5p Charge for all carrier bags in Wales

Poppy9

I noticed today on the self service till in Tesco a warning of the 5p charge from 1st October 2011.

Are there any exemptions? If I impluse buy a non food item i.e clothes, shoes etc. will I have to pay for a carrier bag. How can they say it's single use as I always re-use sturdy carriers that some non food shops use.

I generally take my own bags for food shop but not for clothe shopping.

Middy

Here you go
http://www.carrierbagchargewales.gov.uk/retailers/bagsnotincluded/?lang=en

mike24w

i hope its introduced in England soon. Far too many carrier bags being used once and never used again. I use mine(whenever i forget to take my reusable bags with me) for bin liners but not many do and just throw them away.

Middy

mike24w wrote: »

i hope its introduced in England soon. Far too many carrier bags being used once and never used again. I use mine(whenever i forget to take my reusable bags with me) for bin liners but not many do and just throw them away.

Me too. I ask customers do they want bags and they say yes as left them in the car. Why can't they pack their bags by their car? On the few occasions I have left my bags in the car, I was happy to put my shopping straight into the trolley and pack at the car. On those times, I have asked for one carrier if I have small items such as herbs, jelly, packet sauce mixes etc.

Plus it stops customers getting a whole carrier bag for one lemon, or a bag for something that has a handle and therefore designed to be carried without the need for a bag such as nappies and loo rolls.

Then again, I do feel sorry for shop workers - mainly supermarket workers in Wales from 1st October as they will get a lot of aggro.

Poppy9

M&S foodhall has been charging for bags for ages. It does annoy me if I impluse food shop in M&S and the one carrier that I always have in my handbag isn't enough and then I have to pay another 5p for the priviledge of taking the food away. I can't pack it at my car as it's usually a lunch hour and I have a 20 minute walk back to work.

I think supermarkets should do away with the bags for fruit and veg. The bags are small and useless and can't be reused. I always put my fruit and veg loose into my trolley and then just put them on the conveyor belt together. All my fruit and veg is washed or peeled so it doesn't matter that another person handles it.

oki25

If I do an unplanned shop I find the free ones are now so thin they're useless. There was a time when you could fill the bags to the brink and use the same one time and time again, I find I'm lucky to get the bag half full before it feels overloaded or gets caught on something and rips, so I find I end up using twice as many bags as before, makes no sense? I get Ocado shoppping delivered mostly and sometimes they use bags for raw meat ect, they are large, so strong and they collect them on my next delivery to recycle!

recovering_spendaholic

This is crazy - are they not making profit enough? I feel that they should encourage people to use their own bags by offering more than 1 reward card point - something like if you use your own bags for 10 shops you get a conditional spend voucher or something like that. I just think that it is yet another way to put up the cost of already really expensive shopping. That said I do take my own bags as I don't want old carriers clogging up my house. Some people think that the cost of the bags is a kind of tax, but it isn't - they can't tell retailers what to do with the money so it's just pure profit increase for no more outlay as they provide the bags free anyway.

System

why not buy one of those small bags that can fold down into almost nothing and keep it in your pocket/bag for when you impulse shop .

zenseeker

recovering_spendaholic wrote: »

I feel that they should encourage people to use their own bags by offering more than 1 reward card point

Tesco do this.

I really don't care about being charged a few pence for a bag on the rare occasion that I need one, it's only 5p-10p, hardly bank breaking amounts.

welshlovebiscuit

They should do away with plastic bags altogether - have paper ones like in the states or make it compulsory to bring your own/use recycled cardboard boxes as in moany European countries - plastic bags are a scourge on this planet! I put my shopping back in the trolley as it comes and load it in the boot of the car loose...then get hubbie to unload at the other end (this partly arosse from my bad experiences of shop staff doing my packing for me) - I do have to wave the receipt at the security guard as I leave tho!

xbrenx

There's been discussions on this in the past. Apparently the paper bags used in America have to be reinforced somehow which in turn makes them no better than the plastic ones we are used to.

I do laugh when people say they use the plastic one to line their bin - that means they only get one more use from it and it still ends up in landfill sites. Slightly better but not much.

Off to find some info about paper bags...

ETA Plastic or paper