Thursday, May 22, 2008

F#@%** Baggies

Those tiny Innocent looking plastic baggies are everywhere. Folding tops. Zipped tops. Teany-weany. Big enough to hold a horse.

In my kitchen I have an entire drawer dedicated to waxed paper, tin foil, trash bags and those little baggies. A few new bags have recently slid into the drawer.

We all know that wasteful plastics are essentially not good. The create harmful pollution in the manufacturing process. Can leach into our food. Once they are discarded they will stay on this earth for somewhere close to a glazillion years.

It is no secret that I use cloth bags for gift wrap. These bags can be used over and over and over again without creating any trash. What about cloth baggies for snack too?

"Duh", to quote my nine year-old self. I was wrapping gifts in reusable plastic bags but I was wrapping my kid's snacks in disgusting plastic.

I dug around in my gift bag collection to find a few small cloth bags to be promoted into the kitchen. Two girlie-type bags and one more Little Guy-friendly bag.

These new baggies are used everyday. Pretzels and snack time. A washed apple for the school picnic. Popcorn smuggled into the movie theater. After they have been used, I just toss them into the washing machine.

Easy smeashy!

Note to my friends Kim and Heidi who have called me to ask about how to make their children's lunchboxes greener. I know I promised to make a couple of snack baggies for you. That would require figuring out my new $9.99 sewing machine and getting off of my butt. Soon, OK maybe soonish I will get on that project.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

We "made over" our lunchwrapa as well.

My Mom sewed up something kind of like this:

http://www.reusablebags.com/store/lunch-bags-sandwich-bags-c-4_13.html

The kids LOVE them!