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Excerpts

1

It’s in the Bag

Today it was Dad’s turn to shop for groceries for dinner, so he took Elliott and Lucy with him to Wholesome Choices Market, the kids’ favorite grocery store. Lucy loved going there to see all the beautiful displays of fresh fruit, vegetables, and flowers that came from farmers nearby.

Elliott liked to go to the grocery store because they always had creepy-looking fish on ice in the fish department. Elliott pretended that the fish were talking to one another, and he made up funny voices for them to match their mouths. “Hello, Mr. Salmon, how are things upstream today?” he would say. “Just fine, thank you, Mr. Trout,” he’d reply in a deep voice. Lucy thought everything about fish was icky even if they did have funny voices. Dad agreed. He said he had a hard time eating things with a face on them. And those fish sure did have faces. Weird ones!

With that, Dad gave the kids jobs. He said it was like a treasure hunt for ingredients. “Lucy, you go find a package of spaghetti and also a jar of sauce called marinara. And be sure to get the one that says ‘organic’ on the package. Do you remember how to spell that?”

Lucy smiled and said, “Yup, and I know what it means, too: it’s made without the yucky stuff!”

Dad just smiled and turned to Elliott. “Elliott, I want you to go get the lettuce, and along with making sure it says ‘organic,’ I want to see if you can get some that is local. All right?”

“Check!” Elliott replied.

Dad also asked him to get a cucumber and some carrots, too. Elliott complained that he had more things to get than Lucy, but Dad reminded him that his sister was smaller and this evened out the contest. “See you at the checkout. First one there wins… oh, and no running!”

They were off like a shot, and in record time they both came sliding to meet Dad at the front. “It’s a tie!” Dad said with relief.

The kids caught their breath as Dad finished up with the cashier. “Would you like bags today, sir?” she asked. Just as Dad was about to answer “Yes,” Lucy jumped in and said, “Dad, wait!”

QUESTION

Why do you think Lucy stopped her dad before he
could answer the question?

Dad didn’t realize it, but Lucy had thought ahead and brought three reusable grocery bags from home. Whenever Mom went shopping, she always brought her own reusable bags, and this had now become a habit for Lucy, too. She answered because she knew her dad didn’t have any with him that day. Bringing her own shopping bags meant that fewer paper bags needed to be used, saving energy and trees.

MORE QUESTIONS

• By using her own bag from home, did Lucy reduce, reuse, or recycle?

• Can you make a decision to remember to use a reusable bag when you go shopping?

• What other things in this story are healthy for the environment?

Depending on what it is made from, a plastic shopping bag can take anywhere from 15 to 1,000 years to decompose. In a compressed landfill, deprived of atmosphere to help them biodegrade, paper bags don’t fare much better. Not only that, but many plastic bags find their way into our oceans and get eaten by turtles, birds, and other ocean dwellers. This can kill them.

“Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.”

VINCENT VAN GOGH

© 2011 Ian James Corlett