I like trees, and grass, and nature, but I'm not especially fond of the color green. This stems, I'm sure, from my having worn a green jumper throughout grammar school and high school. Even when every other Catholic school in the universe converted to the relatively hip and with-it plaid skirt and jacket uniform, my high school persisted in requiring a jumper that was nearly identical to the one my mother had worn to her high school 30 years earlier.
Whatever my feelings about the color green, I know deep down that we all have to start getting better at being it.
A few weeks ago, while tootling home from Syracuse, I took a bio-break at one of the Turnpike stops. I passed the iZone sunglass area, and saw that they were selling fold-up shopping bags, called Totettes.
I had read recently that the flimsy plastic bags you get everywhere are contributed mightily to the ruin of the environment, so I thought I'd get me one of them Totettes and start using it in lieu of the evil plastic bags.
When I went to pay for it ($12.99), the woman working the stand chirped up, two for $20. So I sprung, and I now keep one in my laptop backpack and one in my pocketbook, and am religiously using these totes in lieu of the plastic bags I'm used to getting when I buy toothpaste, a loaf of bread, a printer cartridge, a pair of socks... I figure I'm saving the environment a couple of hundred bags a year this way. The Totettes are nylon and come in a bunch of bright colors (plus, I think, black). Each has a self-contained (self-attached) little case. Once you've used the Totette, it folds up very readily into that case, and you have something somewhere betweeen the size of a glasses case and your cell phone to handily toss in your pocketbook (or pocket).
Since purchasing my Totettes - one neon green, one electric blue; the better to see them in the far reaches of my black pocketbook or my black backpack - I have been using them religiously at Staples, CVS, and the corner grocery. In the first week alone, I've saved a good half dozen plastic bags.
And being green may have a reward attached beyond just plain goodness and virtue. I used both Totette's when I went to pick up a few things at Trader Joe's, and got to enter a drawing (winner gets $25 worth of groceries) for those who are bringing their own bags. Even if I don't win - and I actually have pretty good luck with raffles - this is a nice touch!
Feeling virtuous, feeling green, I now vow that I will start bringing my big canvas tote bags to the grocery store when I do my major grocery haul next week. Let's see if I keep that vow.
But I do already recycle my bottles, cans, newspapers, and mags. I already drive a small, fuel-efficient car. I already believe that global warming is a clear and present danger. I have already gotten plastic-bag-replacing Totettes for The Banshees (my girl gang: six sisters-cousins who convene twice a year for no-boys-allowed, wine, shopping, and song weekends). I figure if all six of us forego 5 of those miserable little plastic bags each week, at the end of the year, we'll have "saved" 1500 of them.
Damn, I'm good and green.
7 comments:
Maureen,
Great post! Green is so interesting. I don't claim to know whether global warming is a danger or not. That's not the point to me. It's that I can do something better for the world with my old junk, or I can have less junk to being with. I don't get why people get so riled up about being more responsible with their trash! I think green is great, and I may have to check out those totes. (I had some old ones, but the handles broke).
Thanks so much for your comments on my blog today. I totally agree with you that what workers want today doesn't really probably differ from what workers ever wanted before. I think that fundamentally, this generation may be different simply because we're at a new stage in the evolution of the workplace. For example, now, women can have careers fairly easily, but they want more than that. So, we're fighting different battles. But, we realize, as you pointed out, that we can inject ourselves into the process of the evolving workplace and quite possible get exactly what we - and all workers - really want. It's exciting to be a part of the evolving workplace, and hopefully, it will all turn out to make work better for all workers. We'll see.
It's funny - I linked over to your blog earlier today from Employee Evolution and really enjoyed your blog. I'm so glad you stopped by littleredsuit.com. Please visit often, I love your insights!
My experience with bringing bags to a regular grocery store (down here, the local Kroger) is that the baggers seem mightily confused. (Whole Foods is a whole other story, of course.)
I would love to see us do what's typical in France (& I'm sure other European countries, though France is the only one where I have grocery buying experience); if you don't bring bags, you pay for the plastic ones. Not much (I seem to remember it was something like 10 euro cents) but it's a good little incentive. Oh, and the plastic bags you get are kind of crappy.
I try to get just enough plastic bags at the grocery store to have one a day to scoop the cat's litterbox into, and otherwise keep the plastic or fabric ones in my trunk and use those.
How is it a Worcester girl doesn't have her canvas Spags bag at the ready where ever she is. Remember, long before it was popular with the jet set crowd, we were going bagless and sorting our plastics and glass.
Gee, at least I got to wear a suit coat and a tie at the local boys Catholic high school...
Mark - Is it just coincidental that Spag's started to go down hill once they started offering plastic bags? I think not.
And I had forgotten about Worcester trash "policy": they picked up garbage-garbage, but you had to have the "junk man" pick up bottles, cans, and any household items you wanted to dispose of. Our junk man, Archie Lemieux, had an "antique store"in Cherry Valley. I doubt he found much of value in the trash he found in Main South, but you never know.
I'm working on a great worcester rubbish removal contractor website now - he gets tons of interesting, reusable stuff, and is talking about doing a store as well.
You would not believe the stuff he gets, really...
Ooh, memory lane, I love it The Junk Man and "no bags at Spag's":) And kids scouring the neighborhood for deposit bottles so we could buy penny candy and rot our teeth.
A couple of other green ideas: get one of those snazzy SIGG steel water bottles instead of buying tap water in a bottle (yeah, yeah, they call it spring water but it is just somebody's private tap.) And how about those goofy compact fluorescent lightbulbs. They look weird and the dimmable ones don't work very well, but if you put them where they don't show it's not bad and they last a long time.
Kathleen
Other than buying your own bag, maybe I can inspire you to create your own. I discovered that Crafter has issued a "Reusable Shopping Bag Challenge". I took it up and you can see pictures of my creation at the following link:
http://greenbeingnancy.blogspot.com/2007/08/missed-buying-im-not-plastic-bag.html
Click on to the link to crafter's challenge and you can view lots of interesting designs submitted by their members.
John Whiteside, you are going to love the dog poo scoop I have created. It has a little space for you to store your plastic bags. See picture and instructions at the following link:
http://greenbeings.bravehost.com/scoop.htm
Also, instead of charging 10 euro to get plastic bags at store, maybe more will be encouraged to recycle the bags if they are paid to return to the store. What do you think? After all suppliers of beverages in plastic bottles are supposed to be responsible for recycling the bottles, so, why not the bag too? This way shops will provide better bags, knowing that their customers will return them to be re-used.
Post a Comment