It’s taken me years to commit to my reusable grocery bags. I bought the white one in France several years ago–many of the grocery stores there don’t offer one use bags. You must either bring your own or carry everything out in your arms. The gigantic blue one was 50 cents from Ikea. Until recently, I usually left the house without them. And on the few occasions the bags made it to the car, I would forget to bring them into the grocery store. In Chicago, it was easy to forget the bags because there was no one to hold me accountable–I rarely saw shoppers bring their own bags, so I didn’t feel so guilty. But now living in super eco-friendly Portland, I’m sometimes scowled at by the cashier and others in line for not bringing my own. Some stores here give a tiny bag refund for bringing your own; at Trader Joe’s you become eligible for a weekly raffle for free groceries, which I never win. I would say 80% of the time, I use the bags above. So. I guess you can say that I’ve been shamed into finally bringing my own bags. Like Martha says, it’s a good thing.
I now use these most of the time as well and have found I like them much better than the grocery store plastic or paper. I wonder when this will go beyond grocery stores? Five years from now will we be taking these with us when we do other types of shopping?
At the co-op I belong to in Brooklyn, you actually have no other option but to use your own, reusable bags. I was surprised: it wasn’t a hassle at all, just took a change of mindset. Before I belonged to this co-op, shopping at regular grocery stores left me with droves of plastic bags that I could never seem to get rid of. Now, I feel more ecologically responsible, and don’t have the clutter!
Here in the UK most pople don’t use reusable bags, although the supermarkets are trying hard to promote it. At Tesco and Sainsburys you get a club card point for every bag that you bring which means money off shopping in the long run. I always carry a rolled up bag for life in my handbag, and I agree it definately is better to bring them!
Like you, I am working on becoming 100%. Congrats on being at 80!! The bags make so much sense. The trick is to take them with you wherever you go. Still working on it!
I’ve been working on this for the past year. I’ve collected enough bags (I think I have around 8), that I can do my farmer’s market shopping and my grocery store shopping all in one day w/o having to empty them. It really takes changing your mindset so that you remember to take them with you.
I never seem to remember them at Target though… gotta work on that one since I do buy food and tons of other stuff there.