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When I arrived home from work yesterday, I found that one of my tomato plants, the one that is now officially taller than me, had fallen over from growing well above its wire cage. For some reason, there were absolutely no long stringy (rope, twine, string, etc.) things in my house yesterday. None. Zilch. Absolutely nothing I could tie up a tomato plant with. I had also run out of padded 9″x12″ envelopes with which to send things through the mail in. In addition, I had been meaning to get some laundry detergent, avacados, carrots and cereal. I resolved to run some errands.
On my way out I grabbed the plastic bag stuffed full of plastic bags that I had been meaning to take to Kroger for a long time to recycle. Thus the setup for the following table is complete.
So, hmmm. Two out of three employees didn’t get the point of my turning away new bags for my items. Three out of three didn’t ask what my bag preference was in the first place. Three out of three companies have apparently not done an adequate job informing their employees of the need to stop giving away so many bags.
Reminds me of the story my mom told me a little while back about how in South Africa people refer to plastic bags as the national flower. For many years they were everywhere in the landscape. Here’s a story about it.
Yes, I’m sure they can all afford to give a few bags away. I should make it clear that I certainly don’t mean to say the Home Depot employee wouldn’t have realized why I didn’t want a bag (less waste, if you’re not clear) if I had just explained. It just wasn’t the first reason that came to mind for her. No biggie.
My conclusion is that this is just further proof that fighting waste, pollution, and the climate crisis is a team effort. It is far too easy (I know) place 100% of the blame on people, or on big business, or on the government. But harder to say that the mess is mutual and so is the responsibility. I’m lazy about my waste issues, big business is lazy about theirs, too. And we all know that our government doesn’t do much of anything unless big business and/or the people make them, so they’re lazy, too.
I think I’m overall just a little bumbed that it still so far from people’s minds to ask. Anybody else have experience on this?
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Comments ( 1 Comment )
p added these pithy words on Aug 19 07 at 12:52 ami got these awesome reusable bags from my sister’s swap-drop once that said “reduce arkansas tumbleweeds” on them. so i guess plastic bags are arkansas tumbleweeds?
