Not Anymore

[JR]

Aldi's also does a neat thing with their shopping carts. They keep them chained together in sheltered area just outside the entrance. You need a cart, you stick a quarter in the slot to release the chain lock and when you're done shopping you simply return the cart, connect the chain to the coin release and get your quarter back. No more carts all over the lot and they're always dry during the wet weather.

I've seen that in Europe, too. It's a great idea and wish it would be used around here.

When I see people at Costco who put their cart between parking stalls rather than in the corral DIRECTLY ACCROSS THE AISLE, I just get apoplectic.

JR

[cwsmith]

We've got several of cloth/nylon/canvas-like bags and a couple of years ago, I "got on my wife's case" as to why in heck we weren't using those. (I have a lot of "green moments" and sometimes, stupid "man-of-the-house" moments too.)

So, the LOML who is often much more logical than I am, asked what we were supposed to do about the daily garbage accumulations. My first thought of course was that we could buy "Glad" or some other brand of "kitchen bags". Her reply was a "Duh, doesn't that sort of defeat the purpose of NOT accepting "plastic" at the grocery store?... plus it cost's money to buy what we don't want to accept free."

Plus of course, the city requires that all garbage waste MUST be contained, and then put on the curb in their official "plastic" which we must purchase!

We are steadfast believers in "recycling" and we separate all our stuff into bins for recycling and removal. In the village where we are ever so slowing moving from, they went on a "recycling" binge about 20 years ago. Everyone would separate their paper, plastics, glass, metal, etc. Put them in separate bins (which you could buy from the village). Funny though as they'd only pick up once a month... and then the village disposal truck would come around and their guys would pick up all your bins and dump them into the truck, thus mixing everything up. (And then I found that it would just go to a separate area of the landfill anyway!) Looked good, but stupid! (At least here in the city, the "recyclables" go to the county area, where I believe it is in fact "recycled".)

My grandparents had a 96 acre farm when they were alive and over the 60-plus years they had that, they never had "garbage pickup". All the cans would be taken "up on the hill" and dumped in a small trench, and the green food waste put in the mulch. The animal waste incinerated. They had 11 children and in all that time, the most solid waste (those cans) never amounted to more than that one relatively small trench area.

Of course, they were pretty self sufficient. My grandmother "canned" just about all the vegetables, fruit, and berries produced on their own land. They never used paper towels or napkins in their life, and "re-use" and "recycle" were about as normal as breathing. Funny how the last 60-70 years have produced so much wastefulness and taught us all just how convenient such waste is.

CWS

[cabinetman]

Imagine a pull cord netting the same height as the sides. The netting fits down inside when not needed and doesn't take any space. Then it pulls up and doubles the height and the net fits around any tall items, and doubles the capacity. The cord pulls tight at the top and keeps everything in place. GREAT! IIRC, they cost about $10.00 each in Japan.

These bags are about 3' long, 12" high, and about 16" wide. When they are full, they are heavy. I can't imagine my wife carrying these with netting to hold that which would be..."runneth over".


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[chopnhack]

Funny how the last 60-70 years have produced so much wastefulness and taught us all just how convenient such waste is.
CWS

I find it funny too... Can't sell if people don't consume is my answer to that. But then again we must understand that there are a lot more people around now than 60-70 years ago and the farming lifestyle is all but gone, at least the style that your parents and my grandparents and parents had. Different times, none the less, it certainly is a user society now. Green is a fad, a social awareness, true Green was common sense choices without flaunting it.

[thrytis]

I was all for this bag tax because baggers would send my 20 items home in about 10 bags. We had mountains of bags. But then we realized how handy they were because now we struggle to find convenient garbage bags for all the diapers we change between the 2 kids. Now we hoard bags whenever we get our hands on them and resort to using the skinny knecked bags used to wrap the free newspapers that show up on the doorstep.

I'm glad to hear i'm not the only plastic bag horder! I end up taping up holes in bags and using the newspaper bags too in order to have enough for cat litter.

[Mr__Bill]

We reuse plastic bags too. Primarily for litter box waste, which is removed twice a day.

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I'm glad to hear i'm not the only plastic bag horder! I end up taping up holes in bags and using the newspaper bags too in order to have enough for cat litter.

We have switched to litter made of corn! Everything flushes with out a problem and now no more bags of cat poop! (might not do this if we had a septic system)

I sometimes wish the dog was litter trained We too save all the plastic bags and recycle them as garbage bags and to pick up after the dog, we even have dogless friends save bags for us.

Bill
reuse is the ultimate recycle

[BobSch]

Our local grocery store had a big container for recycling plastic bag and it's almost always full. Better than tossing them in the garbage.

[tommyt654]

We take reusable cloth bags that Publix sells or sometimes gives out and usually get out plastic bags only when I forget to take one, which works out well as they usually get used as poop p/u devices when I walk Buster as the other dogs are to large for me to restrain. They are great for that otherwise I think they should be banned.

[cabinetman]

We take reusable cloth bags that Publix sells or sometimes gives out and usually get out plastic bags only when I forget to take one, which works out well as they usually get used as poop p/u devices when I walk Buster as the other dogs are to large for me to restrain. They are great for that otherwise I think they should be banned.

That's what we use the grocery type for. We have a friend that has a little ankle biter, that asked us to save the plastic bags that our newspaper comes in so he can clean up after their walks. Those don't work for our two 100 LB German Shepherds, as they use our yard, and rival cow pies. We wash down with a hose...good for the grass.

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