Rockhounds follow lessons out in the wild, wilderness, desert and forest that are also valuable in the city. Rockhounds know to bring their own bags, backpacks, saddle bags or pouches with their gear, and also with their finds consisting of gems, minerals, fossils and other stones. For me, this also applies when I am out here in New York City. I bring a backpack, side-bag or saddle bag when I leave the apartment because I am a collector. Like most rockhounds, we are collectors, as well as adventurers and discoverers.

Hence, and the purpose and motivation of this essay, I find myself bothered when I buy a can of soda, or a few items from the grocery store, and the clerk insists on putting the items in a plastic bag. Even when I am carrying my rockhound bag, which is a Fred Perry airline bag, the stores in New York City automatically put your can of soda, or packet of peanuts even into a plastic bag! So now when I walk up to a counter, the first words I speak are “No bag please.” I have recently found myself saying, when asked “Do you want a bag?,” “No thank you. That would be such a waste.”

Now Joe and I have each, respectively been to Vietnam, but when I was there, a Vietnamese tour guide said to me that the plastic bag was the white man’s curse on his country. I saw that in Vietnam as well. We were on tours out in the Vietnamese forests, walking for miles, and then we would walk past a plastic bag, the same type of plastic bag passed out with every transaction in New York City.

The plastic bag is everyone’s curse on the environment here in America as well. New York City streets are littered with them, the trash cans are disproportionately filled with them, and the landfills will continue to grow in area with plastic bags.

American Geode is bothered by the amount of plastic bags that litter our forests and our cities. We hope that all readers will share this essay, follow our example to #banthebag, and refuse a plastic bag during your next shopping excursion, and treat every excursion like a rockhounding excursion, and carry your own bag!

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