i ran in to my friendly target store today at lunch to pick up a head for my teethbrush and a towel to use for chains class.
the redshirt at the counter rang my two items and immediately started to shove them into a plastic bag. like i always do, i told him that i didn’t need a bag, that it was a pretty short trip to the car and i thought i could manage the towel and brush heads. it took him a second to register what i said, but then he looked up and said, “yeah, i guess it is sort’ve wasteful.” the guy behind me in line was buying a little box of tazo tea and, as he handed it to the cashier he said that he didn’t need a bag either.
it got me thinking: what sort of impact would it have if all of us brought our own bags to the grocery store or declined the plastic bags if it was reasonably simple to manage our purchases by hand?
i’d like to challenge everyone who reads this post to try out the following seven words at least once this week:
“no thanks, i don’t need a bag.”
feel free to use this phrase liberally (even the conservatives out there can do this). in fact, if you’re feeling particularly feisty, you might even try taking your own bags shopping with you!!
bwe and i purchased some reusable bags for grocery shopping a couple of months back and really like them. i keep one in my car and she in hers. one bag is big enough for quick trips to the grocery. for larger shopping trips or if we forget our csa basket, we purchased a “shopping bag system”. it costs a few bucks up front, but we thought it was well worth it.
we’ve been making a concious effort to use the bags whenever possible and to ask for the bagger or clerk to use as few bags as possible anytime we have to have a bag.
give it a try!!!
a few quick facts about plastic bags: (i poached these from the reusable bags’ site)
-according to the epa, over 380 billion plastic bags, sacks and wraps are consumed in the u.s. each year.
-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.
-each year, an estimated 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are consumed worldwide. that comes out to over one million per minute. Billions end up as litter each year.
-each high quality reusable shopping bag you use has the potential to eliminate hundreds, if not thousands, of plastic bags over its lifetime.
