A couple of weeks ago Enviro Girl’s local grocery store set up a bag recycling box–she doesn’t have any opportunity to recycle plastic bags with her municipal recycling, and this spot is on her route, so she determined to start saving her bags for dropping off.
Two weeks ago she began stuffing plastic bags into an empty recyclable wrapper from Seventh Generation napkins. Bagel bags, bread bags, wrapping from a Lands End order, packaging from a few Nerf guns Mr. B received for his birthday. Enviro Girl does NOT accept plastic shopping bags–she hasn’t for years. She isn’t a shopper, she buys what her family needs, little more, and she tries to purchase things that use minimal packaging. She always opts for paper packaging when it’s available. She recycles paper, glass, metal and plastic containers vigilantly.
After two weeks of setting aside plastic bags for recycling, this is what she’ll bring to the grocery store later today:
TWO GALLONS of plastic bags generated over two weeks. TWO GALLONS (Enviro Girl placed that ice cream bucket there to prove the measurement). This is what an environmentally conscious family of five throws away in two weeks.
The mind reels.
Enviro Girl has been stuffing the equivalent in her local landfill for YEARS. A gallon of plastic packaging per week–bread bags, bagel bags, bun bags, etc. She is genuinely appalled at how much plastic is produced, purchased and thrown away without a second thought.
I know, it’s crazy. And beyond that, it’s so hard to avoid.
I’ve been trying hard to eliminate plastic and plastic bags from my life, but it’s darn near impossible. So disheartening.
It’s amazing – and scary – to think of the resulting plastic in a home that doesn’t refuse the shopping bags!
Cambridge, MA accepts plastic film (bags, packaging, etc) at a drop-off. I started removing it from my family’s waste stream a few years ago, and it has been one of the biggest reductions in our garbage stream so far!