New Mexico – Vitamin Cottage and Bioneers = No Place for Bag Monsters!

From Colorado, I found myself quickly in New Mexico, a place with strong gusty 70 mile per hour winds. My bags blew up with air and the gusts almost blew me and my bike off the highway. My plastic heart pounded and my knuckles turned white as I tried to hold myself together. Normally as a Bag Monster, I wouldn’t mind being hung up on a fence along the highway, but today I had an important meeting with the citizens of Santa Fe.

At the Santa Fe Farmers’ Market I quickly was told that the Mayor didn’t want me in town and has been trying to ban single-use plastic bags in Santa Fe. I wasn’t surprised at this, most towns are trying to keep me out. However what shocked me was that Santa Fe did not allow curb-side recycling for glass bottles. One of the only places to recycle glass in Santa Fe is at Whole Foods. At Whole Foods I met Irma Bueno, Green Mission Representative, and she showed me their well established recycling program.  (View the Tour) 

Before going to Whole Foods, I first went over to the Bioneers office to meet the people behind the Bioneers Conference and Radio Series. I tried hard to find single-use bags in their office, but came up with nothing close to a Bag Monster.  (Watch my Attack) (Watch the Bioneer Interview) On my way out of town, I found myself at a Vitamin Cottage, a chain-store who brazenly has totally eliminated single-use paper and plastic bags in their stores. They have slightly-used corrugated cardboard boxes organized by size in bins at the check out. I watched as most of their customers approached the store with those darn reusable bags. Using boxes and reusable bags instead of single-use bags was enough to send me running out of New Mexico.