Produce Bag Solution

Not so long ago I ran across information regarding plastic, specially in the form of grocery bags. The reports were about what types of chemicals plastics contain and what they do to our environment and our heath if ending up in water, how plastic bags go into the landfill and slowly disintegrate into smaller and smaller pieces, finally into particle sized aggregate penetrating groundwater. How much plastic is found in the oceans already, from whole bags to those tiny particles posing and threatening to fish and the whole maritime ecosystems. There was one research project that scooped up water and found more plastic in it than plankton!

Wow.

I am glad that on a personal level we have taken steps to avoid plastic bags some time ago. We take our own fabric-bags to the stores. That was easy for us to switch to and works great.
In several towns and counties plastic bags have been banned from the check out counters. There is also an increasing practice from retailers to give you a few cents back if you bring your own bag. Especially great is that some retailers let you offer those few cents as a donation to a non-profit organization in your local community.

Ok, maybe all this is nothing new to anyone, really. What bothered me  is that when buying groceries, specifically produce, it is often wet. The produce is misted ever so often on the shelves to keep it fresh. When trying to just check it out with whatever else I purchased without putting it into a bag, a plastic bag of course, it caused a lot of mess on the counter and in our bags.  So, grudgingly back to plastic bags for the wet items.

What a great surprise when I found out that there is an alternative. There are bags available that are made out of a few plastic bottles, containing almost 90% of this recycled plastic source. So it is kept out of the landfill. These bags are woven, so they let air or ethylene pass through. They are ideal for potatoes or oranges and similar produce. They are lightweight and can be folded up into small packets that easily fit in your pocket. And of course they are water proof and reusable. Sounded like the solution I was looking for.

In practice, it turns out they work well. We take a number of those bags with us shopping, stuffed into our cloth bags and do not need any plastic bags anymore. What I do is put the wet produce right in the bag from he shelf and bring like that to the checkout counter. The little additional weight is negligible. Once unpacked back home, I hang the bags up to dry out and then fold them back up and put them back in the fabric-bags, ready to be used the next time.