I have a wonderful newspaper carrier. She arrives in the dead of night, reliably, to sling an N&O out her car window and then disappear back into the darkness.
It is a thankless job really. The only time folks think much about their newspaper carriers is when the paper is late, or doesn’t show up at all. Then they get all in a huff and complain and moan. Usually they don’t even know the name of this mystery late night visitor, and couldn’t care less if the slight they feel is due to a death in the family, a car accident, or an alarm that didn’t go off on time.
Years ago we had a friend that delivered the paper and the Sunday edition was huge. It needed to be bagged and that alone took him over an hour. So we would occasionally meet him up behind the post office Saturday at midnight and bagging papers became a social event. It gave me a perspective on the life of the newspaper carrier. Everyone who gets a paper should have to deliver them a few times.
And then there was my brother’s paper route. He did that one on a bike, and occasionally he would have a Boy Scout event, or some such thing, and I would run his route for him. I loved it.
But that is not the topic here. Each day my paper comes in a plastic bag. It used to be that only on wet days the papers were bagged (and that fat Sunday edition with all it’s sections.) But now there is a bag everyday, a bag that would go in the trash, but I can’t bring myself to throw away a plastic bag each and every day. So I save them. I take one and stuff it with all the others until it is stuffed full. Then I hang it on the mailbox in hopes the carrier will take them back.
Eureka! It turns out, not only is she happy to reuse them, she has to buy these wasteful bags with her own money. They are required and they are not provided by the newspaper. So, she is very grateful for my obsessive behavior. It saves her money, and you don’t make a lot of that by delivering newspapers. Most carriers have a second job they go to after they catch a few hours of sleep.
What if we all did this? Can we start a movement of bag savers? It is not really that much trouble and think of the benefits. Happy carrier, less plastic waste, less carbon footprint.
Will you start today?
1 comments:
Another note for saving plastic. We love seltzer and drink quite a bit of it. I found and lobbied (badgered) my family prior to Christmas a perfect solution to the plastic bottles to the recycle center dilema. The Sodastream. Carbonate your own tap water and never again have to buy a plastic bottle of seltzer. You can also make sodas and tonic, though I am not a consumer of those things. Seltzer in 3 seconds!
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