Say NO to plastic bags

gromituk

Hmm - well I guess they get what they pay for...

Poppea

Baileys_Babe wrote:

I try to avoid plastic bags.

I always carry a kalico bag.

If I am doing a big shop I use some old Sainsburys bags for life or a cardboard box.

Why do shop assistance try and put my fruit and veg in little plastic bags, including 1 cougette. If I wanted it in a bag I would of put it in a bag.

Why does this country not have a carrier bag tax like Ireland, 10p a bag I think. I think this would have a large impact on the use of plastic bags,

I also use cardboard boxes for a big shop and have made my own canvas bags for general purpose shopping.

I have also e-mailed Tony Blair's web site begging this government to bring in a plastic bag tax. Anyone out there who cares about this issue PLEASE do the same. His website is number10.gov.uk. You just click on the contact section and can e-mail him easily. If he gets enough messages then maybe one day he might bring it in. I find it amazing he harps on about the environment yet doesn't implement this simple yet effective measure. I'm fed up seeing so much discarded plastic ruining our beautiful country.:mad:

amanda8t1

Hi this is my first post but I think it is needed if not just to relieve tension on my part after reading this thread I went to Tesco and bought two tee shirts and a bag for life and the check out lady actually put the bag for life (which was scanned first) in a free Tesco carrier bag and then put my tee shirts in to another different free carrier. :rolleyes: Just to confirm I took the Tee shirts out and put them in my new bag for life and left the freebies on the checkout.

Seakay

Environment Care

Plastic bags cost the earth


To coincide with World Environment Day on June 5th 2006 IKEA Nottingham are introducing a 5p charge on plastic carrier bags.

Plastic carrier bag production and distribution endangers wildlife, and increases landfill.

We at IKEA Cardiff aim to discourage our customers from using plastic bags by charging 5p per bag.


Bag for Life

As an environmentally friendly alternative why not purchase a re-usable, blue bag for 25p. These bags are so durable that if it ever wears out we'll replace it for free!

IKEA will not make any profit from the sale of these bags. All profits will be donated to local community forests

Joscar

Like so many of you I take reusable strong bags and bags-for-life to the supermarket. And any plastic bags I do end up using do get reused as bin liners at home.

But I have to say that I am surprised to see so many of you in favour of asking the government to charge us yet another tax. This is a money saving website after all - and that includes saving money from the tax man. I know the idea is to promote the idea of using less bags, but we all know that there will be occasions when you will have to have one and you do not have a spare old bag in your pocket.

Campaigning to the shops to get them to promote 'bags-for life' seems like a better option to me ......good for the environment .... better for the shops as they do not have to provide so many free bags and less tax for the consumer to pay.

If I have to pay for a bag I would rather know the shop had pledged to use the profit for the bag for environmental causes than it disappear to the tax man. :mad:

gromituk

Joscar wrote:

But I have to say that I am surprised to see so many of you in favour of asking the government to charge us yet another tax. This is a money saving website after all - and that includes saving money from the tax man. I know the idea is to promote the idea of using less bags, but we all know that there will be occasions when you will have to have one and you do not have a spare old bag in your pocket.

Actually, I see it in exactly the opposite way to you. At the moment you are paying a plastic bag tax to the supermarkets whether or not you use their bags, because you pay for the "free" bags in the cost of everything you buy. Enforced charging for bags will reduce their use dramatically, and so the food will get cheaper. If you usually remember to bring your own bag, you will win.

Campaigning to the shops to get them to promote 'bags-for life' seems like a better option to me

That will only have a limited effect. A large proportion of the population is too selfish to care, but if it is hit in the pocket you can be sure that it will suddenly start to use re-usable bags. We all know how manipulative big business can be - pretending to be green by plonking a high-profile wind turbine here and there, and selling mis-shapen vegetables, for instance. Because environmental protection is such a complicated subject, legislation has to play a large part in its enforcement.

If I have to pay for a bag I would rather know the shop had pledged to use the profit for the bag for environmental causes than it disappear to the tax man. :mad:

Ah, the mythical tax man striketh again - he doesn't keep the money, you know. And is this a tax anyway? Legislation could simply be drafted to enforce a minimum charge for a bag, and it could go entirely to the shop.

MORPH3US

gromituk sums it up quite nicely.

Its not like anyone wants to pay more money to anyone, its just most of the time, the only way to stop people doing bad things is to hit them in the pocket!!

M

EagerLearner

This is an interesting post - I keep meaning to buy a bag for life, but then again I re-use the plastic bags given to me by supermarkets - all my 'supermarket' bin liners are therefore practically free (=money saving) and I don't purposely buy bin liners anymore (= environmentally friendly).

For anyone who does buy a bag for life - do you continue to buy bin liners?

In particular the deep black ones, which must be horrible for the environment, whereas some of the supermarket ones seem to be bio-degradable.

EagerLearner

karendb

We've been using Tesco's own strong plastic blue boxes for about 10 years now, since they first introduced them. Before that, we used to use those plastic stackable milk crates to put our shopping in.

Tesco charged us about £2 each for these boxes but very few people took them up on it and you only see the odd person in the supermarket using them even though they are extremely practical - we use them for our fruit and veg market shop as well as carrying wine back from France etc!.

As for bin liners, we have a black bin liner in our kitchen bin and empty the contents each day into the one outside (lined with another black bin liner). When this gets collected, we transfer the old liner from the kitchen bin into the outside bin and put a fresh one in the kitchen bin - in effect using one (recycled) liner per week. Even though we are a family of five, we only produce one full bin bag per week for collection. Everything else gets recycled.

Not using carrier bags is such an easy one to do - but rather than penalise people for using carrier bags, perhaps Tesco etc. could offer extra clubcard points or rewards for those who don't use them. Would that be enough of an incentive though - don't know.

culpepper

There are several charities that deliver a large bag and a leaflet a few times a year here usually for clothes. We used to put the empty bag out to be collected and it would sit on the doorstep for weeks until we brought it back in as I didnt like to use it in the bin we acrued quite a few.
I finally decided I would use them in the big bin in my kitchen ,so now, if they havent been collected when the collecters come for the filled bags, thats what I do.
We have to buy large green bags if we want our garden rubbish collected here too. They are printed so that you cant use just any green bag. When the collection lorry comes around, the collectors empty all the bags into the dustcart so I assume they are not biodegradeable bags at all and will just end up at the dump.