But we still have a long way to go, and the vendors need to know we care.
Back up: Two years ago, I wrote the post, "Plastic Farmers Market," about all the plastic bags and packaging at our local Temescal farmers market here in North Oakland. Shortly afterwards, I got involved with Green Sangha's Rethinking Plastics campaign, whose members table at local farmers markets, handing out cloth bags and encouraging patrons to bring their own.
To be clear: I'm not talking about reusable grocery totes and baskets. Most of the folks here in the Bay Area are conscientious about bringing those bags. The problem is that they then proceed to fill up their canvas totes with multiple plastic produce bags. Green Sangha's mission has been two-fold: encouraging shoppers to bring their own cloth produce bags (or skip putting larger items into separate bags in the first place) and encouraging markets to eliminate free plastic bags in the first place.
Now, three local farmers markets have done just that:
April 25, 2009: Berkeley Farmers' Markets First in Nation to Eliminate Plastic Bags & Packaging
May 6, 2009: Plastic Bag-Free Fairfax Farmers Market Opens
May 23, 2009: Ferry Plaza Farmers Market Goes Plastic Bag Free
I paid a visit to the Berkeley Farmers Market to see how it was going, and also chatted briefly with Ben Feldman, Berkeley's farmers market program manager. Here are a few useful things I learned:
The Berkeley Farmers Market provides corn-based compostable BioBags instead of plastic. In Berkeley, compostable bags are actually picked up curbside and composted. Still, recognizing that corn-based bags are not a perfect substitute, the Berkeley vendors charge .25 per compostable bag in order to encourage customers to bring their own reusable bags.
To encourage shoppers to reuse bags instead of taking new ones, Berkeley has always had a used bag bin at the entrance to the market where folks can drop off old bags or take bags if they forget their own.
And while most of the vendors have gone completely plastic-free...
A few unfortunately have not.
Beth Terry writes about finding alternatives to plastic and tracks her own plastic consumption and plastic waste at www.FakePlasticFish.com. Why Fake Plastic Fish? "Because if we don't solve our plastic problem, they could be the only kind of fish we have left." Please stop by and leave a comment!
