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Grocery Backpack



 went on my first grocery shopping trip today, because as amazing as yesterday's food related adventures were, I can't afford to eat out all day every day (though I did go to Brown Cow for ice cream tonight, and Bear Claw ice cream is amazing). I learned the interesting way that Chicago is among the places in the US that charges for plastic bags. The point of this is to decrease their overall use in an attempt to mitigate environmental damages. According to a WTTW article from 2018, the bag tax was started in 2017. Before charging for bags, 80% of Chicagoans used plastic bags. At the time of the article, that number had dropped to 54%.

When I went to get groceries I didn't know that, but I did know I would be walking, so I emptied out my backpack and brought that with me. My plan was to put as many of the bags as possible inside of my backpack to make it easier to carry everything back. The cashier asked if I needed to buy any bags, and I said no, thinking she meant to be asking if I wanted to buy reusable bags. She became increasingly incredulous as my groceries added up, and I learned about the bag tax. Still, I stuck to my plan, because I figured it wouldn't matter if I was tetrising in my groceries without the addition of the plastic bags. That was kind of a mistake. Cleaning the juice that had leaked from my package of chicken into my backpack wasn't super fun. In the future I'll bring something to wrap meat in (that's what she said).

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