bagless

Last night Mirelle and I went to our local Vitamin Cottage (a small natural grocery chain based in Colorado). We hadn't been in a while, and in the time we've been away, the store's gone completely bagless. How cool is that? And they're the only Vitamin Cottage store in Colorado that is doing so. Can I just say how great it was to be shopping and notice that every other shopper had reuseable bags with them. (If a customer shows up without a bag, they can purchase a cloth bag for $1, or use a cardboard box, of which the store has plenty.) Hopefully it will be a trend that will spread, motivated by the city of San Francisco.

Since I've been working with emagineGreen, I've felt inspired to explore what else I can do to continue along my ecoJourney (an emagineGreen keyword!). I've always been what I would call 'green' (back in the day, I spent many hours at my high school shuffling fermented recycle bins around). But, like with yoga, there's always more to learn, and a path to continue on.

My plan right now is to figured out a way to use less plastic - namely: produce bags, yogurt containers, mixed greens/salad containers and anything else that can't be recycled. The action I'm taking so far is this: I have some great little mesh produce bags that I'm using, and I reuse all of my bread bags for other things, until they're pretty worn out. Vitamin Cottage will recycle used bulk bags (they package all of their bulk items for you) if you take them back in. I wonder where I could take the plastic bread bags? My solution thus far to the yogurt container dilemma is to buy kefir (basically drinkable yogurt) that comes in reyclable bottles. But ideally I'd like to get back to making my own yogurt. And the salad? Just buying leaf lettuce, not mixed greens packaged in plastic. I realized that a lot of these things take a little more time. With convenience comes packaging. Often not recyclable.



If you haven't checked it out yet, Gorgeously Green is a good book. I have so many library books on my bedside table at the moment that I haven't gotten to it yet - just perused it briefly. This is a fun read to inspire more progress on your path to green (or more green)!