I'm a Bag Lady

If everyone could just see the real effects of plastic bags on the environment first hand—up close in all their disgraceful and wasteful convenience—choosing bring-your-own bags over plastic ones at the grocery store would likely be made without hesitation.

Case in point: me. I really felt the need to stop using plastic bags because of my trip home one day on NJ Transit. At the Newark International Liberty Airport (EWR) stop, I noticed the top of the 10-foot-high chainlink fence surrounding the station was festooned in black, white, and yellow plastic bags. Shredded and torn, hundreds and hundred of bags were caught in the fence wire. It was sickening. When it became clear that I was part of the problem (my bags might not get caught on the fence, but just by using plastic bags, I'm a participant in the "demand" for their manufacture), I resolved to invest in my own reusable bags.

After buying a bunch of those green permabags for sale in my local supermarket (I think we had a set of 8 or so), I soon regretted my purchase. After just two short weeks, one bag ripped when the semi-sharp corner of a cereal box sliced through the material. I searched online for instructions on how to repair the bag (maybe patch the tear or stitch it up); instead, I discovered that the green bags weren’t made of natural fabric after all, but out of some polypropawhatever. I also learned that these bags are expected to last only about 2 years. After that, like other plastic bags, they will outlive their usefulness at the dump. So I went in search of a better, more sustainable bag and found it in canvas.

The best I found were these from Eco-Bags. Their Shopping Systems (which include large canvas totes, French market string bags, and some cotton grain/produce bags) are the perfect shopping companions. I use fewer bags (which equals fewer trips lugging the groceries from the car to the house) and they are sturdy and more structured than the plastic bags (no more soup cans rolling around the Jeep). I haven’t used the produce bags yet, because I don’t want to freak out my supermarket cashiers. They’ll never find the produce codes with these woven and largely opaque bags.

Because some people might not buy these bags because of the initial investment, I've purchased a number of sets as gifts for families and friends, including Mom! She loves them now, especially after my stepdad cut out some cardboard to fit into the bottom gusset to stiffen/stabilize it. I have yet to do that myself. (I must admit: with their plastic inserts set at the bottom, the green tote bags really did have better stability.)

I keep hoping to see more of these bags in use at the grocery store, especially since they were featured on Oprah (for once she shills for something I really like). But, alas, we're still in the minority at the checkout. One day...

And, yes, I know, even if most shoppers start bringing their own bags to market, there will always be those buffoons who refuse to tote their own. They're the same people who don't pick up shoes they knock over in stores or bring the grocery cart back to the cart corrals because it's too much of a bother and because "they pay people to do this anyway." Picking up after oneself, it's becoming a lost art.