I came across http://www.ecoforeducation.com/, a very lovely, small website launched by Nicholas, a pupil at Northwood Hills Elementary School in Texas. In his website, Nicholas proposes supermarkets to contribute 1% of the total grocery bill to the local school district anytime someone agrees not to use the store’s grocery bags. “Help us to make this dream a reality.  Let’s start the Eco For Education challenge together!” Nicholas said on his site.

Nicholas is not alone. Young children from different parts of the world are taking initiatives on reducing plastic shopping bags’ environmental impacts. Here are a few examples:

A group of students from Kent Denver School lined up two senators to sponsor a bill that will eliminate plastic shopping bags in Colorado.

Enthusiastic students from 8 high schools around Dunedin, New Zealand rolled out the red carpet (literally) to celebrate people who are using reusable bags last June. They made an ‘Oscar-like’ photoshoot street theatre, and approached people on the street to swap their plastic bags for the students’ creatively designed reusable bags for free.

In Canada, students at Cecil Rhodes School produced a video promoting the banning of plastic bags, and asked the mayor for a meeting to discuss a concrete approach to reduce plastic bag usage.

Students at Sighthill Primary in the UK designed and produced their own reusable shopping bags, and raised funds for other environmental projects with the bags.

Students in Shanghai China conducted road shows at different schools, and called for reusable bag use in every family in the city.

The list goes on…

Impressive!

To some extent, they make me feel pressured. If young and innocent kids can take such initiatives to help save environment, should grown-ups like us make more conscious efforts for the cause? At the same time, I am pleased and relieved. A more eco-minded generation is growing up. They are going to make the world, which will belong to them, a greener and better place to live. May they, and all of us, follow this calling and pass it on to future generations to come.

 “To charge” or “not to charge” that is the heated question on plastic bag fees recently. When I see that on the media, I always think of my favorite grocery store chain in New Zealand, when I lived there in the 90s. The chain, called Pack N Save, charged (and is still charging) plastic bag fees in all their North Island stores. It was probably the only chain to do so at that time, but the extra charge never made Pack N Save less popular. The fresh mussel and seafood, the crispy green vegetables, the juicy kiwi fruits, and the endless choices of competitive-priced groceries at the large well lit stores always attract a large number of customers. The bag fee, if it had any impact, only encouraged more people to bring their own bags or make good use of the used cardboard boxes offered by the stores. As a poor student, I keep some of those used cardboard boxes in the trunk of my car religiously to avoid paying for the bags. I would load the groceries directly from the shopping cart to those cardboard boxes, then to the kitchen floors with the boxes. For the freshness of the foods I love, the additional efforts were never a problem. At least, it is not sufficient to make me switch to any other stores offering free bags.

Years later, when I saw the big debate regarding bag fees heating up in the U.S., I almost felt surprised by the emotional attachment to the free bags. What the fuzz? Why doesn’t everyone just bring their own shopping bags or use the cardboard boxes like people did with Pack N Save? Simple like that, I thought.  

Maybe I over simplified it, though…

Today, I read on the web that Foodstuffs, the holding company of Pack N Save decided to expand the bag fee to the South Island stores in August 2009, only to be forced to withdraw its decision 2 months later due to customer resistance. I realize, suddenly, it took a lot of courage for Pack N Save in the North Island to initiate the bag fee single-handedly 20 years ago. Luckily, they did it and they have been doing it successfully all these years.

Salute to the managers of Pack N Save, whoever decided to charge a bag fee 20 years ago, for the great example they set. I am proud that I was one of those loyal customers who helped them hold on to this environmentally conscious program.

I miss those mussels and kiwi fruits. I will definitely make a trip to Pack N Save when I visit Auckland this year, with my Ecozuri shopping bags, of course.