Plastic Bags Home On the Range?

On my commute to Boulder, I drive by lots of great scenery.

One of my favorite spots is on the edge of Loveland: across the street from a horrible shopping plaza with a giant King Soopers, various fast food joints, Walgreens, gas stations and a Starbucks (natch), is a small reminder of how things used to be:

a big green field where a small herd of cows graze and generally spend their days loitering about.

It's such a peaceful scene, and because it is juxtaposed with the busy streets of commerce, its impact is even greater on me (for those 5 seconds when I'm driving past anyway).

Yesterday, though, my serene cow pasture was spoiled - literally. I noticed there were some colorful blobs out in the field ... and as I looked closer, I realized these weren't some new tool for feeding cattle - but hundreds of plastic bags. The fence was layered with them. Wal-Mart, Target, King Soopers ... all those seemingly harmless light plastic bags were hung up and blowing about in my peaceful little picture.

I'm not sure what happened - maybe someone didn't have their load covered on the way to the dump or maybe the cows made a run for some T-Bell. The point is, if you look - you'll see these plastic bags all over the place! There's one in a tree behind my house. Just last night I saw my neighbor pulling Safeway bag after bag out of the back of his SUV.

The average American uses about 900 grocery bags per year. Less than 1% are recycled. Now, I'm no saint. We definitely have our share of plastic shopping bags stuffed under the kitchen sink for Marc's lunch sacks and poop pick-up, but I'm making it a personal commitment to rid ourselves of plastic bags by July 1, 2007. You heard it here first.

That means accepting those "she's a crazy hippy" looks when I stroll into Target for tampons with my canvas Wild Oats bag. But that's the price I'm willing to pay to clean out that mess under the sink, and in the cow pasture.

You can pick up a canvas bag at any old natural foods store these days. But if you'd prefer to go logoless, here are some things I found:

EcoBags
LL Bean (classic)
Timbuk2 Cargo Tote
Sherpani Urban Bags