eco-friendly grocery bags

Ben mentioned the other day that we should start looking on line for some alternative to those horrible plastic shopping bags we get by the dozens at the grocery store. We don't litter, so none of ours are festooning trees and power lines across the country, but they do pile up in the cupboards and drawers until we give up and throw a bunch of them away.

I thought Ben had a good idea, so I hopped on line to see what I could find. I think I googled something like "eco-friendly grocery bags." I got over 350 hits, and started to check them out. As you might imagine, what I found ran the gamut from nylon bags to string bags to " Eco-friendly hemp / organic cotton blend" bags. At the low end of the price spectrum, the nylon bags retailed for $4.95 plus S&H. The high end, was, well, just ridiculously high. The average price was about $15.00. I do want to be a friend to the earth and all that, but I am unemployed.

When Julie and I were at the mall a couple of days ago, we saw a rack of sale merchandise in front of a store called "icing by claire's," which looked exactly like a "claire's" to me, if you know what those are. We had noticed some really cute lightweight cotton back-to-school book bags. Normally $12.00, they were on sale for $5.00. I particularly liked the bags with a small repeating apple pattern that came in several different color combinations, while Julie favored the owl pattern. We hadn't bought them at the time, but after doing my homework on line, I decided to go back and get some. I ended up buying nine bags (three in each of the three color combos) and Julie bought a couple of owl bags.

I went to the grocery store later in the day, and brought them along, and I am well-pleased with my purchase. Now I just hope we can remember to bring them when we go grocery shopping. That might be the trickiest part.