Tuesday 5 February 2008

Not just for looks

I like to think of myself as a bit of a tree-hugger: I use cloth diapers, I wash my clothes in cold water, I dry my clothes on a clothesline (weather permitting), I drive a hybrid, I use compact fluorescent bulbs, energy-star rated appliances, and I use eco-friendly grocery bags.

That is, I bring my eco-bags to the store and assume that the store that sold me the eco-friendly bag will know that I want them to pack my groceries IN said eco-friendly bag.


An eco-friendly bag



Ah, what a nice bag! I feel great that I am saving some landfills from all those plastic bags!


An eco-friendly bag MY ASS!



Wait, what is that?? A plastic bag WITHIN an eco-bag?  How the hell does that work?

When I bought my milk (you can see which store from the bag), I placed my eco-bag on the counter next to the milk, assuming that the cashier would get the hint and place my milk in her store's eco-bag. Obviously she was not that smart. Instead, she placed my milk in one plastic bag, my two bottles of water in another plastic bag, then put them in my eco-bag.

This is where I go:


Duh...



Are you fucking kidding me? For real? Why the hell would a store market and sell eco-bags and then not tell their cashiers to use them? Furthermore, why the hell would I want you to put my milk and pop in separate plastic bags, then put both of those bags into an eco-bag?

Now, I cannot blame the store in question as being the only culprit. I have also shopped at Walmart, boasting its own brand of eco-bags, and the handitard cashier, even after I told her to put my groceries in the eco-bags, continued to plastic bag everything and then place them in the eco-bag. Then there are the cashiers that get their curlers in a knot when I insist that it's ok to place my deli meat next to *gasp* my bread in the same bag, like so:


OH NO!  My meat is next to my bread!



I mean, for crap's sake.  The deli meat is double-wrapped in plastic as it is, and the bread is already in a paper bag from the bakery.  I think it's ok that they sit next to each other. Getting along is a virtue I love in food.

I don't use eco-bags because they're pretty. I use them to help the environment.

So damn you stupid companies who sell these bags, tell your cashiers to USE THEM!

13 comments:

  1. OMG! Total agreement here! I once handed over my stack 'o bags to the bag person and they stuffed the entire pile in a plastic bag while I watched with my lip hitting the floor. LOTS of correction going on that afternoon.

    And no one seems to understand that you can stuff these bags FULL. They're not going to break. I've had baggers put one or two items in each bag and I'm like, "Wait. Wait. Do you know what you're doing? Stuff 'em!"

    It's like they need classes. Sheesh.

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  2. It's like pulling up to a gas station in a hybrid and having the gas jockey ask if you'd like him to throw some more coal into the engine. Sweet.

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  3. Oh man, that's funny! Hello? Where's the common sense?

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  4. This is so true! I recently bought a couple of these and I have 2 problems... one, I can only remember about half the time to bring the bags into the store with me!!! Hello me! Two, the same problem as Coal Miner's Granddaughter, hello, you can put A LOT more stuff in these bags!

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  5. Ha ha! That's insane. And the pic of you is classic.

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  6. OMG. I thought it was only me.

    I ended up with this reusable PVC bag form Telus, which is great for buying meat and things. I bought some meat at Safeway and milk and a lasagne at Safeway once - the cashier asks me if I want them in the same bag. I tell her yes and hand her the Telus bag. She looks at me like I have 5 heads and says, "Are you sure?" I nod yes, and she attempts to convince me that the meat and the jug of milk shouldn't go in the bag together.

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  7. are you kidding me? seriously???? that's crazy. i haven't had that happen. yet. but i'm sure it will.

    one time i was at Walmart and i only had a couple of eco-bags with me. as if out of spite, the cashier put the items that wouldn't fit in the eco-bags in separate bags....like one item per bag. huh? what's with that???

    don't Fuzzi Bunz rock? both my boys are in them, and have been since they were a few weeks old. i wouldn't trade them for anything!

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  8. Cate:
    I love Fuzzi Bunz. I also use Kushies Ultra diapers, which were the first ones we bought, but now the Fuzzi Bunz fit the Dude better (he's at an inbetween size for the Kushies).

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  9. I've resorted to bagging a lot of my own groceries in my eco-friendly bags because I'm tired of people thinking I'm going to poison myself by putting food beside each other, or that I'm over packing. They hold so much more and the cashiers appear to think it's such a hassle to pack...

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  10. It's weird, isn't it? And on the more-frequent-than-I-would-like occasions when I forget my eco-bags, it seems like they've been trained to put only one thing in each plastic bag, like if they don't come from the same aisle, they can't ever, ever touch.

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  11. You know if you chewed them out for it they probably wouldn't do it again.... I used to work in a supermarket while i was studying, and most of the time I was in such a sleep deprived daze I didn't notice what the hell I was doing - until some customer told me off for it. Then I'd wish I could just win lotto and quit.

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  12. Wal Mart has eco-bags? In what universe?

    Yay for cloth dipes!

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  13. i know this is an older post - but i just found u!! but i totally had this happen yesterday at the grocery store! i came home w/ more plastic bags than eco bags!! i didn't want to give the bagger a bad time, but come on??

    and on a side note - if u have time, i would love to know more about the world of cloth diapers. i am a total chicken but also know i need to take the plunge!!

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Thoughts? Comments? Questions?