I normally refrain from ranting or proselytizing on this blog, but I can’t help myself at the moment. I was in the grocery store about an hour ago and listened to an older woman loudly complain to the cashier about those idiots in the city outlawing plastic grocery sacks. She uses them, darn it! What in the world is she going to do if they stop allowing them in our community? How will she line her small trash cans? The cashier pointed out that they will still offer paper sacks but she vehemently stated that she has no use for paper and that they go straight into the trash. I didn’t want to, but out it came…the continent of trash floating in the Pacific Ocean and how many cities/states/countries are banning plastic shopping bags because there are just so many of them and they ultimately wind up in landfills or Texas sized trash islands in the ocean. She was undaunted and still absolutely righteous about her right to consume as many plastic bags as she desired. At least the cashier seemed relieved to have someone else dealing with the lady and her ignorant and selfish opinion.
Don’t you ever wonder sometimes…come across someone new and think…how is it possible that I share the planet with this person?
I think that people forget that we did perfectly well before plastic garbage bags. We managed to keep ourselves hydrated before plastic water bottles, we fed ourselves before the invention of fast food, we found affordable goods from local shopkeepers before Walmart. Heck, we were dandy before microwave ovens, cars, malls, and drive-through espresso. Different, but dandy nevertheless. When you don’t have the option any longer, you discover that most “necessities” are actually luxuries. That’s a silver lining of this economic depression. Just like people are discovering that they are still lovely without the monthly $200 haircut, that lady at the grocery store will find that she can rinse her trash cans out after emptying them or even…dare I say it?…reduce her waste stream and get rid of the little suckers all together.
I have to get back to my latest endeavor: 8 Gingerbread Houses. Why in the world would any person need to make 8 houses made of cookies? A better question would be “Why would a sane person invite their elementary aged students for a sleepover/craft day and happily volunteer to tackle gingerbread houses for everyone?” I will post photos tomorrow, the class will be here in just two hours!
Hey guys, it’s Rachael! You’re website is really cool; I love how you bring yarn to life.
Arrrgh, plastic bags are so irritating. One on hand, I work as a cashier and if a person has a small amount of items that they can easily walk to their car with, I won’t bag them (or I will ask if they need a bag, if it looks like they might, eg. juggling babies/stroller, etc) and 90% of the time people don’t want a bag – then there are the other 10% who, even if all they are buying is a BAG, they want a BAG for it. Honestly, what the hell? Are you completely INCAPABLE of carrying items unless they are in a flimsy plastic sheath with handles?
And on the other hand is the perspective as an eco-geek myself, riding around on my bike with a backpack all the time, where I’m at the registers checking out, getting one or two items, backpack open, plopped on the counter in front of me, and having plastic bags still THRUST at me constantly anyways. WHY??
Of course, I think it’s mostly that cashiers (like myself) are just used to dealing with the twitbags mentioned in my first paragraph (I didn’t expect to go into a rant like this) and just pre-emptively bag EVERYTHING. It’s an unfortunate habit.
By the way, I’m pretty excited about the plastic bag ban. I lived over in Europe (yeah, I know, it’s a totally backwards, crazy undeveloped place) where plastic bags are something you pay for. Somehow, people remember to bring their own shopping bags/backpacks. How primitive and bizarre. We should tell them about how great plastic bags are.