Wednesday, February 21, 2007

An Excellent Suggestion

The Patient One (aka The Engineer, The Triathlete), who is married to The Cute One, wrote a great post in 2005 about Peak Oil. It emphasizes that we should focus our collective energy on finding renewable sources or power. I highly recommend reading it.

This morning on NPR, they announced that IKEA will be charging 5 cents for plastic bags. Their reusable cloth bags will only cost 59 cents. I have no idea how most Americans will react, but I think it's great. It will reduce the number of plastic bags they use. I'm accustomed to this system, because it's what they do in Germany in every single grocery store. IKEA will be donating the proceeds from sales of the 5 cent bags to a conservation group.

It's a small thing, but it's not hard to keep cloth bags in your car for grocery shopping. And it will seriously reduce the amount of waste we produce. And the cloth bags can carry heavier stuff, without worrying that they will break!

By the way, The Patient One hasn't updated his blog since sometime in 2006, because he's been focused on their travel blog. But we should encourage him at least to report any musings about oil and energy, etc., he might have in future....

1 comment:

Triviales Wissen said...

I keep meaning to take our blue IKEA bag with me to HEB. I tend to walk there a couple of times a week, since it's just a few blocks away, and could easily do without adding to the plastic bags that we just recycle anyway...