Say NO to plastic bags

meames_2

years ago i worked at a well known car/cycle shop. we had loads of those little useless bags that you can't use for anything. even back then i would ask if the wanted a bag for the tiny pack of fuses that they were going to use within 30 seconds of leaving the shop. at first they would look aghast they hadn't got a bag then sheepishly slope out.

i mostly have a fold up bag from wilkos that goes with me everywhere.

beyond_skint

I have loads of bags for life and hessian ones, I just keep forgetting them or I go shopping on the hop. I am so cross with myself. Is anyone else struggling to get in the mind set?

trader_girl

i started asking our customers if they need a carrier bag about ayear ago, honestly you'd have thought i'd offered them a smack in the face. most of them then, didnt seem to realise that not only is it waste it also costs me money, at the time about £1500 a year. now a year later almost every other one of my regular customers brings their own bags into the shop and my bag bill has almost halved (thankfully as we didnt charge for the bags)
The greengrocer thought I was mad when I first presented him with a basket of loose fruit and veg and my own green carrier bag hes used to me now

A_fiend_for_life

I read the other day that Tesco have seen something like a 40% drop in bag use and they don't charge for them.

M and S who do charge for plastic bags have dropped by 80%.

Quasar

Well I have several cloth bags but occasionally I have to get new ones from supermarkets when I see bargains and have no space left in the other bags. Thankfully our council has issued all household with large, white bags for recycling plastic of all kinds, so when I've re-used the carriers to death for various purposes, I just put them in there with milk bottles, plastic wrapper and whatnot. Collected weekly.

Elia_2

For ages I -despite my best intentions - would routinely forget my cotton bags when going shopping and end up having to use a couple of plastic bags instead.

I started keeping all my cotton bags in my (admittedly quite large) everyday handbag and remember them every time now because it is impossible to forget them.

Such a simple thing must have cut my carrier use by 75% or more.

economiser

I always use the free bags, I thought this site was about saving money. I don't litter the countryside, I reuse them and recycle when holed or torn or use as bin liners. If I give up using them I have to buy alternative shopping bags and bin liners which is not going to save me money or save the planet.

gromituk

economiser wrote: »

I always use the free bags, I thought this site was about saving money.

It is. Have you ever thought about who pays for the "free" bags? You do, with whatever you buy from the supermarket, whether you use bags or not. D'oh!

If I give up using them I have to buy alternative shopping bags and bin liners which is not going to save me money or save the planet.

Of course it is - stronger bags will outlast many many plastic bags, and the volume of rubbish held by a bin liner is a lot more than the volume of rubbish held by the equivalent amount of plastic made into smaller bags.

economiser

gromituk wrote: »

It is. Have you ever thought about who pays for the "free" bags? You do, with whatever you buy from the supermarket, whether you use bags or not. D'oh!Of course it is - stronger bags will outlast many many plastic bags, and the volume of rubbish held by a bin liner is a lot more than the volume of rubbish held by the equivalent amount of plastic made into smaller bags.

Of course nothing is free but I pay for them whether I use them or not and the "stronger" bags are more bulky to carry around. I use the bags as pedal bin liners, they are just the right size. Otherwise I have to buy similar sized bags (which don't have convenient "handles" to use as ties). It's impractical for us to put rubbish directly into the bin as it's about a 50 yard trek from the kitchen. Except for the split or holed bags all the bags are reused. Also the amount energy/oil use in the production of bags of negligible compared with the overall UK usage which is itself minute in global terms. The main problem with bags is environmental litter and I am very careful not create any litter.

I am sure the anti-bag zealots will triumph in the end but I am also confident I will find a source to buy them at a lot less the the 5p currently charged by M&S. Alternatively I suppose I can go back to scrounging cardboard boxes from the shops as we used to do in the 1960's before the "free" bags were provided. In fact I saw a Sainsbury's store making them available quite recently.

A_fiend_for_life

Once you eliminate food waste, or reduce it significantly, you really don't need a bin bag or carrier bag. Or you can just tip the contents in the bin and reuse the bag. I still slip into using a carrier bag though this is force of habit rather than need.