Protagi-green: Parts 1 and 2

Just try and make me care about global warming, you bastards.

Sometime, between July and August, my social conscience came out of hibernation. Thus, I present to you Protagi-green: Slowly Greening Marty, or How to Get that Self-Righteous Glow (In Many Steps). Each week I'll try to make at least one change that will reduce my impact on the environment, and the wee cuddly beasties that live there.

Change 1: Ditching the Plastic Bags.

Plastic bags are the devil. There's really no way of getting around it, plastic bags choke the environment, take forever to degrade, and are just plain ugly. However, those bastards are useful. They're light but strong, you don't have to remember to pack enough when you go grocery shopping, and they can be used again as disposable lunch bags and as cat poo disposal units. And everyone is keen to give you some. If I don't have your hands on an item and are desperately stuffing it in your reusable bag, the eager bag jockeys will put it in a plastic bag. Even if the only thing you couldn't fit in your cloth bag... was a bag of milk. Which comes with its own bag. But I don't blame them. They get paid dick all, they have to impress the boss, and they could be made redundant at any time if my local Provigo decides to follow the discount route and cut the amenity of the bagger. And dropping a snotty "Thanks, but I prefer *sniff* that you use my re-usable bag instead, it's better for our precious environment." is not an option, because that makes you a dick. So, my solution is to eagerly toss them a bag, with a friendly "Here's some bags! Thanks!" and help put some of the stuff in. They seem cool with that, it doesn't make me sound like an enviro-dick, and I've really cute down on my plastic bag use. I even backpacked my liquor home from the SAQ.

So, what bags have I been using? I had my eye on these, but they don't deliver to Canada, and it seemed wasteful when I already had a bunch of perfect grocery bags kicking around anyway. So, I use one of my flowery totes made from some wacky plasticized floral print fabric, or that President's Choice bag obnoxious Galen Weston wanted me to buy, all good choices for grocery shopping. The benefit to having reusable bags is that they offer the shoulder-slinging option that plastic bags so sorely. I also have that Everlasting Bagstopper waiting for straps so that it can be stuffed in my backpack for those impromptu purchases. Unfortunately, I'm having some cash flow issues, and I think I'll just have to steal parts from the old clothes that weren't good enough to make it to Value Village. Thrifty and ecologically responsible... yes. But hardly pretty.

Part 2: Green Mah Kitteh!

See that beast of a cat up there? That's what Pistache looks like. Pistache probably takes up a small country's worth of carbon emissions on his own. Because Herr Chubfat needs a special food, I can't really green his meals. He drinks tap water like the rest of us. What else am I supposed to do? Buy him locally-made, artisan-crafted, ecologically-sound ceramic food bowls? A bamboo litter box? Sometimes, things just go too far. So, my admission is that his litter box is a plastic behemoth from the local pet store, probably made in China. And his food bowls were from the Dollar Store, probably the product of some crazy lead-spewing Chinese factory. Because he's just crapping in the litter box, and any kind of nice bowls would be destroyed by my clumsiness. So, I can only green his litter. And thus we started to use Swheat Scoop. It isn't strip-mined from the earth, it still clumps, and it won't cause lung problems for my kitty. And Pistache surely doesn't need any more problems. Now, would looking into holistic pet dandruff fall under "taking it too far?" Pistache loves Kaffe Fasset socks.