Elly May Clampett could really work a paper dress.
Elly May was patriarch Jed Clampett’s daughter on The Beverly
Hillbillies, a 1960s sitcom about a family of nouveau riche hicks who move to a mansion in Beverly Hills after finding oil on their
land.
The Beverly Hillbillies finished production before I emerged
from the womb and into the loving arms of American network television,
but during my childhood in front of the living room floor-model glow, I
learned a lot from the show’s re-runs.
Most of those lessons were from Elly May Clampett, a buxom
tomboy-cum-pin-up. And most were about the madness of extravagance.
Not that this was highbrow TV; the goal of a sit-com is laughs. But
there’s inherent commentary on popular culture built into any product
of that culture. So while viewers chuckled at the backwoods Clampetts
fitting in with their Rodeo Drive neighbours, they also digested an
easy-to-swallow examination of the ridiculousness of wealth.
Like, for example, a paper dress.
Elly May appeared in such a dress in one episode. For the love of
little green apples don’t ask me which one; I’m going back three
decades here. But I have a stored image clear as Beverly Hills pool
water: Elly May in the dress—white, short, Wilma
Flintstone-esque—standing at the bottom of a staircase in the
Clampett mansion, explaining to her cousin Jethro that you were
supposed to wear it once and throw it away.
Elly May wore the dress with a while-in-Rome approach—she embraced
it, but she didn’t quite get why anyone would wear something you just
tossed in the bin before bed. And I suppose that’s where the nuance of
pop culture philosophy comes in: Elly May wore the dress, but it wasn’t
so every fan would run out and buy one. It was, the sitcom writers told
us, so we could all laugh at the inherent lunacy of disposable
clothing.
Penning a commentary on the folly of disposable culture was no small
feat in the ’60s (The Beverly Hillbillies ran from 1962 to
1971), when the culture of disposability that took hold after the
Second World War was claiming its deep and destructive foothold.
Forty years later, we’re mired in it still. Our one advance in the
battle against a toss-away world?
Grocery bags.
Single-use plastic grocery bags, for many of us, are no longer a
bygone conclusion. They have become—either because they cost a nickel
at the store, or because the cloth kind can be so much more fashionable
or because society has labelled plastic-bag users pariahs—an
emergency measure.
The plastics lobby? They’d like us to go back to the Elly May paper
dress approach to carrying groceries.
Canada’s Environment and Plastics Industry Council funded a study
(available at tinyurl.com/mfrwvl) released in May to
investigate the potential public health risks from reusable bags.
The study found reusable bags that looked clean were routinely
infected with elevated levels of bacteria, mould and yeast.
The council stresses it isn’t in this for its own profit—“the
industry…recognizes use of reusables as good environmental practice,”
according to the report, “but it does not want to see these initiatives
inadvertently compromise public health and safety.”
Of course not.
In line with that purported selflessness, the report doesn’t suggest
people only use plastic, and only use it once, but that, among
other recommendations, governmental safety standards be developed for
cloth bags.
Yes. For cloth bags. Safety guidelines. Written by the
government.
Perhaps LaSenza should send me home with a government-produced
booklet on how to safely use and clean my underwear. Because I’m pretty
sure there’s some nasty stuff in there.
Look, I’m the biggest germophobe you’re likely to ever come
across—a militant clean freak with a Howard Hughesian bent for
hygiene procedures. Hughes wrote a manual for his staff on how to open
canned peaches, and I might do the same someday.
And despite having read the Plastics Industry Council’s 15-page
report, I have a different set of recommendations.
One: ditch plastic bags, even if the report showed “no evidence of
bacteria, mould, yeast or total coliforms.”
Two: use your cloth bags with the common sense most of us have.
Don’t use them to carry around your mud-and-dog-shit-spoiled running
sneakers and then to bring home a pint of strawberries.
Once a week, when you pitch your crusty underwear into the washer
and dryer, throw the bags in too.
Even Elly May Clampett could figure that one out.
This article appears in Jun 4-10, 2009.
I second that!
I really didn’t need to read “Perhaps LaSenza should send me home with a government-produced booklet on how to safely use and clean my underwear. Because I’m pretty sure there’s some nasty stuff in there.”
The facts are the facts. The enviro-types may not like it, but the facts are that cloth bags can be a cesspool of bacteria. Plastic grocery bags are a non-issue in reality for most folks, but have become the whipping boy for the environmentalists. Leave them alone.
Hey crusty: The um, “whipping” of plastic bags by so-called environmentalists is well deserved. I’m nowhere near the image most would have of some hippy-environmentalist, but I do have a bit of common sense. That common sense says that with a bit of consideration, I realize that landfills are packed full of largely useless plastic bags. And the author is completely right: I wouldn’t put a leaking package of beef in with my lettuce. And cloth bags aren’t the only ones out there, there’s lots of recycled rubber, and plastic bags that you can actually use more than once. The point is that they can be reused, and not just thrown out. This “non-issue” is more than an issue when you actually look around at our waste-infested lifestyles. Time to clean up our act, and our habits, even if that means cleaning a bag once in a while-big deal!
I am totally supportive of reusable bags. I’m also a fan of charging for plastic bags…why is it so hard to carry a few extra strong reusable bags with you for your weekly shop? I always carry a wee fold away bag is my purse now that is about the size of a plastic bag and can’t even remember the last time I used a plastic bag. In no way to I consider myself someone who would go out of their way to be a hardcore earth lover or recycler but I like to think that if everyone just made small changes like this we’d see a reduction in those ugly bags in the trees and on the beach.
