Weekly Random Green Observations

After making the cashier at Safeway roll his eyes at me in the express check out lane because I asked for paper instead of plastic, I began to look at all the green around me.

It started with plastic bags. I preached the importance of my canvas grocery bag to my friends and gave them the facts about how you can’t recycle plastic shopping bags. You can only reuse them. My friends gave me the same look as the cashier.

Simply asking for paper bags over plastic is a necessary step if you care about the state of the environment — even if it bothers a cashier or two. You can also take the paper bags back to the grocery store if you’re not into buying a canvas bag (which is only about $1 per bag).

But what if you want to reuse the plastic bags you have? Target puts its ideas for reuse right on the bag.

Here are its 10 ways to reuse a Target bag (printed on the side of each one):

1. Tiny Trash Can Liner
2. Doggy Duty
3. Water Balloon
4. Road Trip Rubbish
5. Soggy Laundry
6. Ice Pack
7. Toiletry Tote
8. Kitty Litter Liner
9. Tomorrow’s Lunch Bag
10. Care Package Padding

If you’re like me, you already use these tips in your everyday life and don’t even realize it.

My next observation came while I was watching the NCAA tournament — or the many repetitive commercials that air during timeouts.

One advertisement stuck out in my mind: Chevy’s hybrid Tahoe.

The gargantuan Tahoe recently won the Greenest Car of the Year award from Green Car Journal.

Here is just one of the commercials, in which children learn about the car and about hybrids:



These were my observations. Look around you, and you'll see green all around, too.