Posted by Rene.Bross on 20. June 2009 20:47
True confession time-- no matter how hard I try I ALWAYS forget my big fabric grocery store reusable bags. They're in the back of the car. Sitting there. Waiting ever so patiently to be used and fullfill their eco-friendly destiny. And EVERY SINGLE TIME I forget to bring them in with me. It's so frustrating. But I've found an answer to my absent minded shopping problem- the Compact Reusable Bag!! I've picked up a couple of these little gems and I carry them in my purse. Now they ALWAYS make it into the store with me because I always have my purse! And three or four of these are usually enough to do the trick. You can stuff these things to the gills and anything bigger- like toilet paper, bottle of juice, milk jugs etc don't really need a bag anyway. Now my only trick is to whip them out faster than the checker can start bagging.
Now it's become a personal quest to see just how many times I can avoid taking any sort of bag- plastic or paper from any store. I was in SubWay recently and after ordering my sandwich and proceeding down the counter, I saw the checker start to bag our sandwiches and I halted her and said, "wait a sec- I have my own bag." She said, "oh you carry your own bags?" and proceeded to announce loudly to the entire store, "look she carries her own bags with her. Isn't that cool!" and I felt so great and even better that my 4 year old was with me and witnessed his super-star environmentally conscious mommy in action! Whoot Whoot! One small step for mommy-kind, one giant step for the environment.
Interesting info: The average American uses between 300
and 700 plastic bags per year. If everyone in the United States tied
their annual consumption of plastic bags together in a giant chain, the
chain would reach around the earth 760 times.
When you see these compact bags around, pick up a couple- they're so much easier to carry around and remember to use!
