Bag busted

And Regina busted me again.

Regina, a seemingly nice person who works at the Safeway on Howard Avenue in Burlingame recognized me from a previous column I wrote about our society’s overt dependence on plastic water bottles. I suppose I deserved the good-natured ribbing about the fact I accepted plastic bags for the eight items I bought that day. It was not the first time I forgot.

I got a little testy since there is, I suppose, a difference between using plastic water bottles and plastic bags. There is definitely a movement toward using less plastic and that doesn’t mean just bottles, I suppose it means bags too.

In line on Sunday, a couple behind me panicked since they forgot their reusable bags at home and I was a hero because I remembered mine. A supermarket line hero! Now that’s something to write about.

Sometimes, you can remember to bring the bags from the home to the car, sometimes you can remember to bring the bags from the car to the store. But not always. But I guarantee we are all working on it and we don’t need to be harassed to remember.

A few months ago, I was in the Whole Foods in San Mateo buying a paper bag full of food (jam-packed I might add and filled by me instead of waiting for the cashier to do it) when a woman standing behind me told me I was killing trees because I didn’t use a reusable bag. Sheepishly, I looked at her and her purchases which included a flat of bottled water. I thought about saying something rude, but decided a grocery line is a place for pleasantries not platitudes. After all, I planned on using my paper bag again for recycling bottles and cans but wasn’t sure if her Fiji-born water bottles would be reused the same way. But I took my bag home and stuffed it on the side of the fridge. I guarantee it is either now a pulpy mesh or some other paper product while her plastic water bottles are still sitting in a landfill. Though I don’t know for sure really.

There is definitely a movement toward green living and sustainability. At the forefront, we all are thinking about what we are using, what we can reuse, how we can reduce our use and how we can recycle. The economy is playing a part now, in that many of us are looking for ways to reduce our family and business costs. If filling up a reusable bottle helps reduce costs, the better. Convenience has a price.

Regina may have a point. We should all reduce our reliance on plastic and other resources. But we are all busy and the environment is not always at the forefront. There are jobs to be done and families to be taken care of. But the fact that so many feel guilt about forgetting is a step in the right direction and I am glad to be in that crowd. We’ll get there Regina, trust me.

Jon Mays is the editor in chief of the Daily Journal. He can be reached at jon@smdailyjournal.com.