I know that in the world today, one of the biggest problems we face is the abuse and overuse of our environment in just about every way that humans exist. Take shopping bags, be they of plastic or paper, they are evil either way. We’ve all seen the statistics and the pictures of dolphins living for years with plastic bags around their bottle-nosed snouts. Or, there was the weird kid in the movie American Beauty who filmed the plastic shopping bag floating through the sky and thought it was art in the midst of tragic despair and filth.
Now, we have grocery store chains, local-retail-posing-as-a-wholesale-style-themed-warehouse-club-store-wanna-be grocery-store-chains, and states implementing disposable shopping bag BANS because they can’t be disposed of properly. Totes and advertising re-useable shopping canvas bags are now sold in said stores as replacements. I have quite a collection of these. And, there is a variety of these from each retailer, regular, hot-n-cold temperature thermos styles, etc. In any case, I always run into the same problem, in that I can’t seem to remember to have these re-usable shopping bags in my possession when I’m out and about and all of a sudden a need arises which requires some shopping when on my way home from work en route to another destination. Subsequently, I buy more re-usable shopping bags to add to my collection. And so, the new non-solution continues.
The other day I need to pick up some fresh fruit and groceries for my mom who is home-bound after her hip replacement. I get the call while I’m at work, actually it was a text message, which, my receiving at all took quite a bit of technical aptitude and luck as I work in an NSA-spying proof silo where such communication is next to impossible. Anyway, I got the message and limped into a retail-wholesale store, to remain nameless, on my crutch to get the needed nourishment. I loaded up my cart after trudging around the “warehouse” designed, ever-changing layout of ever revolving offerings and checked out. Next, I displayed my receipt to the blue-haired security types at the exit. I unloaded my bounty in my truck then drove away and heard a shift in my load in the back seat. I closed my eyes for a brief second as I knew what this meant.
Yes, blueberries all over the floor of my truck, which I’ve had for a total of 2 months now? Of course. Whelp, now time to pick them all up, carefully, throw them away, and take my business to another grocery store that still doesn’t mind polluting the environment a little bit to help out a lazy 1st world customer like myself. Oh, you’re thinking I could have taken used and empty cardboard boxes offered at the previous store? Well, those are non-recycleable if anyone truly cares about environments, but who’s counting?
I wonder, what impact does all of this warehouse-type grocery overbuying of food in bulk have on sewer systems around the world? Or, if excessive intake in our bloated waistline culture isn’t enough of a concern, how about crates of toilet paper so plentiful that teenagers may be the biggest purchasers of them, for weekend outdoor decoration projects and the like?
Eh, I’m sure it’s offset by the reduction in flimsy plastic shopping bags being used, so it’s all good.