Going Green: I hate plastic bags.

Ever since I started learning about how bad they are for the environment, plastic bags have become my number one source of urban yuppie guilt. More than driving my non-hybrid car. More than drinking bottled water...it's plastic bags that irk me. Some facts:

• It takes 1000 years for plastic bags to break down. As polyethylene breaks down, toxic substances leach into the soil and enter the food chain
• Americans throw away approximately 100 billion plastic bags per year.
• Approximately 1 billion seabirds and mammals die per year by ingesting plastic bags
• In addition, 100,000 marine mammals die yearly by eating plastic bags because plastic bags are often mistaken as food by marine mammals. These animals suffer a painful death, the plastic wraps around their intestines or they choke to death
• Plastic bags are carried by the wind into forests, ponds, rivers, and lakes.
• I am sick of looking at them everywhere - aren't you?

ONE THOUSAND YEARS people!!! That means that EVERY plastic bag you have EVER USED in your ENTIRE LIFE is still out there somewhere (even if some poor seal or sea turtle already choked to death on it, it's STILL out there. The body just decomposes around it. Yuck.) Every time you took an extra bag, or took 2 bags when you really only needed one, you potentially killed Flipper.

Think about THAT.

Being the lazy mooch that I am, I started out small, insisting I didn't need a bag for my pack of gum. Most store clerks looked at my like I was from Mars. "No bag? Are you sure?" When I got up to not taking a bag for up to 4 or 5 items (you're just going to your car, you can carry 4 items people!), I thought they might call the nuthouse. "Um, Steve, we got a gal on checkout 5 who isn't taking a bag for her handful of items." "Is she sober? I dunno."

And when I did have lots of items, I would insist on all in one bag and I never allowed for the dreadful double bag. I mean seriously, what is up with the grocery stores insisting on giving you like 30 bags for your 2 items? "Let me double bag those 2 apples and cheese for you, Miss, wouldn't want the apples to get bruised."

But for some reason, I was resisting buying one of those reusable bags. I don't know why. Maybe I was afraid I would be mistaken for an unshaven hippy toting my canvas bags, buying organic veg, and drinking my Fairtrade coffee out of my reusable ceramic mug. I was guilty, yes, but at least I wasn't INCONVENIENCED. Remembering that bag would be hard. Who needs that kind of trouble?

That is, until yesterday, when I broke down and spent the $.99 to buy a reusable bag. Let me tell you, I slept like a baby that night. The weight of the world was lifted from my shoulders. And so far, it's easier than you think. Take the groceries into the house, put bag by door, put bag back into car for next time.

Easy peezy.

I was also pleasantly surprised to see in the PI the next day that Seattle could impose a 20-cent-per-bag "green fee" and outlaw foam food containers next year. Yeah! I mean, shoot, if even China is doing it...

So Go Green people! If for no other reason than so that you don't have to keep that ever growing collection of plastic bags under the sink anymore.