So many good reasons to be frugal

arkonite_babe

There's a good post in freebies to help educate your children about waste and its impact on the environment.

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.html?p=946382&postcount=1

Yorkielass

I'm so so glad I'm not alone on hating carrier bags. I use bags for life all the time in tescos - Almost all of the one's I'm using now are the ones I got before last Christmas - is a bit weird taking a snowman to Tescos in July - but they save so many carrier bags and last for ages - it makes me so mad when people use so many carrier bags - and you know they're just going in the bin when they get home.

As for high street shops most sales assistants look at me as if I'm stupid when I say I don't want a carrier, I've got several cotton and jute bags of various sizes and I take one when I go shopping in town - got one the other day from a fair trade shop, it's a traidcraft one so even better. Just about got OH in the habit of saying no to carriers. The beauty with these cotton ones is you can fold them up in your handbag and then you get it out when you get your purse out to pay and then put the items in it after they've been scanned. We've lived in our new house for 2 weeks and got our first carrier bag today (was a goody bag from a wedding fair we went to).

My new place is on a main road out of York city centre and the number of plastic carrier bags people walk past with are shocking.

I think that there should be a charge for carrier bags in all shops, maybe people's attitudes would change then.

Liney_2

In Tescos last week (I haven't shopped in a supermarket in 2 months - yay! - but had no option) when I told the cashier I didn't want a bag she looked at me like I was a complete loser. She kept trying to put my fruit in little bags but i just kept saying no. After all the fruit is washed or peeled before eating it so why do I need a bag, what is it being protected from? Her hands maybe?

[Deleted User]

1sttimer wrote:

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!

When I was a little girl the bags were brown paper carriers and cost 2d or 4d for a super strong one.When they started to get a bit worn my Mum used thenm to light the fire. Brown paper carriers were far better than the skimpy free plastic rubbish thats handed out at the supermarkets.What wasn't burnt was stuck on the compost heap and rotted down how long does it take for a plastic bag to rot.Look in your local rivers and see how many plastic bags are there floating around and clogging up the ecology and harming the wildlife