Over the weekend we visited the natural foods grocery Return to Eden in our ongoing quest to find some truly meltable vegetarian cheeses. It's been awhile since I've been to R2E, and I was nostalgic walking by the food bins because I remembered all the times I'd held that little lever down and watched the contents (carob-covered macadamia nuts, organic cranberries, yogurt-dipped raisins...mmm....) flow into a plastic bag.

What?! A plastic bag!? Say it ain't so.

A lot has changed for me since those long-ago days when I lived nearby and was a frequent shopper at R2E. Even though I still wanted the snacks, there's now no way I'm going to use a plastic to carry them in. We found some cheese-like substances to try, got a big old bottle of that castille soap we like and a bottle of natural bug spray that smelled almost as good as the soap. We got some aluminum foil made from recycled materials, a product I had never seen before but was happy to find, and headed for the check-out sans snacks.    

At the register, I handed over my plastic to manager Peter Rooney and at the same time, asked him about his. Turns out he's already on it. Return to Eden has a six or seven week supply of the little snack-sized plastic bags left and when they're gone, they're gone.



Rooney will be replacing the current bags with an item from Trellis Earth Products that they claim (right there on the package and here, on their website) is 100% biodegradable and will not harm the environment. I tried to verify that claim on an internet search, but found mostly industry web sites and something about the Shroud of Turin that I still haven't figured out.  

Anyway, the grocery bags at R2E are printed with a similar announcement, "100% DEGRADABLE: This environmentally responsible plastic bag is based upon oxo-biodeble technology and will first degrade, then biodegrade in the presence of moisture, micro-organisms, oxygen & soil."

Well, whaddaya know? If it looks like a plastic bag (and it does) and it works like a plastic bag (and it does) it might be just the thing to wean shoppers off those globs of real plastic that are swirling around in our ocean at this very moment, poisoning the plankton, then the little fish, then the big fish, then the people who eat the little fish and the big fish... 

Most of what I've learned (which is precious little) about the bioplastic polymers the bags are made from says that this material will compost in a commercial composting station. I think the likelihood of them finding their way to such a destination in Georgia is extremely low. What will really make products such as these compostable bags a viable alternative to the plastic we're now drowning in is if they will compost in the little backyard piles that are springing up all over the country. Rooney gave me a sample of each bag so I could throw them in my compost and find out for myself what happens when they are exposed to oxygen, soil and micro-organisms.

I'll let you know what happens.