This Takes The Cake ( Archived) (32)

I think you are missing the point Lilli. The point I am making is the cashier didn't want to put groceries that I touched into a reusable grocery bag but she WOULD put them in a plastic bag from the store.

I prefer to bag my own groceries but the grocery stores in my area don't have a space for customers to be able to do that.

This pandemic has made us all crazy.
Our lives have turned upside down and our "normal" reactions and thoughts just aren't so normal anymore.
I remind myself to not take things personal as we all our doing the best we can in this crazy state of affairs, even when our "best" that day isn't really very good, and to give out tons and tons of grace.
Yes, things don't make sense, but it's how some are holding onto a thin strand of sanity and we can help everyone by simply smiling and giving out that grace.

It's about the cashiers attitude KB. She is worried about bringing home Covid germs to her 91 year old mother and I understand her concern. However, she should be wearing gloves but she wasn't. All day she touches groceries that customers put on the conveyer belt. She rings up the groceries and puts them in a plastic bag that the store provides yet she wouldn't put them in a reusable bag.

The purpose of using a reusable grocery bag is to help to save the environment. Oceans are full of plastic garbage that people throw into the ocean from their boats. The fish, turtles, etc. get caught in tangles of the bags and fishing lines.

Styrofoam is non-biodegradable and non-recyclable. According to Washington University, Styrofoam takes 500 years to decompose; it cannot be recycled, so the Styrofoam cups dumped in landfills are there to stay.

It takes 500 (or more) years for a plastic bag and styrofoam to degrade in a landfill. They don't break down completely but instead photo-degrade, becoming microplastics that absorb toxins and continue to pollute the environment.

Let's say you have to do a huge grocery shopping. You wind up with 15+ plastic bags of groceries. When you get home you take the groceries out of the bags throw the bags into the kitchen trash can. When your kitchen trash can is full you take it out to the large can in your driveway. A couple days later the garbage truck dumps your trash into the truck. The truck goes up and down the street doing that for every resident on that street. That process happens all over America. That is a lot of plastic bags that will fill the dump and won't be broken down for 500 years. As the bags breakdown toxins are released into the ground which eventually lead to your backyard or the farmer who grows produce that you will buy and put into a plastic bag.

If you use a reusable grocery bag over and over you never have to be concerned about toxins being released into the ground while they are in the landfill. You never have to be concerned about wildlife, fish or even whales being caught in a plastic bag.

And I wouldn't have had a nasty interaction from this cashier.