Comes in a Plain Brown Wrapper

There’s a story in my family about an elderly lady who was downsizing from an apartment to a room in a retirement  home. Friends helping her pack were amazed by her many years of accumulated possessions. The most memorable (after the enormous collection of ruby glass) was a large envelope, rather fat. It was neatly labeled: 

Padded Bag of Padded Bags.

People who lived through the Great Depression were prone to save things that might come in handy later. Waste not, want not. My mother was well known in our family for saving Really Good Boxes to store her tax records in. At Christmas time she’d carefully remove the contents and use them as gift boxes. This is why one was suddenly bemused by a gift labeled Tax Records, 1971. This was followed by my mother anxiously exclaiming, “you can’t keep that box. I need it back.”

Padded bags. A Really Good Box. Whether our lives have been influenced by folks who lived through the Great Depression or by deep commitment to the environmental movement, we sometimes don’t want to part with certain things because: we might need them some day, someone else might need them, or we want them to be properly recycled. Why, just yesterday I rescued a potentially fabulous gift box and some bubble wrap in perfectly good condition. You’re impressed, I know.

This is why I smiled when I saw this Tweet a few weeks ago:

Volunteers from a retirement community in Columbia are helping the planet and saving a local food bank money.

Here’s the whole story.

Making a difference one brown bag at a time, Ashley McDowell, WMAR 2 News

Essentially, residents at Vantage Point saw brown paper bags from various deliveries piling up and decided to do something about it. 

Volunteers from a retirement community in Columbia are helping the planet and saving a local food bank money. They're called the ‘Bag Ladies and Gentlemen,’ where every Thursday volunteers from Residences at Vantage Point are making a difference one brown paper bag at a time. "To make sure that all these bags that come from the dining room with our meals and so on that are in them. That they actually end up being reused not recycled by the Howard County Food Bank,” said Jean Larson who lives at Residences at Vantage.

In a culture where we often feel inundated with the proliferation of single use materials, it can feel downright rewarding to make a dent in it, somehow. Local group Upcycled, Inc. has been partnering with local schools to collect single use plastics that they turn into benches for playgrounds. A member of my Buy Nothing group put out a call when their child’s school was participating in an Upcycled project. I can’t adequately describe the satisfaction I felt in offloading a pile of the plastic Amazon mailers* that I can’t recycle in the Blue Bin. 

FYI, Upcycled also makes raised garden beds and gorgeous coasters.

Coasters made from plastic bottle caps, image from Upcycled, Inc.

So let’s raise a toast to the Bag Ladies and Gentlemen of Vantage Point for their diligent efforts. And, if the following Tweet resonates with you, please know that you are not alone.

@kellywellread I needed a certain sized little box for a project and wouldn't you know I had the perfect size box! which is why I save all the boxes, because you never KNOW when you'll need one, right?

Village Green/Town² Comments

*Today’s equivalent of padded bags.