... to think that charging 30p for a carrier bag is taking the piss and has naff all to do with Attenborough and his polar bears?

[BerwickLad]

Seriously, 30p in Morrisons now. Even a paper bag is 25p. And Sainsbury's are charging 30p for little bags to put your loose fruit and vegetables in. This has gone way beyond trying to get people to cut down on plastic. What is wrong with just recycling the damn things anyway if you don't want them choking sea-lions etc? Rather fleecing customers?

Glad you got something out of them @sarahjconnor, good job.

I tend not to shop there personally as they fuck over their staff with compulsory short hours contracts and their reductions pricing policy is shit but good to hear some of the money they make has gone somewhere useful.

I can’t stand this “ consumers are bad” mentality. Most of us thought plastic bags were great..cheap and easy etc etc. Sadly we now know the environmental cost. But it’s going to take a long time to change habits ..that doesn’t make you a bad person for using the odd plastic carrier . However some of the outrage makes you feel a criminal for not constantly having a jute bag about your person.

I try to be mindful of my plastic consumption but I refuse to feel guilty about the times I go out and buy something and then realise I need a bag.I’m not willingly choking turtles , I’m just living my life, which will inevitably leave an environmental impact in some way.

When supermarkets stop wrapping their pallets in miles of plastic sheeting, I'll start taking the plastic bag thing seriously!

I’m not willingly choking turtles , I’m just living my life, which will inevitably leave an environmental impact in some way

Excellent. Well done you.

This is one reason why I like Aldi and Lidl - if you forget a bag (or end up buying much more that you thought you would), you can grab a cardboard box and then re-use it or put it straight in your home recycling afterwards.

Much better than that, though: slightly older people will remember the Safeway Green Boxes back in the mid-90s. Buy a thick plastic (yes, plastic) open-topped crate, get a sticker on it when you paid, so they'd know it was already paid for when you brought it in next time, and then keep returning with them every time. Obviously no good if you weren't in a car, but many customers were. They used to have trolleys that were specifically designed for 4 or 6 of them. We still have a load of them in the loft - I ought to get them down and start re-using them when I go shopping with the car, really.

It's a bit like old-fashioned milk bottles and returnable pop bottles with a deposit on them - we already had these environmentally-friendly methods decades ago, but we strayed and those in charge are only now, very slowly, having the same old ideas as if it were somehow new thinking.

I try to be mindful of my plastic consumption but I refuse to feel guilty about the times I go out and buy something and then realise I need a bag.I’m not willingly choking turtles , I’m just living my life, which will inevitably leave an environmental impact in some way.

I completely agree with this. It’s why the hypocrisy argument just drives me mad - what the world needs is for everyone to do their best. A poster on another thread had a brilliant sound bite for it, I can’t remember the exact wording but something like - we don’t need 10% of people to be 100% perfect, we need 100% of people being 10% perfect. Just little tiny steps to changing the way we see waste and it just makes such a massive difference overall.

Christ. In some ways I preferred the bad old days when people went to church and moralised about how you measured up to a bloke in the sky over the endless holier than thou environmental scolding we get now. At least back then you didn't have commercial entities fleecing you in the name of Thunberg while sending out endless press releases about how much they care.

When legisislation came to Wales all the money went to charity. I do not know about England. We got used to it very quickly, tourists were a bit taken aback. I have had my jute bags for a few years now just put them in the washing machine. We keep them hooked over a chair by the front door and try to remember to keep some in the car, but occasionally we may be out somewhere and decide to shop then I have to buy one. This is irksome when you know you have a pile at home.

I do wish the supermarkets would sort out their packaging though, there is far too much.

@BerwickLad, no one is expecting you to carry your shopping home `in a cardboard bloody box'.

You carry on as if having to pay 35p for a plastic bag is some kind of human rights abuse.

Pay up or bring your own.

You sound unhinged.

I don't like the idea of putting them loose in the trolley. People sit their kids in the trollies and who knows what is at the bottom of their shoes.

