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.