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The rumor on the streets at my bookshop this week: it sounds like we’re phasing out plastic bags in the next month or so. We have, however, started stocking a wide range of reusable bags (some of them made from recycled plastic bottles!). Plastic-bag-usage is of wide and growing concern here in the UK.

The funny thing is, Brits really don’t use that many bags to begin with. One of our reusable bags declares “One Bag Less” and then goes on to mention how many plastic bags the average Brit uses in a year. I can’t remember the exact figure, but it is well under 200 bags. Which seemed low to me, coming from America, where a single trip to the grocery store could run you ten bags or more, and a day at the mall easily seven.

All this talk about reducing (one of the three R’s!), though, has made me very conscious of my own plastic bag usage. If I’m taking a quick run down to the shop for lunch supplies, I try always to bring the classic Spiegel “unshopping” bag I inherited from my mom (have I mentioned this bag before on this blog? I’m having the strangest sense of deja vu), and I’m not picky about carrying things that don’t fit by hand. When Ben and I go to the bookstore, we generally hand-carry our purchases outside and then stop at the bus stand to put them in our bags. And when we do use a lot of plastic bags (shopping trip at the base, anyone?) we keep the bags and use them as bin liners.*

Anyway, if anyone wants a sweet reusable bag from the shop, let me know–Christmas is coming up, after all! We have the “One Bag Less” design, which is natural cotton-coloured with the text block on a sky-blue screened-on background; a design featuring an array of objects, from books to dollies to clothes (natural, pictures in black and white); the recycled-bottle bags in bright green; and my personal favourite, which has the old-potato-sacking look. After all, just because we fought for our independence from the British doesn’t mean we can’t follow their reusable-bag lead!

*Unless they’re wet. I will never forget the time that we in ND shoved some wet plastic bags into our plastic bag keeper thingy, and they grew mold and smelled awful. Yuck. Wet plastic bags sometimes get thrown, but if there’s room, they get turned inside out and left to dry!