environment?

even though i am terribly allergic to shopping, i had to quite a bit of shopping this weekend because of the baby.

i went to the local ikea, finished buying some stuff and the clerk billed me for the stuff and started doing something else.  he did not do the bagging. i asked him for some bags and he said “we stopped giving out plastic bags. they now cost 10 cents a bag. do you need a few?”. i said “no thanks” and put all my stuff into a waste bucket i had purchased and walked out. i felt really happy that ikea started charging for bags.

i then went to the local fry’s market (kroger is called fry’s in this part of the country) and they had a big recycling bin for old plastic bags. and they also had some thicker reusable grocery bags for sale. 10 for 10 bucks or something like that. i felt even happier. even though in reality all these companies are just trying to reduce their operating costs (and probably don’t really care about the environment), it is a good thing thing that they are forcing people to not use plastic bags.  i then went to toys’r'us and they shoved some small towels i bought into a giant bag, even after telling them i do not need a bag. i am sure they will change soon.

after getting stuck in the disastrous mumbai floods  which was pretty much caused by plastic bags, my younger brother now always takes some bags with him when he goes to the grocery store. maybe i should do the same too. we anyways reuse the store plastic bags as trash bags @ home, but i am sure it would be a good thing to just avoid them altogether.

i also found out today that most cities do not let folks add the plastic bags to the recycle garbage bins. that seems to be pretty stupid. why would they not want to recycle the plastic bags ?