The bag lady was right all along....

In an effort to reduce my contribution to adding plastic trash to the earth, I have been utilizing 2-3 medium-sized cloth bags on my weekly shopping trips for groceries for the last month. I have already slashed the amount of plastic bags in the house by a significant amount. The bags are useful for small trash cans we have in the basement and under the kitchen sink, but I have not needed to add to the large amount that I have accumulated for the last few years and kept hidden since I never wanted to throw them away. I should have converted to reusable bags much earlier, but since I was just lazy in that respect, I failed to do so, but now that I am doing that, I don't know why more people don't do the same. Some stores already charge for using them and since Euros are much more concerned about the environment than the average american, you find higher usage of reusable bags for shopping. Whole Foods will eliminate plastic bags in about two weeks. Think of the implications to the earth if Walmart or Best Lie (thanks D; I still laugh using that description) had a policy like this in place.

Once again, americans need to wake up and think about tomorrow....

Carbon Footprints

The other day, I was looking at some propaganda literature from one of my utility companies and it had a small postcard mentioning a new program customers could join that would "offset carbon emissions" and help the environment; reduce your carbon footprint, in other words.

Well, I am all for helping the environment and Carbon Offsetting is the rage right now. Just ask big Al who just picked up a Nobel peace prize for some of his work and attention to environmental issues. Not only are utility companies trying to push consumers over the edge by appealing to their emotions, but airlines are now on board and asking for X amount of dollars to offset your flight and save the earth.

Again, I am all for tangible and concrete actions on reducing waste and truly minimizing emissions and guys like Al do a good service to the planet when they shift people's thinking.....to a point. Don't try and scare me into action or try and pull my heart strings to get me to open my purse strings.

I have an issue when no hard science exists to truly quantify carbon emissions and the idea of my giving $50 to an airline to allegedly plant some trees to offset my plane trip is an absolute scam and consumers are blind sheep that think throwing some cash for a cause will cure the problem. What would be more likely to help the cause would be a severe reduction in SUV purchases, more local purchase of goods and services and heavy R&D into alternative energy and no dependence on oil, but since our government cannot tax the sun or the wind, you can forget those two options for taking us off the grid........People need to start thinking!