Boy it's a great day today. Not too warm here in the mountains but with an abundance of sunshine and a pleasing lack of bugs of the blood sucking kind.
This week was again more relaxed partly due to our glorious Fête Nationale which fell on the 24th and is a mandatory holiday here in Quebec.
I don't go to the supermarket that often. My wife handles the grocery shopping mainly because we've decided that it's not my domain. I can find my way around a hardware store but supermarkets are boring to me. I couldn't care less about a yogurt going on sale but it somehow excites my wife. Recently, the mega supermarket chains have started a trend that really pisses me off. They've decided to not give anymore plastic bags to their customers at the check out counter to apparently save the environment. Actually, if you want one to put your groceries in, they'll sell you one for five cents. More idiotic corporate PR bullshit... Throwing the ball in the consumer's yard to make him feel like he's actively doing his part to rid the world of this terrible bane we call the plastic bag. This makes as much an impact on the environment than a pimple would on Oprah's ass. ( By the way Tim Wilson has an excellent song about overexposed celebrities at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-5d5IfdYK4).
Meanwhile in these oversized markets, everything is either wrapped in plastic, or comes in plastic and by the facial expression I get from the store employees, I suspect their faces are also made of plastic. You have boxes with plastic inside, boxes with plastic outside, eggs now come in plastic, cheese is often wrapped in plastic (some of it might even be plastic) and the vast majority of containers for water, juices, spices, you name it, are now plastic made. Am I missing anything here..? It goes as far as putting plastic in plastic. Garbage bags come in a plastic bag. It would make more sense to me if they used one of the bags to package the others.I made good use of those grocery bags, mainly disposing of my doggies poop in a responsible manner. And why couldn't they have adopted degradable plastic bags..? They are abundant nowadays but I suspect that they cost just a little more to produce. This trend as also contaminated our government run liquor board, the S.A.Q. and it's outlets. They used to put your purchases, wine, beer or spirits in paper or plastic bags. But they don't do that anymore. They want you to buy a nifty designer like reusable bag, which they sell on the premises, so you think you're saving a tree, a tire or something. More fuckin' hypocrisy bullshit from a corporate minded government. Why...? Well because they don't have a bottle consignment policy for any of their products including beer. You're expected to clean them out and put them in your little recycling blue bin so that the glass will maybe find it's way to a mash up facility and then be resold to you in another fashion or product along the way. Recycling glass is much more energy consuming and wasteful than a proper
consignment policy.
I'm not against recycling but I am against the propagandist illusion maintained by our governments and big corporations that we are individually saving the planet by tossing a few bottles and some plastic containers in a separate containment unit each week. It takes much more than that I'm afraid. Michael Moore whom I equate to a social shock jock, wrote a great piece on the subject on his blog at
http://greenyes.grrn.org/2003/04/msg00052.html if you care to read it.
So the next time you bring your conscience saving reusable bag to go grocery shopping,take a good look at all the wasteful plastic wrappings and containers. If you're doing your part, why shouldn't they..?
Footnote: The green you see in the picture is not of rolling hills of grass. I stumbled upon this site of broken glass by chance one day in an industrial part of town. The white paper mixed in seems like labels which is odd. I couldn't find out anything there because I was immediately escorted to the entrance by an angry foreman who didn't appreciate the fact that I was taking pictures of this top secret installation.
