I Jumped On The Green Train… and A Green Giveaway

I’m not exactly a trend setter by any means. I’m more of a trend follower. In this case and just like I was with wearing black nail polish, I’m a delayed trend follower.

You could say it was peer pressure that finally pushed me over the edge. I read a couple posts of Erin’s at The Mother Load in April that just left me feeling like a complete jack wad.

The first one was titled Going Green For Spring. She offered some green tips for us to use. There were some really simple tips on there that I could and should totally be doing. However I don’t because I’m exactly what she said, lazy. I can turn off the water when I’m brushing my teeth. I can turn off the lights when I’m not in a room. I can unplug appliances when they’re not in use… I just didn’t think about what I was doing and what kind of effect it has on wasting energy. Thanks to Erin, I have been making an effort to do those things now. The one that really stood out though was that I need to stop using plastic bags. Mainly because she emphasized how moronic it is to use them. Again… laziness on my part and I didn’t want to pay for the reusable bags that I probably would forget to use anyway. There’s many more tips on there, so you should definitely check out that post.

Then on Earth Day she wrote a post titled Happy Earth Day! What kind of bagger are you?. She had staked out in her minivan at a few different local grocery store parking lots and went all paparazzi on complete strangers who were guilty of having plastic bags in their possession. Then she posted those photos that she took and poked fun at them. It was really quite a funny and entertaining post, but I learned a couple things about myself. First, we don’t live that far from each other. So it could have been me that she snapped a shot of if I had ventured over to her neck of the woods to do my grocery shopping. Embarrassing! Thank goodness that I don’t ever visit her area! Second, it turns out that I’m a “I Don’t Even Try To Hide It, I Even Enter The Store Without Reusable Bags Bagger”. Shame shame shame on me.

So that was that. The next time that I went to the grocery store after reading that last post, I bought some reusable bags for the first time. My proof..

I’m happy to report that I’ve used them every time I’ve been to the store since. Which happens to only be twice. But I promise I will make it a lifelong habit.

Thank you Erin for schooling me and making me feel like a bad citizen. I already feel better about myself for doing my part in saving the planet. ;)

So as I’m writing this post and linking up to Erin’s blog, I found out that she just so happens to be hosting a giveaway with her friend Lara. Their giveaway is a personalized reusable bag and a set of three reusable produce bags. She even gave a code to use to buy one at 10% off if you don’t feel like waiting until the end of the giveaway on Tuesday May 18th. So head on over to Erin’s if you want to enter.

Thanks again Erin for bringing the green out of me!