BAGGING BAGS

I think now that I am thirty I might be losing my mind.

I had a quiet weekend. Spring is almost (a girl can dream) in the air and I fancied a spring clean. I didn't get very far. Bree Van De Kamp I am not.

But I did set the bags free. Plastic Bags. The kind they hand out in supermarkets. HUNDREDS of them. Shoved into the small space between the fridge and the work surfaces.

It was one of those jobs you just WISH you hadn't started.

And while I fished the bags out one by one, burying myself under them (WARNING: grown up women can suffocate when buried under this bag) they began to make me feel....

Guilty.

1. Guilty for spending so much money on groceries and clothes. (How many ££ did each bag represent?)
2. Guilty because each bag will take TWENTY YEARS to biodegrade*.
3. Guilty because the production of these ink-covered bags can't be doing the environment any good*.

*Now I'm not an environmentalist. I recycle, use energy efficient lightbulbs where I can (note to self: must try harder) and I try not to waste (too much) water. But if we'd managed to collect soooo many bags in such a short space of time, what does everyone else do with them?

I think there should be a national "re-cycle the shopping bag campaign" before we're tripping up on them in the streets. Or better still, we should get a penny back for every bag returned to the store for recycling. I gave mine to a local organic shop that is happy to reuse them for their customers - but even they were drowning in the beasts.

And don't get me started on the national obsession (is it law here?) to pick up your dogs poo and put it in a plastic bag?! In the summer I was cycling along the beautiful Kennet & Avon Canal and saw a plastic bag tossed into a tree. It's contents - doggy poo. DUR. Wouldn't it have been better to leave said poo where it was? It'll disappear in a few weeks!!!

I said I was losing it.

Bluksemde Sakkies.