So many good reasons to be frugal

Eliza252

https://www.foe.co.uk/resource/reports/greasy_palms_summary.pdf

Interesting report here from Friends of the Earth about the destruction of the rainforest and palm oil. (if the link doesnt work its on their website).

As stated in the report its pointless boycotting things like palm oil cus companies will just swop to more damaging products to replace them.

But if we were all just a bit more frugal and stopped wasting things (like the old stylers of course ) there wouldnt be the damand in the first place.

Yesterday I worked for a large company in the city handing out packed lunches for staff etc who had come to look round a new office building - at the end of the day they threw away 900 packed lunches. They hadnt even arranged for them to be given to a homeless charity or anything :mad: . Especially as its a company which claims to have some good ideals in terms of environmental and social welfare. Makes me SO annoyed.

(of course I now have a dust bin bag full of packed lunches which I have been handing out to everyone ever since!)

Jet

Every day I am amazed about all the waste that goes on around us. It is so frustrating when people in this world are starving and dying because of it!!! :mad:

All we can do is our own little bit and hope that we are making a difference somehow.

tootles_2

That is horrendous and makes me so mad, there are people living on the streets who would have at least had something to eat........ the Sally Army are very good at collecting stuff like that, they could have put them to good use, homeless hostels as well..... all that money wasted............... grrrrrrrrrr............

caffeinehit

In Tesco the other day the guy in front of me at the checkout was putting just 2 or 3 items in each bag then getting a new one. The last item to go through was a bottle of coke and he got a new bag just for that! I nearly resorted to banging my head on the conveyor and crying, but settled for a raised eyebrow as I extracted my battered bags for life from my rucksack.

Trouble is, 95% of the population think like him rather than me. I do sometimes wonder what's the point of it all.

mr218

recently we had some family visting from holland (my husband is dutch) and we stopped into a supermarket on our way home to pick up things for dinner. i did not have my usual bags so my relatives took some old cardboard boxes discarded in the store and they were putting items in it.

the looks of incredulity we got from the checkout girl and other customers were quite funny.


in holland you have to take your own bags and you can use cardboard boxes in the store. or you have to pay for new bags if you really want them

it always annoys me when the checkout staff pack your stuff and keep using more and more bags to put small amounts of stuff in.

madfrenchgirl

well, we shop at lidl and we use their cardboard boxes lying around in the store insted of buying the plastic bags... I wish there was some recycling point for those plastic bags tho... Because we do go to Sainsbury's for the stuff we cant find in LIDL and end up with plastic bags. We do use them for bins and carrying stuff around but we have so many of them it is ridiculous. My old landlord used them to pack the items he was sending the ebay auctioners... Another use for them!

tootles_2

Tesco do have a recycling point for plastic bags, at least in our Tesco we do..... we bought bags from Lakeland which we take with us when we do our shopping, but at times they still put stuff in bags which we really do not want. The ones we do keep we use for rubbish bags in the house.

1sttimer_2

mr218 wrote:

recently we had some family visting from holland (my husband is dutch) and we stopped into a supermarket on our way home to pick up things for dinner. i did not have my usual bags so my relatives took some old cardboard boxes discarded in the store and they were putting items in it.

the looks of incredulity we got from the checkout girl and other customers were quite funny.


in holland you have to take your own bags and you can use cardboard boxes in the store. or you have to pay for new bags if you really want them

it always annoys me when the checkout staff pack your stuff and keep using more and more bags to put small amounts of stuff in.

I remember doing this not all that long ago, and that was before we thought about recycling. Some supermarket in France also do this. Aldi/Lidl charge for their bags and I think this is great. This is a pet hate of mine, I think we ought to back to when all carriers had to be paid for and not just the 'bag for life' ones (which are good) as it would be a lot healther for the environment. I know Tesco's have a bin for recycling old carriers which helps but it would be better not to have all of the excess bags floating around everywhere.

I do re-use mine as bin bags and the small veg bags I re-use as doggie bags so I suppose if I didn't have them I would have to buy some! Sometimes I think you're in a no-win situation!

madfrenchgirl

well the tescos I know of is a tad far, would destroy a bit more of the ozone layer if I drove there!

I will try to bring my own stach into the store next time, i dont know why but I never thought of it!

We are quite an evironmentally friendly household tugh (composting everything that can be, buying big pots of yogie and re-using them as food containers so no little useless pots thrown away, no ready meals...)... So I hope people forgive me? ;-)

culpepper

we use a collapsible crate ,a freezer bag and 2 shopping bags for our shopping. Had to write our name on the crate to save getting accused of stealing it in lidl,even though they dont sell them!
We always say no thanks to the packers and do our own.
We still manage to accumulate carriers though as the kids dont like to say no when the assistant has put their purchase in one for them.Charity shops usually take them to reuse.

kiwichick

Don't even get me started on Tesco! I do my big shops online with them which is great but they way things are packed drives me barmy. Last week I had a packet of dried mixed herbs (28gm) and it came in a carrier bag all by itself - WHAT IS THE POINT OF THAT?!?!?!? :mad:

If you have your things delivered by Tesco they have told me that the driver in obliged to take the bags from last weeks shop away with him to recycle in store, that appeases me somewhat but they really do need to start acting responsibly.

Al.