Green, or Pretending?

So, I’ve been working at Hunger Mountain Co-Op for awhile now. I’m a core member worker, which means that I’m a Member-Owner who works two hours every week to earn a pittance and a 6% discount on groceries.

When I first started working there, I expected everyone to be granola-crunchy types who might talk about the energy fields of the food or some bullshit. To my surprise, everyone was pretty much like me: liberal types who just happened to wanted to incorporate green buying practices (and eliminate the hand of corporations) as much as possible into their food. As I came to find out, though, that means different things to different people.

For instance, I always felt kind of guilty if I didn’t bring a cloth bag to use at the co-op. But now that I’ve been bagging for awhile, I can say with authority that while the percentage of bag-bringers is higher at the co-op than at other grocery stores, it is by no means 100%. Perhaps one in five people bring a bag to reuse. Considering the amount of cheap canvas bags that are now readily available (Shaw’s, Hannaford’s and Wal-Mart all have cloth bags for $1.00, and an organic canvas bag is available at the co-op for their cost, which is about $7.00), I find this annoying and, frankly, typically American. Other countries actually do the reverse that we do: they expect people to bring their own bags, and when they don’t, they charge their customers for the paper or plastic bags that the store provides. This makes an incredible amount of sense to me. What better way to make sure that people bring bags than to charge them when they don’t? Most people say they’ve forgotten: how much thought does it really take?

The amount of waste that goes over that conveyor belt towards me just astonishes me. Wrappers, bags, boxes, bottles…all these things that probably won’t be recycled because it’s too damn hard to find the facilities to do that here in Vermont. Or the things can’t be recycled, period. Take soy, rice, or almond milk, for instance. You can buy the refrigerated versions, but there are handy boxes of the stuff that don’t need to be refrigerated. That’s handy as hell. But, the boxes are made of the same stuff that juice boxes are made of—which you cannot recycle.

I appreciate that much of the merchandise at the Co-op is made with greener practices than their counterparts at Hannaford’s or wherever, but I would argue that it makes just as much difference for the shopper to be intelligent about their shopping habits—and that starts before they even get into the car. By taking a cloth or canvas bag along, you’re reducing waste. By making a meal plan ahead of time and sticking to the list, you’re reducing the amount of food that you’ll waste with poor planning. By thinking ahead, you can buy in bulk, which reduces packaging. Buying whole foods and actually cooking reduces waste by a ton. Sure, buying local is great, but if you’re buying wastefully, you’re not helping anyone.

I would challenge anyone (and myself) to look critically at their shopping habits. Are we buying true eco-friendly products, or ones that are just packaged to look like it? Are we truly doing all that we can to reverse the trends that are currently destroying our world? Are we making excuses that will seem all the more implausible when we don’t have any choices? From my observations at the greenest store in Montpelier, it’s clear that we still just don’t care.