If you’re from San Antonio, you will reckon with two businesses: the local fast-food barbecue chain Bill Miller and the beloved, no-to-secret monopolistic grocery store H-E-B.

Bill Miller is not good barbecue, but it’s great fast food. H-E-B is not good grocery, but it’s great retail. Their hold on San Antonio is not undeserved. These are fierce, competitive businesses that boost the city’s economy. They employ thousands of people, often unskilled first-time workers (such as me). They are local staples, and the locals pledge their fealty are loyal to their brands.

Other businesses in San Antonio are particularly San Antonian, but Bill Miller and H-E-B deserve special attention because of their mascots.

Bill Miller’s mascot is Sweetie, a human-size replica of Bill Miller’s signature 32 oz. tea, which is automatically served sweetened unless you ask for unsweetened.

H-E-B’s mascot is H-E-Buddy, a paper grocery sack with whole foods sticking out of its head. Mind you, most, if not all, H-E-Bs pack groceries in single-use plastic bags at their registers, and paper is not an option. For all intents and purposes, H-E-Buddy is a plastic bag mascot that wears a paper bag as a mask.

Remarkably, these local businesses designed mascots based on single-use packaging. Even though Bill Miller offers one free refill (in-store), these plastic cups wind up in landfills, the river, parks, the sides of highways, and the recycling plant, which I’m not even sure is recycling the plastic I send anymore.

H-E-B’s grocery bags are so ubiquitous that, growing up, we used them as trash can liners. Even now, when I use an H-E-B bag twice, the second time is a small trash bag. Take a tour of San Antonio, and you can see these plastic bags everywhere, especially in creeks. Driving by, my wife and I play a game called “Plastic Bag or Egret.” Sometimes, we confuse the bags for Egrets, and sometimes, we confuse the Egrets for plastic bags.

Of course, I take reusable grocery bags to H-E-B. I bag my own groceries, too. I got tired of seeing the disappointment in the checkers’ and baggers’ faces when the reusable bags come out because “they slow things down.” (I’m better at bagging anyway—once a bagger, always a bagger.) But the way things go around there, I usually grab a few plastic bags for odds and ends. Let’s call it a habit.

What does it say about these businesses that their identities are wrapped up in disposable, single-use packaging materials? How can these businesses be so proud of their brand that they slap cute faces and logos on the unsustainable litter they produce every day—litter that winds up in the San Antonio River? Are these businesses ignorant, or do they just not care?

The old Bill Miller mascot used to be a cow. At least we eat the cow. With Sweetie, they even had the nerve to put the single-use plastic straw in its sugary head. And weirdly, the H-E-Buddy mascot features whole foods in the grocery sack. If you go to the “lower tier” stores, you will find shelf after shelf of ultra-processed foods that are high in sodium, sugar, and fats. Many of these products are marketed to children.

Relevant fact: 1/3^rd of San Antonians are prediabetic, 1/6^th of San Antonians have type 2 diabetes, and San Antonio is one of the dirtiest cities in America. With each rain, the river and creeks are clogged with plastics. The annual tradition of Fiesta is followed by the annual shame of pollution. Sweetie and H-E-Buddy can wipe the smiles off their faces because they represent terrible consumer and commercial habits.

One day, we might see the end of this kind of waste, and that end won’t be on our terms.