Imaginary heroes... dedicated to Robbie

Bags bags bags.
Having cut my hours at the youth centre by half, I recently took a job at AG Valley Foods.
Like many of us here in the valley, I have bought, in abundance, reusable bags from both AG and Sobeys, to avoid the accumulation of a gazillion plastic ones.
And like many of us, I forget to take the darn things in a regular basis.
I have come to realize though, in my short time working, that the reason we are so forgetful about our bags, is the knowledge in the back of our heads that there are always plastic ones, or paper, in the stores. Not just grocery stores, but all stores.
So I got to thinking, if they were not available, would we keep forgetting?
Well, maybe once or twice. But after a couple of episodes of either having to drive home to get them or loading a plethora of items loose into our cars from the carts, I think propensity to forget would be eliminated.
Just imagine if we never used disposable bags.
Beyond the environmental bonus, you can get more into them, they are stronger, and you can use them for anything. If we all just made a point of taking them along with us, easy enough to do as they scrunch down and fit in each other, we would have them all the time.
Like carrying your wallet or purse.
I propose we become a community of no disposable bags at stores at all. Several of our local retailers already have some version of reusable bags for sale for just a dollar or two. And we could even start off with a campaign of every $50 you spend earns you one bag for the first 6 months or so, just so everyone has a chance to stock up. We could phase it in, and for visitors, we could make sure we advertise it well and have the odd contingency plan in place so as not to disgruntle them.
Imagine, the entire valley plastic bag free.
I know some people use them for garbage bags, but they really aren’t all that great when push comes to shove. And if you go so far as to recycle weak little grocery bags into garbage bags, I would think you would be right on board with this idea… nudge nudge, wink wink.
And think of the promotional value.
“The Columbia Valley: proudly plastic bag free since 2008.”
And the trickle down effects could be fantastic.
The more we do to cut down on packaging, the more aware of the immense amount of unnecessary packing we see very day.
In Germany, the 1992 enacted green dot law regarding recycling actually requires manufacturers and retailers to take back all secondary packaging. A year later, it was the obligation of retailers, distributors and manufacturers to accept the returned sale packaging of all types of packaging necessary to contain and transport goods right up to the point of consumption.
I am not saying we need to put the onus on our retailers. What I am saying is we can put the onus on ourselves. After all, we have plenty of recycling bins at our disposal, no pun in tended.
Take a little less home, put a little more in the recycling bin, and suddenly, you don’t need as many of those make shift garbage bags that seemed so handy when you unpacked your groceries.
Food stuff can be composted (and all that stuff we should not put in our outdoor compost piles for Bear Aware purposes, there is a product out there that that you use in a bin inside your home that composts quickly and without odour so you can compost all of those food bits and keep Yogi and Boo Boo at bay).
Having said all of this, my bags, all 14, 643 of them (because for a while I made myself buy new ones every time I forgot them) are in the trunk of my car, and like I said, I STILL forget to take them in sometimes, so I am not all squeaky clean and shiny over this issue.
But, I am trying a lot harder to remember them, and hey, the trunk of my car is better than the house where I used to leave them, hence the accumulation. And at the youth centre, we are going to be making bags as a way to raise funds, out of all recycled material, so heck, you could deal one for the environment and the valley youth at the same time! Heh heh.
Just imagine.
A valley without disposable bags.
Dudes, we’d kinda be heroes.