Rounding up Urban Tumbleweeds

Urban tumbleweeds (better known as plastic bags) ride like the wind because they ride the wind, but I recently roped a couple of these elusive objects.

Unlike regular tumbleweeds, which have a key place in American folklore and certain ecosystems, urban tumbleweeds have very few positives going for them. They are made of plastic and designed for a single use, and they litter the landscape and pollute the environment.

In fact, I may have had one of the only good experiences ever associated with an urban tumbleweed. On a trip last week, I found I had forgotten to bring a container for the remains of the fruit I'd brought and eaten. (I wanted to compost the pieces, but I wouldn't be able to do so for several days, so I needed something to put them in.) That's when an urban tumbleweed happened to fly by.

The airborne bag seemed like a good option for a makeshift compost container. However, with the wind blowing hard, I wouldn't be able to catch it without some help. Luckily, the bag caught on a bush. When I ran to get it, I found another plastic bag right next to it. That gave me a double-lined compost transport and took two urban tumbleweeds out of the environment, so this modern Western has a happy ending.

Well, at least, I got to ride off into the sunset with my compost.

Urban Tumbleweeds

In recent years, many different landscapes and environments have seen the introduction and rise of a new species. It's invasive, ugly, and even deadly. It's known as the urban tumbleweed, and everyday, people contribute to its increasing numbers. Urban tumbleweeds are more commonly called plastic bags.

Last year, a class of students at Northern Arizona University created a campaign (called Urban Tumbleweed Destruction) to urge those at their university to use reusable bags instead of plastic ones. The following YouTube video records their plastic bag fashion show, protest, and rendition of Blowin' in the Wind. Check it out, and then, visit my earlier post about reusable bags.

It's in the Bag

Hopefully, you are already on the reusable-shopping-bag side of good and evil (well, maybe that's a little dramatic). If you're not, seriously consider making the move.

Besides requiring oil for their production, plastic shopping bags get annoying when they start building up in your home (if you are collecting them to be recycled), go into landfills with the trash, or blow around on the wind. If you buy some reusable bags, you'll get to sidestep these annoyances and, sometimes, receive a discount on your shopping (Safeway gives a three-cent discount per bag). Plus, the planet will feel better knowing it has fewer plastic bags to deal with and less demand for oil.

However, the traditional reusable shopping bag is not really the focus of this post. Whether you use those bags or not, you have likely heard about or seen them. Less known is the reusable produce bag. It may receive less attention, but it will help you earn additional Brownie points with the planet and use even fewer plastic bags.

Even if you are using reusable shopping bags, you might be bringing home some plastic bags that you use to contain fruits and vegetables. The cotton produce bags made by Ecobags are great. Mine are still going strong after two years, and checkers at the store constantly ask where I got them. They are lightweight, so they don't add a lot of extra money to your by-the-pound purchases, and they are thin enough that checkers can look through them to see the little plastic identification stickers on the produce.

Ecobags' produce bags are available at Amazon.com. You can also visit their Web site by clicking here.

Ecobags also makes reusable shopping bags if you are in the market for those as well.