For nearly four years now, I have been trying not to use plastic bags when shopping. Declining them at first brought strange looks from the cashiers especially at the Chinese supermarkets. I had quite a number of cloth totes (from so many conferences) to haul my groceries and other purchases.
Then, in late 2007 came the grand opening of Milton's Superstore, the first supermarket in Canada which did not sell or dispense plastic bags. Pretty soon, everyone was catching on to the trend. Every major supermarket is selling some type of branded tote.
Then the Halton region introduced the green bins for composing in 2008 (in addition to the blue bins which have been around forever). So, I started using a compo stable bag for my kitchen waste. Gradually over the years, the number of plastic bags I needed to collect the garbage throughout in the house diminished as items were diverted to recycling and composing. This is somewhat ironic as the homes I have lived in has increased in size over the years.
So that stash of plastic bags which had filled nearly two large black garbage bags has been whittled away. Today, I reach into the bottom of that last black bag and grabbed the last plastic bag. Now, what was going to do with this thing again?
