Thur 3 July is #plasticbagfreeday. How often do you use new plastic bags?

Anatidaephobia

I sometimes use supermarket plastic bags, I sometimes use bags for life or re-use old bags

I always use bags for life for the main shop but if I pop in for bread and milk then I'll use a plastic bag provided. I have no problem paying for plastic bags. I reuse them as bin bags at home. I would be happy to stop using plastic bags completely (and do try to avoid them) except I don't know what else to use as a bin bag. Any ideas?

geordie_joe

pawsies wrote: »

You are looking in the wrong places. How about going to visit a landfill site? A canal? The tip?

I'm sure you'll find at least one there...

I was talking about all these bags which are litter and blight the countryside and towns that people keep ranting on about.

Surely carrier bags which are in landfill or tips have been disposed of properly, not just discarded as litter.

As for canals, I don't live near one, but are you saying it is people who live near/visit canals that are littering the place with carrier bags?

geordie_joe

I_luv_cats wrote: »

I use carrier bags to line my little waste paper bins and collecting waste cat litter.

I need bags of some description so if it's not the carrier bags, it'll be something like pedal bin liners

Exactly, most carrier bags get reused after they have been used to carry the shopping.

I use them as bin liners too, and every day I see people walking dogs who have carrier bags to pick up after the dogs.

If they start charging for carrier bags will people stop lining their bins and picking up after their dogs, or will they just start using bin liner bags instead. And will those bin liner bags end up in the same places the carrier bags are ending up now?

Medstudent

I never use supermarket plastic bags, I use bags for life or re-use old bags every time I shop.

I always bring my own bag and only get more if It doesn't fit in my large rucksack which is rare.

My flatmates however seem to be unable to remember to take a bag even to the local 2 mins away and so we have a cupboard entirely filled with plastic bags as they accumulate far faster than anyone can use them as waste paper bins.

DigForVictory

We switch between jute bags/bags for life & supermarket disposables depending on how many we have for disposing of kitchen waste.

Younglings use them for learning to knit, crochet & weave too. When we have to buy binliners, our disposable income will drop!

CKgeordieinlondon

I always use new supermarket plastic bags, I never use bags for life

I don't have a car to keep carrier bags in so I might not always have one to hand, if not and have no qualms using them.

I don't frequent the big shops so have never bought a bag for life.
I do have the canvas bags they hand out at Glastonbury, so tend to use them.

Carrier bags are a relatively new invention dreamt up by the shops for advertising . Now were going to pay for them for the
privilege.

Ilona

I never use supermarket plastic bags, I use bags for life or re-use old bags every time I shop.

Using carrier bags to pick up dog poo is wasteful. What dog does an elephant size poo? Tesco make nappy bags 35p ish for 300.

There is a landfill site a few miles from where I live. When the wind gets up the hedgerows are littered with hundreds of plastic carrier bags. To use one bag per day for household rubbish is shockingly wasteful.

I put my dirty cat litter in the same paper sack that I bought the new litter in. It gets taken away in the bin wagon.

My shopping bags are all home made. I found a gazebo roof in a skip one day, scrubbed it and made ten shopping bags out of it. They will last me forever.
Ilona

geordie_joe

Ilona wrote: »

Using carrier bags to pick up dog poo is wasteful. What dog does an elephant size poo?

Well it depends on how you look at it. If you have the carrier bag, but don't use it and use a bag you have bought, is that not wasting the carrier bag?

What happens to the carrier bag? Does it get put in the rubbish empty so it blows away at the land fill site and gets stuck in a hedgerow?

Ilona wrote: »

Tesco make nappy bags 35p ish for 300.

Yes, but most people who's babies are no longer babies never think to look in the baby section of a supermarket.

I don't know when nappy bags were invented, but I'm 55, have 3 kids and 4 grandkids and didn't even know nappy bags existed until I read your post and went to the Tesco site to look at them.

Ilona wrote: »

There is a landfill site a few miles from where I live. When the wind gets up the hedgerows are littered with hundreds of plastic carrier bags.

They probably wouldn't blow away if they had a dog turd in them.

Ilona wrote: »

To use one bag per day for household rubbish is shockingly wasteful.

Again, it depends on how you look at it. If you fill one bag per day then is it really wasteful?

Is it wasteful to get rid of your rubbish rather than have it in your house for days/weeks?

I live in a small house, we have no outside bin and have to use skips at the end of the street. Rubbish is kept in the kitchen until taken to the skip. I don't have that much rubbish, especially food waste. But I don't want what I do have hanging around my kitchen for up to 14 days. So what goes into the bin usually goes into the skip the next morning when I go to work.

meritaten

I never use supermarket plastic bags, I use bags for life or re-use old bags every time I shop.

our local river floods after a heavy shower of rain - and along its length all you could see was plastic carrier bags caught up on trees! that is 'before' the bag charge! now you rarely see a 'stray' carrier bag. they used to get blown down into my garden too............they don't now.
and if someone is charged 5p for a carrier bag - then they tend to re-use it and not just chuck it in the bin.

geordie_joe

meritaten wrote: »

if someone is charged 5p for a carrier bag - then they tend to re-use it and not just chuck it in the bin.

But people reuse them anyway, because reusing them saves buying a plastic bag.