i work at a natural foods cooperative, and we encourage our customers to re-use shopping bags, or to save used shopping bags and bring them in as a donation for us to re-use with other customers. yesterday morning, a person came and dropped off a shit load of paper bags, but the majority of the bags were FAST FOOD paper bags, like wendy's and crackdonald's, and shit like that...there were (i shit you not) two trash-bags full of small paper bags from fast food. there was one paper grocery bag full of other paper grocery bags; those are okay, as we can use them to put groceries in for people. but FAST FOOD BAGS? WTF? we are a health food store...i'd say at least 60% of our customer base are vegetarians and vegans. why the FUCK would we want to put food for people into bags which once held food that came from factory farms/big corporations? we're kinda the anti-fast food, and we're anti-factory farm as well. we're also anti-big corporation. i believe that food has energy in it, and personally i would not want to put my wholesome food in a bag that once had a big mac in it...needless to say, that big mac came from a bad source, where food from my store all comes from clean sources. i don't want the energy of the bad food ruining my good food, dammit. and i'm sure co-op customers would agree. i'm sure the lady meant well, but i didn't feel comfortable keeping those bags (we didn't need small bags anyway, we usually only need big, paper grocery bags), so i brought all the fast food bags home and stashed them in my garage until next recycling day. but that was a lot of fast food bags she brought in. i'd hate to see the inside of her arteries...
i know what you mean.. i have my own cooking pan.. NO MEAT! is allowed to be cooked in it. my mom made the mistake of cooking meat in my old pan.. and i was so upset over it she bought me a new one. it just ruins it.. sure it can be washed.. but it's just never the same. i personally would not want to put my groceries into a bag that came from a fast food place knowing that meat had been in the bag before i got it.
I wonder if the person who brought in all those bags knew exactly what they were doing to you and your store. They might have known what you stand for and decided to be a jerk.
If the bags did not have grease on them, so what? I'm sure walmart bags of mainline supermarket bags have been reused by HFS. I know the Earth did. BUT we also had a community recycling center so if a bag was questionable, out it went as compost/ mulch for the garden or simple recycling. Don't assume everything ina HFS is all sweetness and light either: some of the packaging is the worst ever (septic boxes are a bear to recycle) and organics are picked by underpaid itenerent workers, too, and shipped all over the country in polluting trucks just like main line stores.
when i asked people at the co-op, and people on here, i got such varying opinions on the subject, that i decided there really is/was no right or wrong answer to the question. some of my friends said they wouldn't really care, while others were vehemently opposed to the idea of using a former fast food bag, or even a wal mart bag or something like that -- that they'd rather see that sort of thing go to the recycling plant. i acted on my initial instincts which were that for one, the bags were in the way -- our cashiers had to stumble and trip over them to get to the counter, and our store is small and we have limited space as it is, and there was no where that we could have possibly stored them. plus, a lot of the bags did, in fact, have grease on them, or smelled of the fast food that had once been in them. this, i knew, would not bode well with a great many of our customers. to be fair, i really do think the person who brought them in meant well, but i wished they had maybe called ahead first to see if we needed them/could use them. for the record, i know that not all products sold at all health food stores are completely pure, but as a cooperative, we try to be extremely picky about what we carry. not to get defensive about my place of work, but i'm proud of the care my co-op's merchandisers take in making sure we have clean products which weren't produced/grown/picked in a questionable manner. i'm sure it's not always a sure thing, but i know my co-op does the best it possibly can....the things getting shipped by truck is unfortunately just a byproduct of our society. people want what isn't immediately available in their area, so the demand for products to be shipped to a community is high. that is the unfortunate thing which is out of anyone's control, really. well, that's not true, but people tend to be lazy about this sort of thing. so as far as the fast food bags go, i guess there is/was no right or wrong answer. some people didn't appear to care, while some people were very opposed. i can see both points of view now, even though i personally wouldn't want to have my purer foods in a fast food bag. the space issues alone i think were enough for the rest of the staff to agree that we didn't need to keep them around.
Well, but at least she was trying... she made the effort to save all those bags & bring them in somewhere that she knew recycled bags. That's gotta count for something, right? In future, maybe you could say or post that you need large-ish size bags, like those you would get from a grocery store or Target. That ought to help prevent this from happening again. love, mom
Hey, I'm a vegatarian myself and a health fanatic so I personally would not want my food in a bag that came from a fast food place....NO WAY!!! I totally agree with you!!!
