My $3.96 eco-investment
18th October 2007
I’m pretty proud of myself right now. During my Trader Joe’s shopping adventure in Atlanta last weekend, I "invested" in 4 reusable shopping bags, for 99cents each. Less than 4 dollars to keep myself free from the overwhelming number of plastic bags that flood my kitchen every time we go to the store. I wondered how many groceries would fit in 4 bags… maybe I should have gotten more?
I put the bags directly in the car after emptying all my TJ’s goodies when we got home, so the bags were ready to take with me to the store today. I had a shopping cart full of groceries, $80-worth. My bagger was a little disconcerted, and he was incredibly slow getting things to fit. The cashier thought they were VERY cool looking, red with hawiian flowers. But in the end, ALL my groceries fit, which gave me the added benefit of having to make only 2 trips upstairs from the car! SWEET! With this many groceries, I’d probably have had 10 or more plastic bags, and I would have been making at least 3 trips. I put the groceries away, wiped out the bag that was a little damp from my cold items, and the bags are already folded and in the car for the next trip. SWEET!
So. If you’ve got a TJ’s near you, I’d say pick up a couple bags. Plastic bags are choking our planet, and this is one cheap, simple solution for cutting down the number that we use.
October 18th, 2007 at 5:35 pm
I am really troubled with the problem of plastic bags–I seem to see them everywhere and they last forever in the landfill. I was behind a woman in Economart today and she had some nice cloth bags. When I asked she said that she got them on Amazon.com.. When I looked I found several to choose from none for 99 cents but reasonably priced. Time for me to follow your good example!
October 18th, 2007 at 7:25 pm
We saw some people with those bags at the farmer’s market last Saturday! We may have to invest…when we make it to the TJ in Madison.
October 18th, 2007 at 8:43 pm
Try paper bio degradeable and the fit you trash can and great wraping paper. They makes great kites and drawing paper.
October 25th, 2007 at 12:10 am
There’s loads of places to get these bags in Davis (maybe because it’s Davis). We use them too (when we remember to put them back in the car). We also use the ginormous IKEA bags (they can hold about 3-5, depending on fullness, of the cloth bags inside) also to cutdown on the walk from car (in our apartment parking lot) to home. (Costco has a similar type large bag too.) The great thing is that they’re really cheap (something like $1.50 for two) and it helps a lot when we have Elizabeth and a diaper bag and groceries to cart back and forth and back and forth.