bag it

I woke up a gusty wind moment before 5 am with a nightmare of plastic running through my mind. Last night a few of us went to the showing of the documentary Bag It that was geared to help push the state wide ban on single use plastic bags. We had a table out front and then did a little spiel on what the co-op is doing about single use plastic. To prepare for this 2 minute run down, I learned that the co-op has never, or at least since 1994 the historical mark of when one of collective managers started working here, ever provided new single use plastic handled bags. I think that is completely rad! And that little piece of information is pushing me to do even more than what we are doing. It's also pushed me further into reminding me why I am on this little journey. I want to add that our buyers do an amazing job at making sure that we don't carry things that are overly packaged, like a bag in a box wrapped in plastic probably won't be in our store.

As part of my job at the co-op, I order store supplies. I've been doing it a little over a year now, and I love being able to do it. It has included sifting through all the green washing propaganda that passes by me. Have I mentioned how much I really dislike green washing, or the capitalistic idea that we will buy our way out of this environmental nightmare? I will save this for another rant, but people were asking me to carry compostable plastic bags for produce and bulk. I felt like some kind of chemist some days looking over all these crazy bio-plastic chemical chains; all of them claiming to be the best choice for the health of our environment and our bodies.

Eventually we were able to get some help from one of our HOOs (hands on owner/member how volunteers a few hour a week for a discount at the co-op). He and the woman he is married to are Master Recyclers. I had no idea that there were such things. So they took the bags we were looking at, mostly BioBag and Trellis Earth, to the Department of Planning and Sustainability here in Portland and got us some answers. We were also in search of answers about whether it was worth it to switch over to compostable cups and such for coffee and what about cello bags anyway.

The answers about compostable anything currently available was not encouraging. See, most can not be composted in people's backyard compost piles. They take high heat industrial composters that is not available for residential services. Portland has yard waste composting, but that's it thus far. Most of the other items Metro doesn't even take because of the high methane released in the breakdown. The suggestion from the people that work with these plastics everyday say that the best choice is to use items with high post consumer recycled content and that can then be recycled once again.

So I changed my supplier to one that, seems at least, to understand what I am trying to do. So our bags for produce and bulk are currently 100% post industrial consumer recycled plastic and #2 recyclable. The plastic tubs are 50% and #1 recyclable. The complaint is that the tubs don't hold up as well in the dishwasher. My response is that plastic containers should not go into the dishwasher, or microwave either as far as that goes. This is one area that we can control the levels of bpa and other toxic and very harmful chemicals leach out and get into our bodies. The high heat is one way to increase the levels released for our absorption. And if there are any scratches or scrapes on them, this exponentially increases the releases of the dna changing chemicals. And just let me say, if you are transphobic at all, you should eliminate all plastics from your life!

I want to go back and speak a little more on bio-plastics. They suck on a few other levels. First, even if you can have cello or BioBags break down in your backyard, do you then want to put those chemicals on the foods that your are growing? This is what most of us use our home compost for so that we have good nutrients for our soil. I don't want bio-plastics on my food. So then we also may want to ask, if we have high levels of bio-plastics in the city compost, where is that compost going? Plastic is still in the name and chemists are still creating them, so they are not purely plant products as they may want us to believe.

The more troubling aspect, for me, on bio-plastics... Yes most of it is corn, but can also include other starches like potato, and tapioca. The corn bothers me for several reasons: first, its one of the top 4 subsidized crops grown in this country, and because of this subsidy and the wonderful fuck the worldability of the World Band and IMF the countries that really depend on corn as a food, get the royal shaft. The US sets the market price so low, subsidizes it's big corn farmers so that the industrial animal farmers can get cheep food for the livestock (who shouldn't be eating corn), and then the unsubsidized farmers around the world can't compete. I guess there is only a first, because all the other reasons are chain reactions of that first. What is included in that subsidized corn issue, is that is land that could be used to grow food for people.... diverse foods for lots of people. The corn that people grow around the world, until the US has demanded that we get cheaper and cheaper meat for fast-food, is for people. Its a staple food like rice and beans. Its not the kind of corn we have gotten use to. Its corn with high protien and other nutritents, and may I say so very delicious! When I have eaten the corn of S. America, it filled me and sustained me for hours of walking and roaming. And it is beautiful!

This is what we will loose if we let the monocrops and gmo motherfudgers take away the ability to grow good foods. The picture that is missing is the purple corn drink I consumed as I walked around with a big ear of corn, in stunned amazement at the colorfull foods that surrounded me at a market where most people were buying t-shirts and other textiles. And I can only imagine the look on my face based on the looks I got as I interacted with folks that day. This is what I am fighting for... real food!