Throw them int eh washer and dryer that are powered by what? Your personal wind turbine electric generator? I love how people think the answer to the environment is so simple – get an electric car… yes so that we can burn even more coal to charge it… use solar panals that create how many tonnes of greenhouse gasses to produce? These issues are like onions… peel back the surface and there are a whole new set of problems.
Cleaning your reusable bags will eliminate the problem for you as an individual, to an extent. But, as the study points out, and which has been disregarded here, a major public health risk comes from cross-contamination of bags by grocery staff who are repeatedly in contact with reusable shopping bags throughout the day. Just because you washed your bags, doesn’t mean the person in front of you did; if their bags are a cesspool of bacteria and fungus, there does remain a risk of contamination of your bags and food.
Wash your bags by hand, wash your hands by hand, wash your foods by hand, walk to the grocery store, buy items not overly packaged in plastic, if packaged at all. Wash your hands, wash your food. Only you can prevent Germ fires.
There is a thing called a narrow mind. Just because we have problems, much like onions, doesn’t mean we just quit. we might as well all just eat a bunch of sleeping pills if minor bumps in the road are going to prevent us from evolving into a more sustainable culture.
Let’s use some common sense. Take what people have to say for what it’s worth. Analyze, solve the problem. Re-useable bags are not going to save our host from the cancer of humanity, but it is beneficial to get peoples minds moving in the right direction.
Let’s find positivity in peoples efforts, and encourage expansion upon them. We should not shed tears, from the onions, or the fact that people are trying to change, and you feel left behind.
There’s always something negative for the unintelligent to say. Maybe if people challenged themselves in their day to day to get past the routine, humanity could potentially survive the next few hundred years. Or we could just live 9-5, monday to sunday, retire, die, and leave the planet to our children, and children’s children in the decaying state we have pushed it into.
Break the Shell people. It’s exhilirating.
Well said TheRPA. I am normally much more long winded, but you got the point across in a concise and well articulated manner.
I would like to add, that the physical, tangible, effects of a paradigme shift are only half the battle. Raising awareness and shifting view points is where the real battle is won.
Are our solutions perfect? Absolutely not. Are they an effort? Yes! Is action better than inaction? I certainly hope so.
Not too mention, people ridiculed swine flu as propoganda – yet are all too willing to believe they will catch something deadly from their grocery bags. I dont understand this world…
Everyone should visit their local landfill. The city sometimes organizes public tours with transportation every year during the summer. Take advantage. Don’t refuse because of the unpleasant experience, just like everyone should know where their food comes from, they should also know where their waste ends up as well.
Because of HRM’s new policy to prevent organics and recyclables from entering the landfill, they actually mechanically break every bag that comes through the facility. This also makes the garbage loose and when landfilled, many bags actually blow away. The treeline surrounding Otter Lake Landfills are literally decorated with loose bags. Its a very effective visual picture. This doesn’t even include bags recycled. The use of plastic bags for disposable reasons is alarming. Think of the number of small grocery bags you demand you need for pet waste pick up and kitchen garbage cans. That’s you multiplied by 365 and again for everyone in HRM.
Some people re-use their disposable plastic shopping bags as garbage bags. We all fill up plastic bags with household trash for fortnightly collection where they end up in land-fill sites. Seems a little bit hippocratic. The confusion between irresponsible littering and acceptable garbage practices is just an excuse for grocery stores to charge money for something previously provided free of charge. For them, it is about profits, not the environment.
When first seeing this story on television I watched as the reporter loaded a bag of groceries into his trunk. It made me comment out loud how slanted the study is, because if there were any true concern for the consumer’s exposure to germs, bacteria and whatnot, wouldn’t we be looking into what car fumes and whatnot get into your foodstuffs while languishing in the trunk? What about the backseat, the bus with an untold number of individuals carrying all sorts of germs, and what kind of incubation effect can plastic have that a breathable cloth bag doesn’t?
Lots of stuff left unconsidered, there, making the study’s bias as visible as the landfill thick with the bags it supports.
But plastic bags are not always one-use and disposable.
I can remember my grandmother having a variable number of plastic bags drying in the kitchen – after she had washed them out. (It was mainly crumbs out of bread bags that she was getting rid of.) She would re-use these bags as containers for food that was going to be frozen.
I have been recycling as many plastic bags as possible – by taking them to consignments shops for re-use there.
And dreaming of the time when I had accumulated enough bags to be able to knit a really re-usable bag – or door mat – out of plastic “yarn”. (“Yarn” made out of plastic bags, is called “plarn”. Do a Search to find out how to cut the original bag up most efficiently. And/or for possible patterns.)
Janey
I bring my groceries home in plastic bags.
I use the plastic bags to line my bathroom & kitchen & living room garbage pails. when they are full I tie them & throw them in my Rubbermaid Gabage Can & on collection day I wheel it to the curb.
So my grocery bags perform 2 jobs getting the groceries home & getting rid of the packaging. Even at 5 cents a bag its cheaper than buying ‘liners’ for the small containers I collect garbage in.
Those who are so against plastic bags for carrying purchases… do you use Garbage bags for your garbage ?
Or do all of you have bins & fill them with loose trash ?
Once again the Tree Huggers are running our lives for us. Let’s see. We cannot use pesticide on OUR lawn because it is not environmentally friendly (so allergy sufferers are now expected to be miserable due to the thousands of dandelions which are now on people’s lawns) and now we cannot use a plastic bag (which is recyclable and I use for alot of things). What next?