Going Green: Say goodbye to witch's knickers.

After a good run at Business Filter at boston.com, Da Filtuh is no more, and Maura Welch is blogging elsewhere. I lament the loss of Maura's blog, not only because it was a frequent source of Pink Slip inspiration, but because - occasionally - I got to return the favor and supply Maura with ideas.

Tramp. Tramp. Tramp.

That's the sound of time marching on, but Maura can still prompt a blog, as she's done with her post on the billions of cheesy plastic bags that we use mindlessly and needlessly, and which are the scourge of the earth.

Billions? you might understandably ask.

Yes, billions: an estimated 42 B in January 08 alone.

And about 41B of them seem to end up in gutters or caught in tree branches. The other 1B end up in landfills, where in some post-apocalyptic future world, people (or whatever we end up evolving to) will come across them - still undecomposed.

I'm with Maura on these bags. Enough! (She points out in her blog that in Ireland, you have to pay for the bags now, which has really cut down on usage. I can attest to the fact that, since this law went through, there are a lot fewer of these bags - called, by the way, witch's knickers - floating around.

Last spring, I bought a couple of fold up tote bags that were being sold as a sideline at the sunglass stand at a MassPike rest stop. They hold quite a bit of "stuff", and they fit in your average pocketbook, briefcase, or laptop bag. I bought one in green, one in blue.

I liked them so much that I bought one for each of the Banshees - my sister-cousin posse.

This Christmas, I used them as stocking stuffers for my nieces.

Let's see.

I pop into some combination of the local drug store, CVS, the local grocery store, Whole Foods, and Staples at least twice a week.

At minimum I was consuming 100 of these miserable little plastic bags every year.

No longer!

I now use my handy-dandy little fold up tote (which, in fact, I rarely bother to fold up at all). I also sprung for a Whole Foods bag (99 cents, I think). Plus my sister gave me one from her town, Salem, Massachusetts - an environmentally friendly version of witch's knickers.

Of course, my 100 bags a year, plus the 100 bags a year that each of the Banshees and my nieces blow through, barely makes a dent in that 42 B in January alone.

Still...

What do we need these bags for?

Okay.

I use them as a dirty undie bag if I'm going away for the weekend, but I'm not staying at a hotel with laundry bags.

I use them to wrap up rotty stuff from the fridge before I put it in my garbage bag.

I use them when to wrap up dead lightbulbs or broken glass of some kind.

Other than that: THEY'RE NO DAMN GOOD.

Okay.

If I had a dog, I'd probably use them to pick up after it.

But mostly: we just throw those no-good bags away.

I just did a little googling, and couldn't find where I bought all those totes for the Banshees and "the girls". Was it the Sunglass hut? I seem to remember it was in New Jersey.

Matters not: there are a lot of collapsible, re-usable tote bags out there, and we should all be using them.

Go forth and unmultiply! (While we're at it: what about those plastic sleeves that newspapers get delivered in?)

And best of luck to Maura Welch in her new endeavor.