It’s Not Easy (or Cheap) Being Green
The Los Angeles Times reported on Wednesday that the city council is weighing a ban on both plastic and paper grocery bags, a move that will force grocery shoppers to use reusable bags.
And what might be the harvest of this green campaign? Here in the Dunphy house we have an idea.
The city where the Divine Mrs. Dunphy and I do much of our grocery shopping has already banned the use of plastic bags. Fine, we’ll take the paper ones, which, lest we be branded as enviro-felons, we use to sort our recyclables.
Now, at the insistence of the same city, our grocery store is charging ten cents for each paper bag. Every dime counts for a cop on a budget, so we bought some of those reusable bags the local lefty-greens have been toting around for some time. But now we no longer have the paper bags for our recyclables, so from now on all our trash – plastic, glass, newspapers, the lot of it – goes into the same bin, and the hell with it.
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May '10
Re: It’s Not Easy (or Cheap) Being Green
Ah, unintended consequences.
Jan '11
Re: It’s Not Easy (or Cheap) Being Green
Also, the 99¢ reusable bag I bought was shredded by the artichokes that were put in it the first time it was used. I'm waiting for the dog owners to revolt and stop curbing their dogs. Maybe dog owners should stroll by their council member's house.
May '10
Re: It’s Not Easy (or Cheap) Being Green
I wonder how much extra dog poop you're going to find on LA sidewalks now that your honest denizens can't possess plastic bags.
Jul '10
Re: It’s Not Easy (or Cheap) Being Green
Totes are great. You now have your own incubators for all that bacteria on meat and poultry packages - even veggies. Wash them and you'll have a bag about large enough to cart home a box of frozen peas.
Dec '10
Re: It’s Not Easy (or Cheap) Being Green
I read a statistic a few months ago (sorry I don't have a link) saying that the amount of energy expended to make one of the reusable grocery bags = the same amount it takes to make 135 plastic ones. Wonder how many little creepy crawlies are in one of those bags after 135 uses.
But in the interest of full disclosure, Mrs. Adventure is pretty adamant that we use them. Sigh.
Oct '10
Re: It’s Not Easy (or Cheap) Being Green
A tisket a tasket, take a wicker basket. Hmmm.
Jan '11
Re: It’s Not Easy (or Cheap) Being Green
The time of your post suggests you are north of the power outage, yes? what about that Long fellow?
Jan '11
Re: It’s Not Easy (or Cheap) Being Green
MLH: West Los Angeles hasn't suffered a power outage.
Mark Wilson: Santa Monica has parkways covered in dog poo. Disgusting, smelly, germ-filled, yet progressive.
Re: It’s Not Easy (or Cheap) Being Green
The juice remains on here at the Dunphy estate. I understand the troubles are in Orange and San Diego counties.
Re: It’s Not Easy (or Cheap) Being Green
No power outage here in Venice. Jack, glad things are all clear in the pricey parts of town.
Sep '10
Re: It’s Not Easy (or Cheap) Being Green
I was at the grocery store last week picking up my weekly dose of tuna (that will be 456 tins please -- Dave Carter can haul it to my place) and one of the older cashiers (she is usually sighted smoking outside the store on breaks) gave me the lowdown on how incredibly disgusting the totes are that the customers reuse.
She made one eerie comment I won't forget: "If there's ever some mystery plague that develops in this country, I bet the last place they'll look is all these hellacious tote bags."
I think she had a point. And then she coughed and hacked.
Nov '10
Re: It’s Not Easy (or Cheap) Being Green
Absolutely horrifying that the govt is able to strong-arm businesses into charging customers for a d***ed shopping bag. More horrifying is the fact that American businesses have become so weak, so non-competitive that they are permitting this intrusion.
Sep '10
Re: It’s Not Easy (or Cheap) Being Green
Neither paper nor plastic cause any actual measurable harm to the environment, do they? I remember back in the 80s people thought America was going to somehow run out of landfill space but I haven't heard that one in 10 years at least. How, exactly, are reusable totes demonstrably good for the earth?
I never thought about how icky they would get after several uses. Eww!
Jan '11
Re: It’s Not Easy (or Cheap) Being Green
Is it unlawful to bring in your own plastic bags? Costco sells a box of 1,000 bags for about $15.
Oct '10
Re: It’s Not Easy (or Cheap) Being Green
Would be interesting to see the wide eyed reaction at the checkout if one just presented a 30 gallon plastic trash bag for groceries. That just might be amusing..
Apr '11
Re: It’s Not Easy (or Cheap) Being Green
I couldn't find much economic analysis on recycling but Penn & Teller
provide an hilarious expose here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzLebC0mjCQ
For a more serious analysis the Cato put out this paper:
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-202.html
May '11
Re: It’s Not Easy (or Cheap) Being Green
Visiting relatives in Massachussets, I learned that they have trash police that somehow divine if you are sorting your trash into the correct bins or not. That's another reason I don't live there.
Mar '11
Re: It’s Not Easy (or Cheap) Being Green
Recycling is a complete crock, of course. It does no good, and often promotes considerable harm.
Here in Baltimore we have a deal reminiscent of the old Soviet Union where they pretended to pay us, and we pretended to work. Here, we recycle everything in a big pile (no sorting), and the city sorts and recycles. In actual fact, they just toss it all in the same landfill, but have wasted considerable money in having a parallel trash pickup, etc.
Feb '11
Re: It’s Not Easy (or Cheap) Being Green
Pseudodionysius
I was at the grocery store last week picking up my weekly dose of tuna (that will be 456 tins please -- Dave Carter can haul it to my place) and one of the older cashiers (she is usually sighted smoking outside the store on breaks) gave me the lowdown on how incredibly disgusting the totes are that the customers reuse.
She made one eerie comment I won't forget: "If there's ever some mystery plague that develops in this country, I bet the last place they'll look is all these hellacious tote bags."
I think she had a point. And then she coughed and hacked. · Sep 8 at 8:52pm
So very Stephen King.
Sep '10
Re: It’s Not Easy (or Cheap) Being Green
Ed G.
Pseudodionysius
I was at the grocery store last week picking up my weekly dose of tuna (that will be 456 tins please -- Dave Carter can haul it to my place) and one of the older cashiers (she is usually sighted smoking outside the store on breaks) gave me the lowdown on how incredibly disgusting the totes are that the customers reuse.
She made one eerie comment I won't forget: "If there's ever some mystery plague that develops in this country, I bet the last place they'll look is all these hellacious tote bags."
I think she had a point. And then she coughed and hacked. · Sep 8 at 8:52pm
So very Stephen King. · Sep 9 at 6:05am
More like PJ O'Rourke, she was coughing from her last cigarette.