Jumping on the trend of trying to be more environmentally conscious, I recently purchased a couple reusable bags;
- one with very nice patterns and could fake for a Hermes scarf (could I make a fashion statement with my shopping?),
- one with a generic “save the environment” message undersigned store brand name,
- one thin enough that you can fold into a wallet size that would fit in your front pocket,
- a few large and sturdy enough to haul up to 70 lbs (carried my daughter and son in them for testing the claim, but they are really intended for Costco trips), and
- one with dividers to carry wine from my favorite store (you also get a 10% discount off purchases as a side benefit).
Despite my recent investments into the reusable bag space, I have yet to go totally reusable, nevertheless making progress. My main issue is that I don't always plan in advance for when I will shop, what vehicle I will use, what dress I will wear for the occasion, etc - so there is always a chance that I don't have the relevant reusable bag with me for the particular shopping occasion. To minimize this risk, I have been continuing to invest in reusable bags and place them in strategic places, such as in my car, in my wife's car, in my bike bag, in the front pocket of my favorite down coat - wherever I can, really. I believe I will reach a critical mass of reusable bags when I accumulate about 20 bags or so that would cover most of my shopping occasions.
I feel a little nostalgic about reusable bags. When I was a little kid, my grandmother used to take me to the local farmers market every week upon our return from visiting my grandfather’s cemetery. I remember that everybody – including my grandmother - brought their own bag to the farmers market; some bags were sophisticated and they even had rollers, some were woven from left over yarn, some had a plastic but sturdy feel to them, and some were leftover from a shopping trip to a brand name store. For those ladies who forgot to or did intentionally not bring a shopping bag along, their purses played the trick most of the time. Can you imagine today somebody sticking potatoes and celery into a $2,000 Chloe handbag today? About 30 years ago, women (at least the ones in Istanbul) did not seem to mind stuffing their bags with produce (they did not pay $2,000 for a bag either which is a different story that I will not get into). One thing that always fascinated me was that you had a cadence to how you shopped so that your food made home with limited damage. You would purchase the hard and sturdy foods first –such as potatoes-, and leave the more delicate ones for the last -such as tomatoes and strawberries. Now I find myself obliged to separate any kind of vegetable from the other (why can’t avocados go in the same bag with green peppers?).
I wondered the other day, how many plastic bags I used throughout the year before I started my venture into the reusable bag world. Roughly, we - a family of 4 - do about 3 trips to the grocery store a week and on average we leave with 4 bags, almost all double bagged. That makes about 24 bags a week or 1,248 bags a year. And this is just for groceries and does not take into account all the paper and plastic wrappers in the grocery bags and/or other shopping trips. Imagine 1,248 bags – could I fit them all into my son’s room? How many rooms would I need for my lifetime? Would the size of an Olympic pool be enough? How many pools would my friends in Facebook need over their lifetime?
This number surprised me and I started to do more back of the envelope calculations about my share of the environmental damage. For the past two weeks, I typically took out 2 large kitchen bags a day of garbage. This would suggest that my family produces over 14 bags of waste a week or 728 bags a year. Imagine 728 large kitchen bags – could I fit them into our living room? How many rooms would I need for my lifetime? Would the size of a Football field be enough? How many football fields would my friends in Facebook need over their lifetime?
Suddenly, I feel like I have a new year’s resolution that’s worth sticking to. Are you with me?
Hasan Yardimci
