Either we’re going all chic and continental, or we’re morphing into bag ladies.
Whichever it is, we’re saving a sea turtle somewhere.
We, the grocery shoppers of the Pacific Northwest, are turning tote, becoming reusable, eschewing plastic and paper.
We are investing in shopping sacks, under international pressure.
First it was Ingmar, nagging about the bags.
“The next time you see a plastic bag stuck in a tree, it won’t be one of ours,” the signs at IKEA checkouts read.
Ingmar gave us fair warning, then started charging 5 cents a plastic bag. We could avoid that by purchasing a blue store tote for 50 cents, or buying a more attractive bag for $1.50. Every time we brought it back and used it again, Ingmar would give us 5 cents off our bill. Why, in only 30 trips to IKEA, the bag would pay for itself!
Next it was National Geographic News, mentioning that we use half a trillion to a trillion of the bags a year.
The more affluent we are, the less careful we are with these bags. Escapees clog storm drains, festoon forests and drift into oceans, where sea turtles eat them and die dreadful deaths.
Finally, San Francisco, being all eco-friendlier-than-thou, banned supermarket plastic bags outright.
We don’t want it to come to that here. We have legitimate, even critical, uses for flimsy plastic bags.
Without them, how would we line our wastebaskets?
Without them, our hip, dog-walking friends would become pariahs.
Without them, our once-hip, now sleep-deprived friends would have no containment system for poopy disposable diapers.
(Oh, don’t get started on disposable diapers. It’s Saturday, and it’s sunny. You have better things to fret about, like how to retrieve that Dollar Store bag from your poplar’s upper reaches.)
This is not our first stab at reusable bags. We tried to like the cloth sacks grocery stores marketed a few years back. But they were surly little items. They didn’t hold much and got dirty in a minute. They worked better for library books than 2 pounds of hamburger and six cupcakes.
They had no glamour.
Some of these new models put one in mind of bicycling through Dijon with a sack of baguettes, fromage and pommes swinging from the handlebars. Trader Joe’s dollar bags, with images of South Seas paradises, could carry snorkel gear as handily as they transport two-buck chuck.
The bags do, however, raise questions of totetiquette.
If, while in the checkout line, one realizes one has forgotten one’s totes, may one run out and get them?
Yes, one may, but one must leave the line and start over again when one is truly ready to pay up and pack up.
May one bring one’s Grocery Outlet tote to, say, Fred Meyer or Safeway, which have their own version?
Yes, one may. It takes a lot more than that to rile a checker or insult the produce clerk.
Besides, they know you have a few Safeway bags stuck under the middle seat of the minivan.
There’s a trick to avoiding that: Keep one uber-sack in the car to hold all the little ones. Otherwise, they hide under the seat, snag ankles and go to ground when you need them.
My uber-tote is the envy of checkers everywhere. They respond to it with the kind of enthusiasm they might otherwise lavish on a well-behaved baby. They love hearing that it’s a fair trade item made of salvaged packing tape. Women from Indonesia to Kenya have turned shipping industry waste into wages, weaving bright, virtually indestructible bags.
All of that industry, though, is for naught if I do not honor their product by placing it in the front passenger seat.
When I stash it in the back, it slips my mind. Sliding my cash card, I realize my error, and look at my favorite checker. “So,” she says. “You forgot your grocery bag. Again.”
I’m working, I promise, on becoming a better bag lady.
Kathleen Merryman: 253-597-8677
