Holding the Baggie

Even though I penned a novel about an ecojustice lawyer who travels to Canada's Western Arctic to fight against offshore drilling and protect a beluga whale habitat, I have a long way to go before I can wear the What Would Suzuki Do? baby tee I just bought (in organic fair trade cotton, and dyed with vegetables) in public without feeling like a poser. (As it stands now, I usually just wear it at home, and my two-year-old points and says "Who's that man?")

I'm going to come out and say it before my book comes out and everyone just assumes I'm a valiant eco-warrior: I'm not the greenest person in the world. True, I don't drive -- but as much as I'd like to say that's because I'm trying to reduce my carbon emissions, the truth is, I just can't . I've tried. Taken lessons. Failed tests. Taken more lessons. I'm one of those People Who Don't Drive. Much to my husband, aka The Chauffeur's, chagrin. He didn't think it was funny when I asked him if he'd start wearing a cap and letting me call him Jeeves. (Side note: my Grannie didn't drive either, and she was a great writer, so maybe it's just one of the things I have to give up for my trade.)

Sure, I turn out lights, use those new lightbulbs even though I detest their greeny-blue glare, carry cloth bags when I buy mostly local and organic food, use natural household cleaners and cosmetics. I'm not going kid myself, though. Those things are easy. And the natural cosmetics thing is even fun, since it involves shopping.

I also take long, hot showers, even though I recently read that the amount of water a Westerner uses in his or her morning shower is the same amount a person in the Third World uses all day long. I impulsively purchase cheap clothes and shoes shipped from developing countries, the ecological implications of which I'm sure I don't fully comprehend. I buy imported wine, and lots of it. The list goes on. I'm no saint.

For a while, I thought I was alone in this world. I thought the green movement was all or nothing. Then I read Vanessa Farquharson's new book, Sleeping Naked Is Green.

Now I’ve decided to give up plastic baggies. (If Vanessa reads this, she's probably not going to be impressed. She made 366 green-minded changes over the course of a leap year that blow my little baggie project way out of the water, as it were.)

It's about more than baggies, though. I often ponder the legacy I'm going to leave behind for my children -- and I don't want that legacy to be hundreds of thousands of little plastic bags, languishing in landfills, bogging up waterways, choking water fowl and turtles, and otherwise wreaking all manner of havoc long after I've shuffled off the mortal coil.

So as of last week, I decided to store all my food and snacks and sandwiches and such in reusable containers from now until the end of time (or until my voice as a consumer is heard, and Ziploc comes up with a biodegradable baggie alternative, which is just one of the advantages of taking small steps towards sustainability. I learned this from Rob Grand, who owns and operates The Grassroots Store, and who I interviewed for an article last week.)

In characteristic form, I’ve been trying to find an easy way out of this thing, though. What I really want is to buy a brand new, full set of these.



But I can’t, because, of the promise I made my driver. Er, I mean, husband. He’s been so supportive of me this past year, and of my quest to become a published novelist - even as I've allowed my freelance writing career to take a back seat and focused on a project that has yet to earn us a dime - so I feel I should probably be more supportive of him, and his quest to Stop Spending Money So We Can Still Afford to Eat and Pay the Mortgage. (Also, he's probably going to read this, which means I really do need to tow the party line. Hi, honey. No, I did not buy anything new this week. I've had those red espadrilles for several seasons.)

The problem is, we still have some baggies leftover from a pre-baggie-embargo trip to the grocery store. And those teeny tiny plastic baggies are always peering temptingly at me from their oh-so-convenient open-top box, begging me to use them. “I'm right here, just a flick of the wrist away. And I’m so little,” they tell me in their sing-song siren voices. “What impact could I possibly have on the planet?”

How many baggies am I going to use in a lifetime? (I have no idea, you're saying, and nor do I care. Whoever this girl is, her blog is boring, and I am definitely not going to read her book when it comes out. But wait, I beseech you! I promise, I'm getting somewhere. Ahem.) So, let’s say I use two baggies every day for the rest of my life. And, let’s say, I live to be 85. (Yes, I’m being generous in terms of lifespan, but this is supposed to be a positive-thought provoking type blog, or at the very least not a depressing oh-my-gosh am I really going to die at 65, there are so many things I have left to do, questioning-one's-mortality type of blog.)

Right. So, plastic baggies. (And I promise, after I'm done here, I will never, ever, say the word baggie on this blog again.)

If I use two baggies a day and live to be 85, that’s 36,500 baggies. (Don't ask me how I got that total. Just trust me. I'm right. Or maybe don't trust me. I am a writer after all, not a mathematician.) And if I convince my husband to give up baggies (and promise him not to replace said baggies with an investment in a whole set of cute stainless steel containers, but instead use the storage receptacles we already have in the kitchen, i.e. glass pyrex bowls with lids and plastic food tubs for stuff I don't plan to reheat) I can double the number. (This is kind of like a fun game, isn't it? Um no, you're thinking.)

If my kids don’t use baggies anymore (and kids tend to use an awful lot of almost everything, so I think for a kid the number can be quadrupled, especially if I purge my home of all baggies until the little darlings move out… ) then that’s a damn lot of baggies. I'm not even going to try to calculate the number, lest my right brain and my left brain get in a fight and my head implodes.

The point is - and I really do have a point - two baggies, or even a temptingly convenient box of a hundred, is not a lot. But 100, 000 bags is. Giving up baggies means I’m not leaving all those plastic bags behind to not biodegrade, and instead off-gas toxically for hundreds of years. It's a small step, but it's getting me somewhere. Small steps tend to have that effect. Which I think was one of Vanessa's points, and an admirable one indeed.

(An added bonus: worrying about baggies is keeping me from checking email and voicemail every five minutes - which saves on carbon!)

xo Marissa