Whole Foods and Plastic Bags
Whole Foods is a pretty good company ecologically speaking. I've heard of their conversion to biodiesel for their shipping trucks and their growing amounts of local produce on their shelves, their mass availability of organic foods and their big push to get people off using plastic bags. I overheard that the proceeds from the canvas bags they sell goes to some children's charity [this is the 9/South store I'm talking about]. I never really thought about how they package their reusable bags. Well, as you can see from the photo above, it's in plastic.
Yes, this is nitpicking. But it's something that can be improved upon and I don't think it's the biggest hassle to do so. They can use string (biodegradable string!). They can use paper (100% recycled post consumer paper!). They can just not wrap them in anything and ship them loose in cardboard boxes. They have some well paid minds at Whole Foods I'm sure. Figure it out gang!
Lady and I have cut our plastic bag usage to probably 5% of what it used to be. We take our tote bags to the farmer's markets, to the grocery store, to buy beer, to do errands, for whatever. At first, it's kinda mind blowing how many times you say "I have my own bag" at the checkout line. I think we're close to a dozen bags now picked up along the way.
That's the sign in the entrance of Whole Foods about using reusable bags over paper or plastic bags. Lady and I occasionally get paper bags, but they're for our paper recyclables so, in theory, they're being recycled along with our paper (but good God, I've seen all the recyclables just thrown into the normal garbage truck more than once as have others). One thing that I've never understood is why things take longer to biodegrade in a landfill. Why does a plastic bag take 20 years to biodegrade "as litter" but 1,000 years in a landfill? Crazy. Why isn't plastic just plastic?
November 10th, 2007 @ 9:47 am
I've worked at Whole Foods Market for two years now. And yes, these bags come in plastic. Now, I work at the store level, where we have no control of how these items are packaged when they are shipped. However, at my store, we take all of the canvas bags out of the plastic, and we recycle it. We recycle every bit of plastic we can, actually. For example, whenever we get cash from the bank (cash, not coin), it comes in a plastic bag, and we recycle the bag. We recycle bubble wrap, we recycle paper, we recycle cardboard.
However, the author has a point; I don't understand why these bags come in plastic in the first place. They are shipped to us in a cardboard box, so why the plastic? Maybe the higher ups have them wrapped that way in case the box gets wet, I don't know. However, I know that at our store (I cannot divulge which, I'll just say it's one of the top ten in the country) we recycle everything we can.