You could have fooled me

Bag It Trailer from Film Sprout on Vimeo.

But seriously, my parents could have fooled me. Back in the day, my parents tried their best to recycle.

My mom would save plastic containers (she had a lot and since then has purged most of her stash)

and recycle cans and such. As a child who didn’t understand anything except that it wasn’t what all

my friends were doing, it annoyed me to no end. I would actually argue with my parents about the

situation. Fast forward to twenty years later and I am the one reminding my parents to recycle this or

don’t buy that cause it would be wasteful.

I blame a lot of this on my husband and the rest on the knowledge I now possess. I am far more

educated now about the environment and plastics and I actually care. I have grown to love the outdoors

and the wild lands. I feel a certain responsibility to keep it safe.

Honestly, everything I get from the grocery comes in plastic except fresh produce. Milk, Cheese, chips, salad dressings, bread, cookies. I can't imagine going to the grocery and coming home without anything in plastic (I know a lot of places like whole foods and sprouts sell things in bulk but we don't have one of those is Estes). That is a lot of plastic. If you try sitting in your kitchen after a grocery run and taking a look at what you actually purchased, you might notice this too. It’s crazy.

And what is plastic and it’s similar products made from? Petroleum. That’s right, oil. Fossil fuels are such a sacred and depleting resource, it seems just silly to waste it all on useless plastic that we just throw away. Of course some plastics are good and have helped us come a long way such as plastics used for medical situations and even tupperware that we use over and over but it's those one time use plastics that really create an immense amount of waste.

I'm not trying to ridicule but if we could all use one less plastic shopping bag, it could slowly change things. For instance, the other day I went shopping for clothes and instead of having them put it into a bag (for what? so I can carry it to my car and then into my house and into my closet where I would then throw away the bag. silly), I just tell them I can put it in my purse. 

Even if this post gets one person to look at their plastic consumption a little differently,

it’s worth it. Another thing I do is use reusable grocery bags (of some type of canvas normally). I used to feel funny bringing in my own bag but now it makes sense and no one treats me differently. I always keep at least one in my car. We no longer put our produce from the grocery into those plastic bags (unless it’s a super wet lettuce, gross). Its’ great because now, I don’t have to deal with them at home.

I recently became so passionate about plastic (if that is what you call it) because I watched “Bag It”. This is a pretty entertaining and enlightening documentary, created from a guy out of a colorado town, about plastic and our use of the product. I know I know, sounds kinda dry but it's good to know about plastic considering it is in our everyday lives. Very interesting and I learned so much, it made me want to write about it. All I am saying is that you should give it a try. "Bag It"is on Netflix and who doesn’t have  Netflix these days or know someone who does. Above is the trailer. 

In other thoughts, this weekend is our first “backcountry” camping experience. That means we bring a

water filter and drink from streams, eat oatmeal and hike lots of miles but I’ve heard the view is beyond

words. Cannot wait to challenge myself. (Ugh, I wanna back out already). But the good news, lots of

awesome pictures should come out of it!