A Legacy Project

I’m standing at the Trader Joe’s checkout. I have four cans of chickpeas, a ball of fresh mozzarella, a bag of arugula, and a bottle of Three Buck Chuck. They don’t waste time at Trader Joes. As soon as the cashier rings up the first item a co-worker appears next to him and shakes open a paper bag.

That’s okay, I tell him. I brought my own.

I have become obsessed with bags. As a retired person, and as a person who shops for fresh food every day, sometimes more than once a day, often in 2-3 different stores in a single morning, I can accumulate a lot of plastic bags. I did the math once–25-30 bags a week. We try not to throw them away. So in our home we have bags of bags, one by the back door, a plastic bag containing fifty-some lightweight plastic bags; in a cupboard, hanging on a hook, same. For a while I tried keeping one of those handy canvas bags in the car, behind the driver’s seat, which is where it would be when I remembered, standing at checkout, that I should be bringing my own bags. 

Then: a solution. Brought to you by Market Square, our neighborhood market. They offer a plastic bag that’s made for the ages. The standard issue plastic bag is usually .2 mils in thickness. Some, I suspect, are even less than that. Totally unreliable. Totally throw-away-able. The new Market Square bag must be .4, maybe .5 mills. It’s sturdy, it’s foldable, it lasts a long time. I keep two folded away in my man bag, a tote I carry wherever I go. When I’m asked, paper or plastic? I say neither. I pull out my Market Square bag, and away we go. I’ve been using the same two bags for months now. They’ve been to California. They’ve been to Italy. I’ve learned to shake one open and wear it on my wrist while I shop so when I get to checkout, I’m ready, readier even than the fastest Trader Joe clerk.

Then there are the thinner single-item bags in produce. We would easily take home a thousand of those a year. I’ve started folding those and taking them with me. In my bag, clipped together, four of them. Zucchini? Fennel? Apples? No problem. 

The Center for Biological Diversity estimates the world uses 5 trillion plastic bags a year. “A plastic bag,” a CBD researcher observes, “can take 20 years to decompose, but it never fully breaks down. Instead, it breaks into smaller pieces called microplastics that pollute the environment.” 

I’m doing something about that.