If you open a Greek kitchen cabinet, you won’t just find plates and glasses. Somewhere, usually stuffed between the baking trays and the mop, you’ll discover the national treasure: the plastic bags (“σακούλες”). Plastic bags of every size, age, and origin. Plastic bags are like mythical creatures: everyone swears they don’t want them, yet they multiply in the kitchen drawer faster than rabbits. You pay five cents at the supermarket, mutter “we should use cloth next time,” and by the end of the month your cabinet looks like a landfill starter kit.

In Greece, a plastic bag isn’t single-use. It isn’t even double-use. It is multi-generational. The bag you brought home from the supermarket last week will serve as your trash bag tomorrow, carry figs from the village on Sunday, and one day hold your swimsuit, dripping from the beach. Somewhere in Kalamata there’s a bag that once carried feta from the 1980s and is now loyally transporting olive branches to the garden.

There’s a whole hierarchy. The thin, crinkly supermarket bags are “everyday” bags. The sturdier department-store ones with rope handles are kept for “special occasions”, like bringing koulourakia to a neighbor or wrapping a bottle of wine. And then there are the aristocrats: the glossy duty-free bags from Athens airport. Those never die. They live forever in the closet, proudly announcing to guests that once upon a time you flew to Paris.

My wife, however, elevates the “bag thing” to an art form. She hoards bags of all shapes, sizes, and fabrics. When will we ever use them? I ask. “We will,” she promises, and somehow, she’s always right. Visit a friend and need to wrap a bottle of ouzo? She produces a glossy bag with matching ribbon. Need to deliver koulourakia? Out comes a dainty pouch, perfectly sized, as if she had been running a secret bag boutique all along.

The result: in our home, gifts may come and go, but the bags live forever.

And this isn’t just a Greek thing. Back when we lived in Miami, Cubans were notorious for washing their plastic bags and hanging them out to dry on laundry lines, flapping in the breeze like proud little flags. In Greece, that wouldn’t even look strange right next to the drying sheets, pillowcases, and the occasional octopus, why not a few plastic bags too?

Even the EU’s war on plastic hasn’t killed the tradition. Yes, the 0.09€ bag fee annoyed people at first, but quickly turned into a math game: “How many σακούλες can I sneak into my cart without paying?” In every supermarket you now see shoppers arriving armed with ten old bags from previous trips, proof that Greek ingenuity always wins.

My American friends used to laugh at this habit. “Why not just recycle them?” they asked. But in Greece, recycling happens at home, not at the plant. Every drawer, every cabinet, every balcony storage box is a private recycling center. Throw away a plastic bag? Unthinkable. It might come in handy when you least expect it, like covering your car mirror during a hailstorm, or sending leftovers to your cousin.

So yes, the Greek plastic bag is eternal. It is economy, ecology, and psychology rolled into one. It is proof that Greeks never waste anything, especially not something that can be folded, refolded, and stuffed into a bigger bag, the matryoshka dolls of household survival.

Next time you visit a Greek home, don’t be fooled by the marble floors or the balcony view. The true heart of the house is in that drawer stuffed with σακούλες. It’s not clutter. It’s cultural heritage.

¹ And if you think the plastic bag is impressive, wait until you see how Greek families reuse aluminum foil. Smooth it out, fold it neatly, and it lives to cover leftovers another day. The circular economy was alive and well in Greece long before Brussels discovered the term.

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