[GreenYes] personal anecdote on the bag issue

["Elder.Jeff" <Jeff.Elder@msmail.unitedway.org>]

Just a personal anecdote regarding the grocery bag issue.   I've gone
through various stages of outrage at the plastic bag mania we have in our
economy.  I've used reusable bags before, but did often forget (for shame!).
I have to admit I've even gotten lazy once or twice once I've found myself
in the store and the bags in the car and not gone out and gotten them
(double for shame!).  I haven't ever used bags twice or more as was
recommended, but I feel somewhat better now with my current system, which is
using the little plastic bags from grocery stores for my garbage.  Since I
don't have a family, the trash load is fairly small, so the little bags
allow me to discard the trash more often without it smelling up my kitchen.
I have a daily pickup but could imagine larger household (or those without
daily pickups) just toting the smaller bags out to the larger trash can.
The beauty of this system (you can tell I'm quite smug about this ;)  )  is
that I don't buy the expensive and very thick plastic garbage bags at the
store, which, I imagine, contains a heckuva lot more plastic than the
paper-thin ones you get in the grocery store.  The only problem I can see is
that you do sometimes get more bags than you need for trash - but I've
rarely had an oversupply.   Curious, does anyone know what actually happens
to the plastic bag collections that grocery stores have? I sometimes do that
when I have too many.  Do those actually get recycled? ( I have memories of
Gruene Punkt in Germany where the symbol rarely meant that something was
being recycled, or so I was told).  

Jeff Elder
Alex, Va.
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