How to save the world in 1 easy step

Step 1: No more plastic bags from the supermarket.

Once you start paying attention to it, those plastic bags will be everywhere! When we moved out here, a month's worth of trips to the grocery store left us with what felt like a life's supply of plastic grocery bags. So our first step was to reuse those bags instead of adding to the collection with each new trip. But that wasn't really satisfying. We had already started using a linen bag when walking to the grocery store here in town, which has the added benefit of showing some hometown pride for the town I grew up in. In the car we had this black bag we got as a gift from a mattress store. When we went to Indiana the last time, they were selling linen bags at the store there as well, and we got two of them. They are about the size of the black bag, but not pictured here. Those three bags usually provide plenty of room for all of our groceries. But you probably noticed that handsome orange box in the picture as well. I added the apple for size reference.

These kinds of collapsible boxes are really nothing new. My family has been using one for as long as I can remember, and you can get them in a lot of supermarkets in Germany. The one we have now is from The Container Store. Unlike the bags, it wasn't free or really really cheap, but it wasn't overly expensive either. It's great for transporting items that don't bag well, like yogurts and bread. And with the box and the three big bags, there only is one problem left. Bagging the meat. We still use plastic bags for that, recycling the ones we already have, purely for hygienic reasons. Anyway, using our own bags is not at all inconvenient, I even find it easier to carry our stuff inside now. And when I think of all the people that use up so many bags every day, just from the store where we shop, and think about all the other stores in the state, and in the country. And then about how many bags that makes in a week. In a month. In a year. Well, you get the idea. It's a stupendous amount and to reduce that number to near zero is within everyone's power. Easily. Nonetheless, we have yet to see another person using their own bags at the grocery store. As a matter of fact, we see tons of people using two bags. Plastic AND paper. Why anyone would do that is completely beyond me.

So in observance of Earth Day, go and get yourself some reusable bags, preferably cloth ones, and not ones made from plastic, even if it's recycled. If you can't find one in a local store, there are tons of them online. It's too late right now for me post links. Or get a nice collapsible box. It will make you feel better every time you shop.

Sickle and Chocolate

Back when I was a kid, there were two Germanies, and we would get packages from friends in the East every once in a while. Just like the packages we sent over there, they would contain various kinds of sweets: cookies, gummy bears and chocolate. Unfortunately for us kids, we much preferred the Western candy to the Socialists' concoctions. There was a strange taste to it, and I especially remember the gummy bears, which tasted unlike any gummy I ever had, and the chocolate, which wasn't entirely unfamiliar. I recall the cookies being alright, but cookies are one of my favorite foods, so who knows how good they really were. Back to the chocolate though, it tasted a lot like some of the very cheap varieties we had on our side of the Iron Curtain. Not so much of that creamy richness and delicious cocoa, but more of an assault of sugar that did not melt smoothly in your mouth but dissolves into what feels like tiny crystals of sugar.
Anyway, years passed, the memory of the Socialist chocolate drifting deeper and deeper into my subconsciousness. Until one day, I took a trip right to the very heart of capitalism and, against my better judgment, partly out of terrible despair, bought a regular little bar of Hershey's chocolate. Maybe it was the fact that it is so widespread and widely loved in the US. Maybe it was just curiosity. But what I know for certain, is that it tasted a lot like what I remember the chocolate from the German East to taste like. Especially with regards to that grainy sugar taste and texture. And just recently I realized the irony in all this. That the system that embraces free markets and enterprise, and believes in their superiority in bringing out the greatest in human endeavors, and the system that stands for the exact opposite of that, that believes that human endeavor is best carefully regulated and controlled for the greater good, both produce the same kind of funny-tasting chocolate.