Field Note: BYOB, aka, Bring Your Own Bag…
CAUTION CAUSTIC BITING HUMOR AT TIMES - NOT FOR THE THIN SKINNED MEMBERS OF CONVENIENCE CULTURE
Living on the coast might change your perspective.
If your perspective extends beyond YOUR OWN CONVENIENCES.
HINT: This is fueled by frustration and is partly a hopeless rant.
Plastic bags are not an abstract policy debate “for me” or the surrounding area and ecosystems “in my opinion,” although sometimes it feels like government officials, corporations, and shoppers think they are. Blind. Cover your eyes. I don’t see a problem. Wah.
Plastic grocery bags. Ice bags. Styrofoam. Plastic bottles. Plastic straws. Ew, plastic straws, so difficult and mushy to use. Wah. I heard someone skewered their brain with a metal straw. Wah. I don’t know how to vet my news sources. Wah.
Well, the plastic, it just don't politely remain in trash cans y’all.
Plastics (like the butts of cigarettes) don't stay in parking lots.
They ride the wind into the marsh. Down drains. Wrap around wax myrtles. Snag in live oaks. Drift across the dunes. Eventually, they make their way into the sound or the ocean.
Oh, but that is natures fault. Right?
Hey, I warned you - frustration + outlet = rant.
So when someone “gleefully” says,
"I'm so glad Harris Teeter still has plastic bags. We can't get them in New Jersey (or whereever)."
I can't help but think:
Bring your own. (delete what else i think…)
BYOB.
Also (please, don’t move here. retire, go somewhere else, keep going south… way south....damn, sorry, that was harsh.)
*Asterisks: YES paper has a footprint, so does reusable bags… meh…DUHOY.
Every choice comes with an environmental asterisks!*
***************
Damn near everything does!*
But common sense still matters.* It just doesn’t add up anymore, just like the change I got back at Harris Teeters, Seven Eleven. Seems small businesses have exact change ability but chains don’t. hmmm. strange…
If you already own reusable bags, use them. Keep them in the car. Hang them by the door. Build the habit.
My husband does it.
I do it.
And after a period of feeling defeated, I’m going to start back up again.
I carry a large tote nearly everywhere I shop anyway. Sometimes we need an extra paper or plastic bag. Fine. That should be the exception, not the EXPECTATION.
The endless “for your pleasure” expectation of Americans is what gets me. YOU ARE NOT GODS. NOT EVEN CLOSE!!!
What I struggle with isn't the occasional disposable bag.
It's the
expectation that someone else should provide endless convenience while someone else absorbs the consequences.
In my opinion, that is become the predominant and noticable American Way Over Board attitude.
For me, in a coastal area here, the consequences don't disappear.
They flap from tree branches after a storm.
They collect in marsh grass.
They wash into the sound.
Someone eventually has to pick them up.
I don’t bother anymore. Let someone else witness. I’ve had to take a pause.
I’ve accepted radically accepted I can only change my behavior and have to accept nothing can be done about those that refuse to take part in helping their communities.
I walk by the bags. I divert my eyes. Let someone else witness. Let someone else with some authority pick it up finally.
Nature doesn't care that the bag was convenient for twelve minutes between the grocery store and the kitchen.
The wind keeps the receipt.
So no, I have very little patience for the argument that remembering a reusable bag is some great assault on personal freedom.
Freedom is wonderful.
So is responsibility.
Funny, how responsibility actually insures freedom? Has anyone taken notes on this lesson yet? Seems like we just like to gaslight one side or the other versus making the consequences for irresponsiblitly more immediate and transparent
Carrying a reusable bag isn't environmental sainthood.
It's ordinary adulthood.
It's recognizing that the places we claim to love don't clean themselves.
Maybe that's the real choice at the register.
It’s not paper or plastic.
It’s Habit and agency.
Not CONVENIENCE AND INDULGENCE.
No, I'm not a happy camper.
No, I'm not approaching this with perfect Zen detachment.
I'm tired of watching convenience become someone else's cleanup.
And I’m so sick of all the environmental and health astericks like everyone else.*
Astericks are giveing peole the impression they can trust the information they are receiving so they are just tuning out all the way.
We make it simple. We leave something out. Someone uses the environmental asterics as a debunking gripe. The effort to make progress is undermined. People start wearing red hats or buttons.
If you don’t know what i mean by this, don’t worry about it. This is for me. Venting.
I'm tired of hearing people complain that they can't get plastic bags anymore while standing in a coastal town where plastic blows through the marshes. Wah. So sorry babies.
Grow up.
Bring your own damn bag to at least the GROCERY STORE. One place, on factor in your life where you go to your trunk, pop it open, and carry into the store a half dozen empty bags. You and a million others making a measurable imperfect difference.
PROGRESSS
——————
PERFECION
BYOB.
Or don’t.
Micro plastic for your organs.
Maybe someone will sell you a pill for that.
OH HO LOOK ANOTHER MARKET!!! START THE INFOMERCIALS AND GET US A CELEBRITY WHOSE FULL OF PLASTIC!!!
"Well, you use plastic too."
I don't control systems I participate in.
I work in places that hand me plastic.
I buy products wrapped in plastic because that's how they're sold.
I live in a world that often chooses convenience for me.
But where I do have a choice...
I make one.
I’ve had others show me by example. My husband. People that opt to carry their purchases or where their purchases out.
That is agency.
That is choice.
That is freedom.
That is not convenience.
I wish choosing freely was more convenient.
I see the systems.
I see the engineering.
I know it isn’t easy to fight the powers.
This is my rant. PTTTTp. Do what you will. Crucify me as an “environmental wacko” or “crazy lib woman.” Maybe you’ll come to my place of work or get behind me at HARRIS Teeters and say “i’m so glad you have plastic i just can’t, dear me, do without it at home! oh dearest meeee….” while fainting. Who knew the north was full of belles.
Is this really what the descendants of pioneers have become?
A people defeated by a grocery bag?
Bring your own … bag.
