Bag Lady

stockimages freedigitalphotos.net

stockimages freedigitalphotos.net

It’s taken me a while to get to this point. I’ve struggled and the results haven’t always been pretty, but I can now admit, loudly and proudly, that I’m a bag lady. The weight of my big fat carbon footprint has been keeping me up at night for years-not to mention all those agonizing times I’ve had to resolve the eternal debate between paper and plastic-but this year on Earth Day I’ll have a little more spring in my step because I’m finally, consistently doing one environmentally-friendly thing right.

I’m a bag lady.

I’ve got a lightweight, foldable, little chartreuse green number tucked away in my purse, ready to pull out at the pharmacy or the video store or library. And my car’s trunk is loaded with a vast assortment of canvas bags to be used for grocery shopping, picnics and all of the random sports equipment that seems to attach itself to my son.

Inside the house we’ve got tradeshow swag bags advertising products no one’s ever heard of, reusable bags with dividers to hold wine, insulated bags to keep beer and sodas cold, and a scary number of canvas bags with the names of my employers who have long since gone out of business.

Note to the Daily Sound: do not give me a bag with your name on it.

It took a while for me to make the bag lady transition. I started accumulating reusable grocery bags a few years ago, keeping them in my trunk so that they’d be ready whenever I went shopping. I can’t tell you how many times I left Ben and Jerry melting in the cart while I ran outside to get my canvas bags. Despite the fact that we should all be equally invested in preserving the environment, I’m sorry to say the people behind me in line didn’t really take a global view of that particular situation.

Rather than further alienating Mother Earth by risking an altercation, I decided to start purchasing a canvas bag every time I forgot to bring my own into the grocery store. Kind of like my own personal, environmental tax. This is what finally made me make the change for good-it had to hit me in the wallet before I got in the habit of actually taking the bags out of the car before I walked in the store-my own personal tax.

Now I understand that some people think “tax” is a dirty word, so if you’re one of those people you can substitute “benevolent donation to the environment” for “tax.” Our local city council recently bagged on an effort to put a bag tax on the ballot, after some members of the public were fit to be tied over the $23,000 they were planning to spend to survey the issue (though I hear they’re going to “study it” again this summer). Personally I think the council would have had more success with a “benevolent donation to the environment” campaign than a bag tax, but I’ve got an even simpler suggestion: stores should just stop stocking disposable bags. Use up what you’ve got and don’t order more.

This seems to work just fine in France, where they’ve got some of the chicest bag ladies around.

Don’t have a bag? Sorry, you’ll have to purchase one. That’ll cost you a dollar. Eventually your purse and your trunk and your garage will be so full of bags that you’ll have to start bringing them with you when you shop. Talk about an easy way to change people’s habits. San Francisco sacked plastic bags a few years ago after a study found that each bag represents a 17-cent local expense for cleanup, disposal, and lost recycling revenue. This January, Washington, D.C. (where “tax” apparently isn’t a dirty word) started charging a nickel for each disposable paper and plastic bag and their use went down 86 percent in a month. Imagine what a buck a bag would do?

We’d have some pretty chic bag ladies running around Santa Barbara in no time flat.

When Leslie’s not carting her canvas bags around town, she can be reached at Leslie@LeslieDinaberg.com. For more columns visit www.LeslieDinaberg.com. Originally published in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound on April 9, 2010.

My Big Fat Carbon Footprint

hand holding earth by jannoon028 at freedigitalphotos.net

hand holding earth by jannoon028 at freedigitalphotos.net

The weight of my carbon footprint has been keeping me up at night.

I sure do miss the good old days when I’d be overjoyed to find a public bathroom stocked with toilet paper and soap. Show me a recently cleaned floor and seat covers and you’ll see me doing a little “happy dance” as an encore to the “I have to pee dance” I’m usually doing on my way in.

But on a recent visit to the movies, I confronted yet another in a growing number of environmental dilemmas. The facilities were fine, but after I washed my hands I stood stunned by indecision, paralyzed by choices: Should I dry my hands with a paper towel or use the air hand dryer?

“Dryers help protect the environment,” a sign proclaimed. “They save trees from being used for paper towels. They eliminate paper towel waste.” They also suck down electricity and dry out my skin, which increases my hand lotion consumption considerably. Nobody ever considers the Nivea trees.

I also vaguely recall reading something about hand dryers increasing the amount of bacteria in the air, because they suck up your germs then spew them back out onto the next customer. Eww! Just the thought of that is enough to make me resort to my son’s preferred drying method–wiping his wet hands off on my jeans.

“Paper or plastic?” I must have a mental shopping block, because somehow I only remember to bring my canvas bags to Trader Joes, not Vons. I guess I could shop exclusively at Trader Joes, but my husband insists on Kellogg’s Raisin Bran and Tropicana Orange Juice, neither of which TJ’s stocks. Besides, don’t I get some carbon offset credits for reading Star Magazine and the Enquirer in line at Vons and not actually paying for any dead trees that put Britney or Paris on the cover? I suppose if nobody ever read about either of those girls, we might just save the planet. But would such a planet really be worth saving?

I try to do my part. I wish Vons would do theirs, by just charging me for the stupid paper bags (which I always intend to reuse for wrapping paper), so I wouldn’t be embarrassed to leave Ben and Jerry melting in the cart while I run outside to get my canvas bags.

Of course I’m environmentally embarrassed when I do go out to my gigantic gas guzzling Mercury Grand Marquis to get the totes for my melted Stephen Colbert’s Americone Dream.

Here’s the thing: I can’t afford a Prius. Plus I’m not a great driver. Tooling around town in a big safe American car that makes people steer clear of that 80-year-old granny driving is really a safety gesture of good will for the whole community. Seems like I should get some kind of carbon credit for that.

If nothing else, I know I get big carbon points for just being poor. Thanks to our frugal packrat of a landlord, everything in our house is recycled, from the carpet remnants on the floor to the river rock on the walls. Even most of our furniture is family heirlooms, i.e. old junk rescued from the dumpster. Yes, this is quite the P.C. household. Our landlord once spent three hours trying to repair a florescent light that I eventually replaced at Home Depot for $5.99.

My greatest virtue is that rather than succumb to the consumerist temptation to “trade up” a model, I’ve made a commitment to stick to the same old husband. Not only does that cut out the environmental impact of maintaining two separate households, think of all that drive time and paper we’re saving for the lawyers. When you add in the extra showers I’d be taking if I were single, and the hydrocarbons from the hair spray I’d be using if I were dating, I can kick off those heavy carbon shoes entirely. Better hang on tight to your peace prize, Al Gore: I’ll be wearing my carbon halo tonight.

When Leslie’s not agonizing over her carbon footprint, she’s usually on email at email. For more columns visit www.LeslieDinaberg.com.
Originally appeared in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound on November 23, 2007.