1. Go shopping.
That's it. Go shopping. Anywhere. For anything.
Everything comes in ballistic packaging that is nearly impossible to open, and it almost always accompanied by yards of receipt paper.
I almost always have reusable bags on me. I have grocery sized bags that fold and zip into medium-ish pouches that I keep in my car. I have medium sized bags that fold up and fit into smaller bags that I carry around in my everyday bag. I am a veritable bag lady! I am making an effort to be green.
Sometimes my efforts are thwarted, usually by sales associates that just don't get what I am trying to do. Associates that rush to used 9685723645 plastic bags for the ten things I want to buy. Associates that look at me like I am speaking a foreign language when I tell them I brought my own bags. Associates who I am clearly inconveniencing beyond belief when I actually ask that they use my one bag for not only my purchases, but (when we check out separately) my husband's as well. What am I thinking with my outlandish demands?!
I digress.
The other day I went and bought myself new earrings. Cute little star shaped cz's in little white gold settings. They came on a card in a little box. Great! Relatively minimal packaging! This was ideal, since I knew I wasn't going to keep anything but the earrings.
After the sales associate rang up my sale, I said to her, "It's all right, I don't need a bag."
Her reply?
"Ohhh, I'm going to give you a bag. Even though it comes in a little box, I'm going to give you a little bag."
Hm. I asked if I needed the bag, since some places don't like when you check out at the jewelry counter or electronics counter or somewhere else within the store and then traipse out the exit looking like the most confident shop-lifter in history. She didn't answer me. She just handed me my little earrings on their little card in the their little box in their (unnecessary) little bag. And then handed me the longer-than-the-bag receipt, detailing how much the earrings should have cost, how much they actually cost, and how much I saved, and then the shorter, second receipt detailing my debit card transaction.
Are you freaking kidding me?!
First of all, I did not need all of that information. The only details of importance were how much I had spent and with what method I paid.
Secondly, I got in our car, put my earrings in, and immediately had more trash on hand than I generally produce in an entire day at work. And that was after trying to be environmentally conscious.
If that's what I got for trying, it boggles my mind to think of what happens when people just don't care and make no effort!
Anyway, next time you go shopping and bring your own bag, and I hope you have a greener sales associate than I did. Because if those of us who are trying to help out our beautiful Earth, stop, then the terrorists have won.
Or something like that.
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