I carried Milo and my canvas bag into Petsmart. I bought a box of dog treats and a collar for the cat. The lady double bagged the two items while I was signing, and I said, "I brought a bag." She took the double bagged box, lifted it up to put it into the canvas bag. I said "I brought a bag so I wouldn't use the plastic." feeling helpless. She shrugs, says, "alright, if you want"lifts the stuff out of the bag, I set Milo on the floor and put it into my bag and she bends over crumples the two bags up and throws them in the trash. Then she starts ringing up the stuff for the next customer, visibly annoyed with me.
*sigh*. I know that I'm not alone in my craziness about bags, although my family thinks that I am ridiculous and unreasonable, since an entire city has banned them. But seriously folks. My intentions were smashed between ignorance and spite, and in the end, I took the bags out of the trash and brought them home, because I couldn't bear to talk with her about it (she wasn't about to talk with me about it, I mean). blech.
It's pretty clear to me that in most of the US, offering a bag is a sign of kindness, sincerity and helpfulness. And I have witnessed the "not offering" or "withholding" of bags be interpreted as a direct affront and insult to the person.
This I think is the bigger issue, that rejection of the person's normal way of dealing with people, especially since they think it's a positive thing they're doing. It complicates an interaction to have a person not follow the "rules" of the bagging. That is what the people in San Fran have overcome, the expectation that a bag is expected.
It's just so much damn plastic everywhere. Half of our car is plastic. Most of everyone's carpets, almost all toys, all electronics, most of our clothes... its all oil-drenched, making it, packaging it, shipping it, carrying it to the car (more oil), then throwing it away (in a different plastic bag!). Then carting it off to our landfills.
I wish that some massive shift would happen in our lives where buying wasn't almost everything that Americans did. What would this place be if we weren't constantly churning out more things to consume and then throw away?
2 comments:
how frustrating, sarah, i feel your pain!
i went into a discount grocery here in memphis and they charge 10cents for each bag you use. i think it's about saving the store money and not about getting people to use fewer bags but either way getting people to think about the plastic is good.
did you know there's an island of garbage floating in the ocean the size of texas? this is the kind of thing that keeps me up nights.
i'm currently experiencing culture shock after leaving madison, wi where everyone recycles everything (6 types of plastic, junk mail, all without sorting), bring your own bags are common and folks don't just talk about shopping local and leaving your car at home.
alice
:) good to see you here. Before I started library school, one of my main ideas for the future library that I would work at is to create some kind of reusable bag program. The libraries here are just like the grocery stores, piles of plastic bags for people to use as many as they'd like.
I have since heard of a program doing that already, which is great, i'll just jump on their bandwagon. I think it's in England tho.
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