Green Guilt

It’s not easy being an earth muffin (as my brother calls me) in Memphis, but it’s impossible on Dauphin Island. Last year when we went to Gulf Shores, I made a big deal out of everyone recycling despite the absence of a recycling bin at our rental house. All week long I sorted, double checked the trash, and lectured my fellow housemates, young and old. After several phone calls I was finally able to track down a recycling drop off bin a few miles down the road. On our last day, I dropped off everything except the glass, which they did not accept. The bag of empty beer bottles, pickle jars, and mayonnaise traveled back to Memphis with us, where they were eventually recycled curbside at my house.

I decided to be proactive this year and ask our leasing agent about recycling before we headed to the beach. Surprisingly, I was informed that there was absolutely no recycling on the Island.

I thought about hauling it across the bay on the ferry, but Warren informed me that would be an all day endeavor. So I had to ask myself, “Do I want to spend an entire day of my vacation dropping off recyclables?”

The answer was no.

So, I took a deep breath, and headed to the beach knowing full well that there would be no recycling this year. At first I still rinsed my cans, bottles, and plastic and set them aside. Stephanie and I laughed everytime we broke down a cardboard cracker box or Pop-tart package. “We’ve been programmed!” we joked.

Eventually we had to actually put all of the recyclables into a trash bag and carry them down. Not surprisingly, our trash can was filling up at an alarming rate. With seventeen humans in all, you can imagine the trash we were producing.

I was very tempted to throw caution to the wind and set up my own makeshift recycle bins and enforce the rules from our vacation the previous year, but I knew that at the end of the week I would have way more empty containers and cardboard than I could possibly transport home. We had all pretty much stuffed our cars to the brim with swimsuits, towels, beach toys, laptops, DVDs, etc.

Another deep breath and I just let it go, much like I do at Memphis restaurants, bars, and other places where I know that they are not recycling because they have little to no real options for doing so at this time.

But then I was confronted with another, more horrifying issue. Plastic bags. I have been SO good about not acquiring any plastic bags. I always have a reusable bag or two in my purse and in my car. A few bags still show up at our house from time to time, mostly because Warren refuses to carry a purse with reusable bags in it, but I either reuse them or recycle them.

At the beach, Warren and I went on a number of grocery store runs. Not once did I take my purse and the reusable bags that are normally in my car were in the beach house. The worst was the day that we had to go to Super Wal-Mart—the ONLY large grocery store around, and it was 26 miles away. We had a master list of grocery items and incidentals and made one big run to last the whole week. (The Island only had a small seafood market and a small grocery store.)

As we were checking out, it occurred to me that the $300 worth of groceries we just bought was going to require more bags than I could ever fit in my purse. I asked the check out girl if they had any paper bags.

They didn’t.

“Okay then,” I said, “Please try and stuff the bags—I don’t want too many if I can help it.”

I started consolidating items and under my watchful stare, she did too. As she pulled open another bag to start filling it, it stuck. She pulled again. Then she grabbed a whole hunk of bags that appeared to be stuck together indefinitely and tossed them in the trash. My eyes literally popped out of my head. It looked like 100 bags at least.

There goes months of effort on my part! I groaned in my head as I imagined check out people everywhere casually tossing defective plastic bags into the garbage.

To add insult to injury, the checkout girl then triple wrapped a box of baking soda that had a small leak in it.

“It’s okay. Just make sure you put the part that is leaking facing up,” I said to no avail. She was too fast for me.

I intended to make everyone take our used plastic bags with them on future grocery runs, but it never panned out. By the end of the week, I was completely beat down.

At the Ship and Shore, the small grocery store on the Island, I watched as the check out girl double bagged the gallon of milk RJA and I had been sent for (in addition to beer, wine, frozen pizza, and brownies).

“The more bags the better,” I said in a way that only RJA knew I was being an ass.

“That’s what I always say,” the check out girl replied conspiratorially.


Photo borrowed from the Plastic Bags Blow Flickr pool.