I have now been swindled twice this week

Anyone who knows me well knows how much I hate having to spend money when I don’t need to. I love a bargain and if I have a coupon on top of the sale, Yippee for me.

The husband takes my car when he goes to help a friend build his house three times a week. My car’s air conditioning works better then his car so it makes sense. So with that being said I have had to run to the store twice this past week to pick up a few things. And in both cases I have not had my reusable grocery bags with me cause they are in my car and I am driving his. Two different grocery stores have now charged me for grocery bags! And that just burns me. Why you ask, haven’t I jumped on the ‘Green’ band wagon, don’t I care about our environment, blah, blah, blah.

You would be right to think NO I haven’t jumped on the everything ‘Green’. I care about reducing garbage, I compost cause it’s a good thing and helps my gardens, and I refuse a bag if I don’t need it. I have refused to buy something if I felt it is excessively packaged. There was even a time when I mailed back unnecessary packaging (about 3 feet of saran wrap on bananas) to my local grocery stores head office to make a point. But do I support the latest customer charge of .05 cents per bag (grocery store’s only) absolutely not! First of all when the City of Toronto made a law that grocery stores had to charge their customers for bags I was out raged. Why is the city of Toronto interfering in non-government business' and where is this .05 cents going? Is it going to help with environmental efforts in each municipality? Uhh, NO it goes back to the grocery store pocket, so just how is that ‘Green’? But the stupid law went through and now all grocery stores must charge for their bags. My beef with this is I don’t live or shop in Toronto! So why is the grocery stores in my city that does not have this silly law allowed to charge for bags and why isn’t the public pissed about it? As it stands you can buy your bread at Wal Mart and not be charged for the bag but if you go to Sobey and buy the same brand of bread you will have to pay an extra .05 cents. Stupid, Stupid Stupid.

The argument is that less plastic bags will end up in our landfills, How? I like almost everyone I know reuses their plastic grocery bags for household garbage that can’t be composted or recycled. If I don’t have grocery bags to use then that means I don’t use a bag (yuck) or I now have to go buy special bags for my garbage bins. As I understand it these special garbage bags are not at all environmentally friendly and unlike some of our grocery store bags will never break down and if they do the toxins they leave behind makes the soil unusable. Stupid, Stupid, Stupid.

If our governments were truly concerned about the environment and I don’t think they are then they would go to the source of some of our garbage problems. You want to lower our garbage then hit the manufacturers with their outrageous over packaging. Think back to Christmas and the amount of packaging from your kid’s toys.

If the government really cared about being ‘Green” then they would not allow our vegetable to be packaged when not necessary. Today well in A&P (grocery store) I could not buy celery, broccoli, tomatoes, snap peas, and cucumbers that were not already wrapped in plastic wrap. Is any of the plastic wrap necessary NO. Even if I if was possible I could not take the plastic off the vegetables cause now the UPC is on the plastic wrap for the cashier to scan. So I am stuck with it or I guess I could give it to the cashier but then what, besides looking like an idiot he or she will just toss it in there cash garbage can and it will not even be recycled.

I wonder if the law makers who came up with this .05 cent bag law are the same ones who came up with the ‘no smoking in your car if you have children with you’ law. Another stupid, stupid, stupid law. Almost impossible to enforce and how does that stop the second hand smoke issue for the kids? If they have a person living in there home who smokes then they are already breathing it all the time. If the government really cared about people smoking and the health effects of first, second, and third hand smoking then they would out law cigarettes!

For crying out loud government get a backbone and stop trying to appease the industries and picking on the consumer. As a consumer we are not given much choice on how we can purchase products. And us as the consumer’s we need to start making a stronger louder point. We either stop buying overly packaged products or we return the packing to the source and let them deal with it. What I do know is we can’t just keep doing nothing but standing in the grocery line fretting if we have our cloth bag or not.