Shop Co-op (Dammit!)

I've been a member of Citizen's Co-op since they first started taking members, about 4 years ago.  It was still a twinkle in Gretchen's eye, but almost exactly one year ago it finally opened up and...I haven't been shopping there very much.  Sometime earlier in the year an email went out to exhort folks to shop at the co-op more and over what they had been doing already - I think I remember they wanted something like 100-dollars worth of shopping from each member per month.  Not from me, however; I do maybe 1/4 of that in a month, if that.  This is where environmentalism becomes not so accidental, and I think where a lot of people begin to balk.  We're Americans, after all, rugged individualists - we can't be told where to shop or how much to buy.  Oh, wait.  Can we?  No!  We can be subtly lured into purchasing crap we don't need but God help the soul who tries to make us buy something because it will help the community.  At least that's how I feel.

Frankly, getting to the co-op is kind of a pain and Ward's is so much closer.  But I feel like a guilty heel of a co-op member slinking away from an illicit tryst everytime I shop at Ward's though.  Even today DJ and I went to

Fresh Market, which is in a completely different universe from our own Publix/Ward's solar system, and I couldn't help but feel like I was going behind the co-op's back, like a traitorous thug.  Thug?  Yeah, I think so.  And here is a picture of some "Eco-zip" bags that I saw while at Fresh Market.

So, I have to shop more at the co-op "to help the community" even though it's kind of a drag to get to and they don't sell donuts and Bleinheim Ginger Ale, the latter of which I got at Fresh Market and is so tasty (I don't know if Fresh Market sells donuts. Probably not).