rid of the plastic carry-bags, but as far as I can tell, that only accounts for a modest fraction of the bags one uses in shopping. From the double-layer paper around my fish order to the baggies for the bagels to the box on my takeaway dinner, everything almost necessarily comes in its own little containers, all destined to be chucked, or at *best* composted.

I've started to reduce this slightly myself ("This orange doesn't really need its own baggie"), but it's a much harder nut to crack. And it does drive home that, while every little step is good, they're mostly still little steps, and there are many of them...

Comments

[aneirin-awenyd.livejournal.com]

I think it takes little steps to get people gently on the road to big steps.

You said yourself, you're now thinking twice about bagging an orange. That is great. Your thinking is changing in small ways, and if everyone's thinking is similarly affected, the result could be quite significant. Maybe not significant enough to save the entire planet from our species' poor historical choices, but nevertheless. I'm going to err on the side of optimism here.

I started using my own cloth bags about ten years ago, and haven't looked back. I was absolutely thrilled when I was at Trader Joe's with indigoserenity on Saturday and she whipped out her bag-of-bags to use there. Wow! I was impressed. I was thinking I was one of the few weirdo toting a bag-of-bags around to use in stores...but now it's gone and become a mainstream thing. I am very happy about that.

If nothing else, it keeps people like me imagining there is some hope. Humanity may very well still be doomed, but I am glad to find reasons to believe we could still escape our fate.

[evil-macaroni.livejournal.com]

There are sites that sell lightweight cloth bags for veggies. You may want to buy a few - they're very handy for oranges/apples. I don't like them as much for salad greens and herbs, which are prone to wilt.

[calygrey.livejournal.com]

Fish really wants two layers of paper though.

I still put vegetables in their own bags, mostly to get them home in something resembling good condition; they are handled a number of times before they even get into the car.

[cellio]

I don't put produce in baggies unless it's wet, fragile, or numerous. If, for example, I'm buying half a dozen apples, I want them to be weighed together. I wonder if any stores are putting out little bins for that -- fill this up, dump it out on the scale at the register, and collect the bin same as they collect baskets. That would be a win.

I've started carrying cloth bags in my car. Whether I use them depends partly on memory (it's still new) and mostly on whether I need more small bags for scooping the litter boxes. (Plastic bags do get reused in my house.)