Monday, January 17, 2011

Plastic

Two things on Saturday had me thinking about plastic.

First off, we bought new bowls for the baby. The selection was gendered- blue and green dinosaurs and cars or pink and purple butterflies and flowers. Joe joked about the connection between the dinosaur and the car, that the dino is what makes the fossil-fuel consuming car possible. Ugh. Sadly, the bowls are also part of this unsustainable chain, but hopefully they will be used and re-used enough to make their non-breakable nature worth the environmental impact.

The other incident was at the grocery store where a young girl was helping her dad select some carrots. She went to put the veggies in their cart and he loudly told her she needed to use a plastic bag, making eye contact with me, rolling his eyes and laughing. I told her, no you don't need a bag and smiled at the girls good environmental instincts. The dad then laughed again saying he would use one anyway, which disgusted me enough that I looked him in the eye and sharply stated, no need to waste is there?

Come ON people. It's bad enough that I see more than half the shoppers at the store without reuseable shopping bags. Why do you need a plastic bag for your carrots?!? First off, any germs that the carrot will encounter in your cart, at checkout, or in your grocery bag are miniscule compared to those that they encountered in the dirt, during the harvesting process, in shipping, and sitting in the produce section. Second, you will (or should) wash your vegetables upon use and with the carrot you will likely peel it. Do you really need to use up some non-renewable fossil fuels for this process? No, you don't. Please put a second of thought into your choices. I understand the use of veggie bags for greens as they are wet and easily tear in the cart, but there is no reason to waste a bag on other fruits or veggies. I was pleased to see though that his other daughter placed their cucumber in the cart sans bag. Perhaps there is some hope for the future.

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