Growing up on Long Island, our favorite whipping boy was New Jersey. Most close-minded “Lawn Guy Landers” only knew “Joisy” as the stinky swamp you had to drive through on your way to somewhere else or the seemingly endless toxic dump on either side of the New Jersey Turnpike. Of course, having lived in New Jersey and survived, it really isn’t such a bad place. In fact, looking at Long Island from the other side of the East and Hudson rivers, it’s easy to see that it has its faults as well.

For example, 115-mile-long Long Island (which is not just an extension of New York City, FYI) is a claustrophobic’s worst nightmare. Want to get off the island? Well, unless you’re catching one of two ferries to Connecticut from either Port Jefferson or Orient Point, you’re only off-ramp is to drive west and take a bridge or tunnel to somewhere else. God forbid there should ever be an emergency evacuation of the island.

Then there’s the Long Island accent. (Watch Lorraine Bracco in the movie “Goodfellas” for a crash course in the Long Island dialect.) After being teased relentlessly in college about my accent, I worked hard to get rid of it. Four years spent in the Midwest helped to flatten it out even more, though I have to admit that having moved to the Philly area, which has accent issues of its own, I find myself waxing poetic for my “tawk” of origin and even slipping back into Long Island-ese from time to time.

And in the town where I grew up, there was the dump. Looming in the southern landscape like a ski resort’s bunny hill, this dump provided a lovely eau de methane whenever the wind blew the right way. Also, because it sat perched on a hill, I’m guessing that its runoff ran downstream into the town’s water source (though that has never been officially confirmed). But despite the smell or threat of tainted water, the real risk lay in driving near the dump.

The worst was driving by it on windy days–plastic bags and other refuse would come whipping across the road and onto your windshield without notice. You would be temporarily blinded on this winding, downward sloping road that was hazardous enough even on a calm day. As you prayed that your windshield would clear before you met oncoming traffic in the wrong lane, you did your best not to drive off the road. And as quickly as the bag would have blown onto your windshield, the wind would grab it and take it away.

After the town installed a tall chain link fence around the dump (probably because of residents’ complaints of blowing trash in their yards), the plastic bags would cling to the inside of the fence, shaking in the wind, like prisoners rattling the bars of their jail cells.

Of course, the dump has been closed for years now and maybe someday it will be turned into a bunny hill or something else. In the meantime, Long Island has taken a step in the right direction towards excess trash. Suffolk County (where I grew up) just enacted a Plastic Bag Reduce, Reuse, Recycle Measure that requires stores over 10,000 square feet not only to provide someplace for consumers to drop off their plastic bags for recycling but also to ensure that these bags do, in fact, end up getting recycled. This isn’t an outright ban of plastic bags like what San Francisco did but at least it should help cut down on plastic bags blowing in the wind against some chain link fence, sticking on your windshield or, worse, ending up in another town’s dump.

Green Boot Camp: Week Three–Recycling cardboard, cartridges, cell phones and more

Since the start of our frugal days some eight months ago, I have rarely splurged on anything for myself. If I have needed new clothes or new shoes, you can be sure that I made sure I could get one or both at a bargain price or, better yet, by using a gift card that someone else had purchased for me. At the same time I have never been one to go with the whims of fashion or get sucked into labels–at least not since high school.

But for all of this talk of being frugal and fashion-averse, there are times when I see something and I’ve just got to have it. I’m sure my subscription to People magazine doesn’t help in this regard, especially the magazine’s “Style Watch” column. Every once and awhile there will be something in that column that I’ve just got to have. One of those must-have moments first occurred when the magazine wrote about the spray-on foundation like you may have seen Carmindy on “What Not to Wear” using and which I could never find in regular stores. Finally, last summer I splurged on that at the MAC store in London, despite its heart-stopping price tag.

Recently, “Style Watch” had a write-up with picture on Anya Hindmarch s “I’m Not a Plastic Bag” canvas bag, which offers a stylish option for those looking to green their grocery shopping. I’ll admit that it was cool seeing celebs like Reese Witherspoon and Keira Knightley carrying one of these smart bags, but then I just turned the page and continued reading the magazine.

However, in the days to come I found myself continuing to think about this bag, which, it turns out, is very hard to get here in the States. For example, when the bags came to New York, they sold out in hours. And suddenly I discovered that I just had to have this bag.

Just before Thanksgiving I logged onto eBay and started bidding like crazy. I lost out on a pink version of the bag when it went for $80 (I like the bag, but not that much) and then a brown version when it went for $60. I kept checking eBay and kept bidding, but I kept getting outbid. Finally, on a Tuesday, I think, the fury seemed to die down and eventually I succeeded in bidding on and winning an olive-colored bag. I was thrilled.

Truth be told the bag has sat in my closet for the past few weeks because I just couldn’t figure out how or when to use it. It was too nice to actually use for groceries and too expensive to risk having food spill in it. Then my elder daughter was playing on this newer virtual world called Wee World, and her “wee mee” happens to be a green gal with a, get this, Anya Hindmarch “I’m Not a Plastic Bag”–well, of course, the virtual version of it. And her “wee” girl was taking the bag to the mall with her. What an awesome idea.

Today, my daughters decided to have a New Year’s Day shopping extravaganza at the mall so that they could take advantage of all of the post-holiday sales. I didn’t mind the notion of getting good deals as well. And what better an opportunity to break in the bag than today’s shopping trip.

I have to admit that the bag looked quite smart with my outfit but what was even better was asking not to have a bag at department stores where I was shopping. At first I was concerned that some security guy might stop me because I had all of these purchases shoved in my personal bag, not a store bag. But I kept my receipts at the ready, and no one stopped me. And I managed to make it through a day of shopping at the mall without taking home a single bag.

I was actually a bit touched that I inspired my daughters and their friends to do something similar. They decided to use a single department store bag to hold all of their purchases from the various stores they visited. That is, they got a bag at the first store and then at every establishment thereafter they said to the checkout person, “That’s OK. We don’t need a bag. We already have one.”

Be still my green heart.