Green Musings of an Eco Resort

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

plastic grocery bags

In perhaps one of the more interesting stories in yesterdays Daily News, there was an article explaining the plastic bag situation at Pueblo Market on St. Thomas. Apparently Pueblo will not be using plastic grocery bags in the near future: "in accordance with a plea agreement for stealing electricity, the four Pueblo Supermarkets will discontinue using plastic grocery bagsonce they exhaust bags stocked nearly two years ago, according to a status report filed in V.I. Superior Court." Wow, I'm not exactly sure what to make of that statement, but the end result is pretty good! This blogger is certainly interested in how they came to the settlement, which is certainly interesting based on the initial charge of stealing electricity. Not to mention how or why a 4 store chain of grocery stores in the Virgin Islands is trying to get away with stealing electricity in the first place!

In the islands discontinuing the use of plastic grocery bags makes a lot of sense. Plastic bags that make their way into our coastal waters look quite a bit like a tasty jellyfish to our resident sea turtle population, and they've been creating a stink lately about seeing so many grocery bags on their reefs.

At Maho Bay Camps we've never carried plastic bags in our general store, but do get asked quite frequently when guests are at the register. Old habits are hard to break, and when you're custom to having everything bagged before leaving a store it can seem a bit odd when you carry your items out in a reused cardboard box or nothing at all, but that's what we offer! The best alternative of course is to bring your own bag into our store or any store. Pictured below is the selection of boxes available, if needed, in our Maho store.

1 comment:

Julia Whitmore said...

Bravo Maho. We visited last fall and stayed at the Concordia resort -- the woman who worked in the store was kind enough to sell me one of your cool string bags. People ask me about it all the time. Thanks for the inspiration.
Here's my post about bags: http://holdouts.wordpress.com/2012/03/05/bag-lady/