Plastic Bags with…Plastic Bags inside.hm part2 by scottwyden
I was going through the list of bloggers who will be at this years BlogOrlando Conference in September and came across Lorrie Delk Waker’s Banning Plastic Bags Article. Amused by the way people are associating (scapegoating) plastic grocery bags with civil rights, I gave my two cents which I’ll give here (it’s more like 20 cents…a bit long and warranted a blog entry more so than a comment.) Read the comments on the original post above including:
Simplemom.net tells me I should narrow down my daily blog intake to a healthy amount, citing 75 as a bit much (then what is 104?). They say it will help me with my time management. Yeah… I just don’t see that happening anytime soon. I admit, my Bloglines runneth over, but what if I miss a day of Dooce or DaddyTypes? What if one clever Bossy-ism slips past my screen? What if I miss a Crafty Crow suggestion of some wonderful art project in all of their slightly super saturated photojournalistic glory? You know, the ones you try with your child that leave you frustrated to tears with a wailing eight month old on one hip and a toddler, a chair and two walls covered in paint, chalk, marker and a pint of sand. The fun ones.
I love blogs like House on Hill Road, Sycamore Stirrings and Sugar City Journal, they sit in a folder I reserve for particularly guilt-driven days when I want nothing more than to see smiling children in perfectly primed, coordinated, freshly bleached whites. I close my eyes and pretend for a minute that it is my house (the same with my “House Fodder” folder, not so much parent based…minus ohdeedoh…but equally as gluttonous).
I’m your normal stay at home mom of two (thing one: 29 months, thing two: 8 months). We practice frugal living, urban homesteading, freegan tactics and at times deep, deep denial to make it through. Life isn’t nearly as perfect as a lot of SAHMs make it out to be. I have visions of sugar plums and that 1950’s house wife dancing through my head in the wee hours of the morning before I get woke up by the co-sleeping, attachment parented baby wiggling a diaper butt in my face and the toddler beginning her repetitive chant of “malk, malk, maaaaaalk” that starts my day.
I think I’m 25, but I still feel 19 (until nap time) and I swear college was just a few weeks ago. Where did the time go? How did I get…established? I left my career as an Art Director in a Publishing House to marry my husband and become a mommy, a job I wouldn’t trade for the world: because there are way too many people on the world and its hard enough trying to convince my husband of adding a third, let alone a couple billion. But it suits me, at times the walls close in and I need a good cup of tea to get me through (or coffee if the walls are really, really close). But all my credentials and all the talent in the world wouldn’t make me a better mother than my sense of humor, my survival gear and a garden hose (think about that one for a bit).
Read this article in the New York Times, via a link from this article on Techno-Urban Survivalism (they are discussing turning all the glass condos on the stagnant market into green houses, really has nothing to do with voluntary simplicity) at TreeHugger.com. And after coming across things like the Dancing Rabbit EcoVillage in my search for…whatever it is I am searching for (at the time, like homemade cleaner…not like “the greater meaning of it all”), I’ve come to a conclusion.
I really admire the ability to pick up everything and head to the woods. <insert bitter sarcasm in case you missed it the first time> It takes a strong person to hide from the problems in society instead of fulfilling your responsibilities as a global citizen and attempt to problem solve and create change. It doesn’t take a strong person to leave behind all their earthly possessions and go hide in a cabin away from it all. You are not impressive.
“But we’re looking for a better way,” you whine. Great, but how many people will walk away from their Miami flats to go frolic in the hills of where ever and grow tomatoes? We are accustom to society the way it is, to the immediacy and the glitz and the craze. Your change will only work for a handful of people, and a handful isn’t enough. I don’t like being in the midst of it any more than you do, but it is our responsibility to our children to live in the society as active participants and seek out better ways to replace what we currently have that is not working and leading to self-destruction. If everyone who was capable of doing it went in hiding, how will we ever change?
“I don’t want the government telling me…” seriously? How many areas in your life, big areas does the government influence you in what you should and should not do? You seriously need to be kidding me if you are going to overlook those and get spiffed on a bag. Pick your four favorite months of the year…those four months you work your wages go straight to them, and that doesn’t make you a bit angry?
I mean, god forbid you be inconvenienced a few minutes each shopping trip to grab your own bags. And you can find great bags out there. Lacoste and Marc Jacobs make shopping bags upward of $200 if you are worried about the big green bag crashing your style.
The reality is… Think about how much junk we are leaving behind for our children. Look at your daughter, son, grandchildren…you wouldn’t consciously feed them poison but the waste of not only the bags themselves but the manufacturing process is building up in the air, soil and even the kids bodies.
If you don’t want to relinquish your precious bags because you don’t want people telling you what to do your a moron, or lazy. Neither of which I think is true. The real reason is you are afraid. Change is scary but it’s required or we will self destruct. You touch a stove, it’s hot and you get burned. Touching the stove doesn’t work. You know that now. You don’t do it again. This is where we are at now. Have you heard of the Pacific Vortex? Look at this map, it’s huge! 10 million tons of trash, mostly plastic in our oceans. Plastic that does not decompose. And plastic has only been around for less than 150 years. 10 million tons (and plastic is light, how much takes up a ton?) in less than 150 years. And it’s not going anywhere.
I love this article, seeing how San Francisco just passed a ban on them. The youth (and young at heart) are really taking to living responsibly. A lot of people don’t understand that the “modern conveniences” so readily handed to them are products of commerce and not necessarily of sustainable interest. If we keep pushing this idea from a marketing objective that the young are going green, eventually in our desperate pursuit of youth and beauty it will catch on. Probably with less hostility than “the government will pry my plastic bag from my cold, dead hand.”