Paper or Plastic? To waste or to waste less.
Unless you’ve been living under a waste dump, Green is in. (I guess you could say it’s the new Grey . . . sorry). It’s all over the place, & I’m sure gas prices have a lot to do with it, but people are treating this like it’s a fad. Which I really hope is not the case. Let me share a story with you that’s the reason for this post.
I was having an off-site, brainstorming session, and one of my friends walks in with a rather large, paper Eatzi’s bag. The kind with the rolled up paper handles, I immediately thought he was bringing food for the rest of us, which prompted me to ask – “HEEEEYYYY – what’s in the bag?”
“Just my lunch.”, he replied. After which he removed his rather small, plastic container. The kind you get when you add a side salad with your to go meal.
“Could you a get a bigger bag?” I asked sarcastically.
“Well, i didn’t want plastic – you know cuz of the environment.”
If he was really concerned with the environment, why didn’t he just bypass the bag altogether and carry his side salad on his own. That’s the problem with the fad thing, people think they’re making changes, but they’re not really thinking them through.
Flashback to a year and a half ago.
I was walking out of CVS Pharmacy after getting some Tylenol and a York Peppermint Patty. I stopped just outside the door, reached in to the CVS bag, opened and consumed my peppermint patty, grabbed my box of Tylenol, then threw away the wrapper AND the plastic bag. The very bag I had just been given not 10 seconds before. I suddenly realized, I’d been doing this for as long as I can remember. Whether it was CVS, Best Buy, or the local grocery store, if i had something in a small bag, i’d walk out the store – dump the excess trash AND THE BAG – and go about my business, feeling good about myself for not littering. MAN – What a lifetime of waste.
Flashforward to present.
Since that time, I purchased my own bags that I take with me into the store and needless to say, if i can carry it with my own hands, I do.
You don’t have to become Ed Begley, Jr. to make a difference. It’s the just like the old saying “Think Globally, Act Locally”, just think about the little things you can do, even if it’s something simple, that one thing can make a HUGE difference. Take the plastic bags for instance. In a year and a half, I’ve used/wasted almost zero plastic bags. Now what if only 10% of the US population employed the same tactic. Think about the impact that would have on waste reduction – it would be HUGE.
So for me it’s not about being part of the green trend, or even being green for that matter. It’s really about being responsible and thinking about the big picture.
So the moral of the story is – if you bring in a big paper Eatzi’s bag to a meeting, you better bring enough for everyone.
This entry was posted on 07.14.2008 at 1:21 pm and is filed in the blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.