They're grown in mud and fertilised in chicken poo fgs 🤦‍

Vegetables that is, not the children sitting in trollies 😆

When supermarkets stop wrapping their pallets in miles of plastic sheeting, I'll start taking the plastic bag thing seriously!

Always someone else's problem isn't it

I like the idea of the fruit and veg bags, having potatoes and other fruit and veg rolling around the conveyor belt must be time consuming for staff and awkward for customers.

This is so funny the Welsh embraced the bag tax with no complaints, perhaps because we are so close to the sea wherever you live. We were a bit about the foaming at the mouth that went on in England beforehand. Some English friends even said that they would never set foot in Wales again if they had to pay for a carrier bag.

Someone mentioned up thread that the money raised by selling shopping bags i.e the bag levy goes to charity. In Wales it does, can't comment on Scotland but in England the charity donation is optional and the first 20% goes to the government as VAT. In may ways its just another stealth tax.

My local Sainsbury's sells the net bag but only offers two loose products in the fruit and veg area; bananas and easy peel oranges. The bags are pointless.

I use an old shower buff puff for loose fruit and veg. Cut off the string, cut a length off it and tie a knot in the bottom. A reusable bag.

I actually get so infuriated by customers complaining about any bag charge.

Firstly, it's 30p. You either accept it, carry your things or bring a reusable bag. It isn't difficult.

Secondly, you don't need to be buying bags every trip to the shop. Just don't. Bring a bag. Reuse said bag.

Thirdly, if you're upset over hygiene... bring your own bag.

Just stop buying the fucking bags or suck it up. It's sheer laziness. Bringing a bag is easy.

Where is it written that you're entitled to free bags for your shopping?

@justasking111 does being close to the sea make it easier for you to get in it?

I don’t mind paying for a plastic bag but a paper one like Primark? Piss off. Its a charge for plastic not paper

having potatoes and other fruit and veg rolling around the conveyor belt must be time consuming for staff and awkward for customers.

Why would it be? I put things on the belt grouped together. They get gathered in one go of each type onto the scales then shoved down the end and I sweep them into a bigger bag. Not sure what's difficult about that.

Im glad of the charge. Itll make people remember to being their own. They are re-usable and I think people laregly forgot that.

As for fruit and veg, I dont put them in induvidual bags at all. They dont need bagging separately, they (largely) have their own skins. Being in their own plastic bag doesnt stop them getting bashed about a bit (think bananas). So why bother with them? Just more waste.

I completely agree that the supermarkets are trying to guilt the consumers.

THEY wrap bananas and apples and goodness knows what else in bags (Morrisons sell little premium steaks and put them on black (i.e. almost universally unrecyclable) plastic that's about 5 times bigger than the actual steak. I can only assume it's about profits and using a correctly-sized piece of backing (if they must) would make the steaks look less substantial and value for money.

Oddly enough, Morrisons have taken a stand with cucumbers and often sell them without a plastic wrapping, which makes them go off a lot more quickly - and yet, bananas?!?!?!

I'm sure, if you asked the big supermarkets, they'd claim that their massive use of single-use plastic, covering the cages etc., is essential to their efficient operations - but when it comes to your household's efficient operation, you're the baddie if you don't make sacrifices too. I'm absolutely not saying that we shouldn't - but why is it only our responsibility?

You are being beyond ridiculous OP. We are in the middle of a climate / environmental emergency.

No we aren't extinction rebellion would have you believe that , but plastic bags are a tiny part of that anyway.

FFS @HeresMe, it's you who is being ridiculius - setting yourself up as knowing better than immensely qualified environmental scientists, who are pretty much unanimous that cataclysmic climate change events will begin to hit us in 20 years.

& here is your "tiny part" that your plastic bags are playing - www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/10/26/shocking-photo-shows-caribbean-sea-choked-death-human-waste/

Oh and I remember in the 89’s that Kwiksave sold carrier bags. My mum refused to buy them and used the cardboard boxes they stored under the shelves.