Comments on: Do One Thing: Forego The Produce Bags.

By: Zana Hart

Zana Hart — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 04:43:16 +0000

I live in Mexico much of the time and plastic bags are the rule here too. We buy almost all our veggies and fruits at the weekly street market, and the vendors give out plastic bags like there is no tomorrow.

We get around this by

[1] we have some large tote bags that we carry the produce in.

[2] for things we do want to bag, anything sqooshy : we reuse plastic bags — we go to the market with a lot of older bags we’ve kept, all ready for a new batch. It helps.

By: GreenAcres

GreenAcres — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 13:21:01 +0000

I completely agree! When I am at the grocery store, I bring my own reusable bags & toss it all in. Plus, maybe you save that extra little bit of weight on the produce scale

At other places, I get the strangest looks when I say I don’t need a bag – at the pharmacy, if I managed to carry 5 things up to the counter it is obvious I can carry them without a bag! And yet, people still try really hard to convince me. At one place, an employee said ‘that’s how we know you bought it’ – to which I replied, ‘oh really, next time I’ll bring the bag in with me & save the money!’ I think it’s amazing how ingrained the habit is in this culture – many other countries do not have this same mindset.

By: david

david — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 18:30:34 +0000

Noob – maybe make your own tags with twist-ties you can bring and wrap around them?

Great idea Jeanne!

Emily – for lettuce I totally agree, it needs a bag. But most everything else I could throw on the floor if I wanted as I always washed it before eating anyway!

By: Emily Jones

Emily Jones — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 18:16:54 +0000

Thanks for this post! I was in the local health food store a few weeks ago, and realized as I was bagging the veggies that this store was supposed to be supporting earth-friendly choices, and yet I was using like 5 plastic bags for the one trip. After that I quit using plastic produce bags altogether, except for really wet leafy greens, so they don’t get everything else wet.

FWIW, the reason I used plastic baggies was 1) to avoid the produce touching the actual cart, and 2) to make it easier to put on the belt and ring up.