Say It Ain't So Already

At the Food Bank

September 4, 2009 at 9:40 AM Leave a comment

Today was the busiest day I’ve experienced at the food bank since I started volunteering there in January.  (Even the long time volunteers don’t know why it has suddenly picked up in the last three or four days.  The end of the month is usually the busiest time.)

The food bank administrator told me a story about trying to get local grocery stores to donate those rolls of plastic bags you find everywhere — especially in the produce and bulk food isle.  Apparently they’re very expensive (forgot to ask how much), at least from a food bank’s perspective, but we use the heck out of them.  We get big bags of potatoes and zucchini, and boxes of laundry detergent — today we had huge bags of dried red chilis — and we break them down into individual (or family-size) portions using those plastic bags.  When we can’t get them, we use the bags newspapers are delivered in, which I hate to do.  I think it’s kind of degrading — maybe because I can’t get away from thinking of those bags as dog poop bags — but there are times when we don’t have a choice.

Anyway, she called two stores and couldn’t get either of them to give her a freakin’ roll of plastic bags.  They’re really stingy when it comes to those damn rolls.  Some won’t even talk about donating them and some will commit to one every month or one every three months.  We need one a week.

It’s really surprising to me — and sad and disappointing — that (1) a food bank has to practically beg for something like a roll of plastic bags, and (2) that the for-profit grocery stores aren’t a bit more generous.

Can’t wait for the time when the Pentagon has to hold a bake sale.

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