Bag Ladies Revisited

Contributed by M.P. Crawford

Since my last posting, I fortunately have positve news to report. The appearance of the environmentally friendly cloth reusable bags is definitely on the upswing. The checkers at the local grocery store report increased sales of these bags. Many stores, including Target at the lower end and Nordstrom on the higher end (with the price tag to prove it!) are selling stylish 100% "organically grown" bags; many that even guys would be comfortable hanging on a shoulder (so there's no excuse for the "paper or plastic?"mantra, men!)
One of the most heartening sights happened as recent as this morning. I was in the grocery check-out line behind a woman who had only purchased a salad. Per the still-unfortunate usual, the clerk placed it in one of those dreaded blue plastic bags. The woman turned to carefully survey the pile (yes, pile!) of cloth bags alongside my pending purchases upon the conveyor belt, then told the young woman to remove the salad from the bag as she did not need it and neither did the Earth.
I am pondering the possibility that on my next trip to this particular grocery of speaking to the management about reducing the cost of the cloth bags and/or giving a cash incentive to those customers who bring their reusable bags. Any step, albeit small and slow, is still a move in the right direction.