Baby steps. Beating the bag

 ‘Would you like a bag?’

This is something shop assistants are programmed to say.

‘Er … yes, please.’

This is something I am programmed to say.

The ‘Er . . .’ represents a complex cognitive process.

Every time I get asked if I want a plastic bag this goes on in my head:

Plastic bags are bad. But what are you going to put all this stuff in? You don’t want to walk around carrying a motley collection of oddments like some bag lady do you?
Er … no. But won’t I look more like a bag lady if I have a bag …
Quiet! Take the bag!
But plastic bags are the axis of all evil.
No that’s avarice and probably pride and apparently lust and envy – you should watch Seven. Just think ... things will be so much more convenient if you take the bag. No juggling. Separate items stay together. And it's got a brand name on the front so everyone will see where you have been shopping.
Fine!
‘Okay, I’ll have the bag.’  

I do solemnly swear that this is going to happen no more.

For years and years the Boyfriend and I have had reusable supermarket bags that we take when we do the grocery shopping. I’m all in favour of them. But they seem a bit pointless when everything in the supermarket is wrapped in plastic anyway. What's the point do you need a eco-friendly bag if everything is already wrapped in plastic? To take the chill off your middle-class guilt? It's a bit like taking paracetamol when someone has just cut off your leg.

One thing that I always do that's very, very bad is use the little plastic bags in the produce section. I think this is conditioning. It’s handy to have a bag to put say, six apples in to keep them together. But when I started picking up a single avocado and putting it in a plastic bag just because, it started to seem like something was wrong.

We’ve recently started ordering an Ooooby box

http://www.ooooby.org/

Which gives us fresh, organic, locally grown produce. And it comes in a cardboard box, there are no plastic bags. So I feel like I’m taking a step in the right direction here.

But modern life is modern life. And sometimes we have to go to the supermarket for produce. So … if we have reusable bags for the main groceries at the end, why don’t we use them for the produce? I’ve seen little drawstring bags for produce shopping for sale before, but they were expensive so I didn’t get them. Today I decided to make some.

I went into Spotlight ( http://www.spotlight.co.nz/ ) this morning and bought the following:

·         1.5 metres of net curtain fabric

·         5 metres of drawstring

·         8 little spring-loaded stoppers to go on the drawstrings.

Personally, net curtains give me the aesthetic heebie jeebies, although I appreciate their usefulness if you happen to be plagued by peeping toms. But for making reusable produce bags they are great. Unfortunately when I let the sales assistant at Spotlight give me my purchases I unthinkingly let her put them in a plastic bag – oops. I also thought later that I should have found some old net curtains to recycle. But I’m learning.

On my way out of the store I picked up some needles I’d forgotten to get and bought them at another counter. This sales assistant suggested I put them in the bag I already had and then give me an AWESOME card. If I don’t use a plastic bag for five trips to Spotlight, I get my sixth purchase at 20% off. Is that a brilliant initiative or what?

Spotlight not-using-plastic-bags discount card

Then I went home and, although my sewing skills were never much to write home about and I haven’t used them since I got a D for form two sewing, I knocked together eight drawstring bags which were all very lightweight and are also all machine washable and oh-so-very convenient.

Last week when I went to the supermarket we used about seven of those little produce bags. If that is my weekly average then I’d use 364 in a year (that's one a day of course) and 22,568 for the rest of my life from now if I live until I’m 90. If 10,000 people also use 7 bags a week for the next 62 years, (that’s how long until I’m 90) then 225,680,000 bags will be used. If these people all use reusable produce bags then those plastic bags will never be used.

Here is one of my bags. Since it’s staying together with three tomatoes inside I’m quite proud of it.

I have also purchased a fold-up-able shopping bag. It cost me $20 and came from Trade Aid ( http://www.tradeaid.org.nz/ ), and it was apparently hand-made in Bangladesh. And – a big plus – it’s very pretty. If I carry it everywhere in its little bag in my handbag then I shouldn’t need to ask for a plastic bag in many situations.

Hopefully now I can stop umming and ahing and say, with conviction (but not too much or I'll seem a bit eccentric) ‘No, thank you. I don’t need a bag.’

Baby steps people. Baby steps.