Wait.... What are these for?

I am constantly amazed at how difficult it is for checkers and baggers at the grocery store to figure out what to do when I hand them my reusable grocery bags. More than once I have set them down in front of my groceries and have received nothing but wide-eyed stares and the most obvious question in the galaxy:

"Do you want us to put your groceries in these?"

Every single time I fight the incessant temptation to be like "No no no, my dear boy, don't be silly... I just wanted you to see how pretty they are! Hand them back now."

The really perplexing thing is that it's usually at the store where I bought them. No one working there seems to have caught on.
Or the best thing is at Macey's where they give you 5 cents for each reusable bag you use, and the checker and bagger will stand there and spend a minute debating about how many bags to credit me, since I always have more than I actually need.

"Well, he brought in five, but technically we only used three... but I suppose we could put an item or two into the two remaining bags, but then it wouldn't really be right... I mean..."

It's ten cents! Between the two of them they have to get paid at least 25 cents per minute.


In the later years of my life I've become very passionate about reusable grocery bags. I am now to the point that I can't even understand why anyone doesn't use them. It just makes sense. It's like using reusable dishes at home.

Why do I use them, or better yet, why should you use them?

• They're sturdy
• They hold literally 5 times as many groceries as plastic bags.
• They look nicer.
• You won't have an obnoxious amount of plastic bags sitting under your sink.
• You'll help save the Earth. It's a great feeling.

Props to Seattle, the greenest city in the US, for trying to pioneer the Plas-tax, a law that would impose a tax on each plastic bag that you use, as much as 25 cents! The store gets to keep 25% of the earnings from it, and the other 75% go to the production of reusable bags. I'm voting for it. I mean the US alone produces 100 BILLION plastic bags every year, and each one of them takes up to 1,000 years to decompose.

Ireland was the first country to do it and guess what? They reduced plastic bag consumption by 90%!

Think about it. Years from now, plastic will be just a history lesson that they teach in school with great disdain, and they'll take field trips to the land fills to show the kids how wasteful and dumb we were. Don't you want to be one of the great heroes of our time, decorated with all the fame and glory that only reusable bags can earn you?

Don't you?

Don't you?...


....hmmmmm?

---