Paying for carrier bags

[luciemule]

Just out of curiosity, would you still carry on using your main supermarket (say Tesco, or Sainsbury's) if they stopped giving you any carrier bags and said you either had to pay for them or use another method (eg -boxes or jute bags).

Would you simply go to a supermarket that didn't charge for them or go with the flow?

Certainly there is too much packaging on many goods in supermarkets, and in my observation it is ones targetted at women like cosmetics that seem the worst offenders
The EU has been trying to get something done about this, but failed miserably.
Not least because almost all EU policies end up captured by vested interests.
Recycling laws are a great way of stopping those nasty foreigners shipping their stuff in, thus helping inefficient European suppliers.

Restrictions on food imports hurt poor countries really quite badly. But they're wogs and niggers, and don't deserve money as much as poor farmers like Giles or Jacque who can't even afford the latest Range Rover.

Look at the way "greenhouse taxes" have been applied to airlines. The obvious way to do this is to tax fuel. This encourages airlines to invest in more efficient planes and lowers demand.
But fuel taxes don't help the grotesquely inefficient national carriers who have high fares. So the taxes are per-flight and fixed rate rake offs. This is a larger % of a cheap fare, which means budget flights don't look so cheap compared to those of BA, Aer Lingus etc.
Road pricing is amazingly complex, and even the gLA admit that the congestion charge has massively pushed up the % of big 4wheel drives in London.
Again why not tax fuel ?
Stupidly easy to do, and hits those who have the most polluting cars.
But again we have governments helping their friends, this time in the car industry who make more money on bigger cars.

Right, so people really do take every bag back, and don't lose them.
I'm not saying it's not a good thing, but it's a tokenist feel good activity, of extremely low usefulness.

What's really interesting is if you try and cut down on the amount of packaging you actually 'buy' (as in get with your food purchase). I've been trying the last week or 2 to have as little packaging as poss (it annoys me for one thing) and its been fascinating. Have been buying fruit and veg from a local greengrocer, and so have only used a small amount of those small very thin plastic serve-yourself bags, which I'm reusing as rubbish bags for days out. Have stopped buying so much junk food, because that's heavily packaged, so I'm eating better. It's having far bigger side effects than just being more eco-friendly - would recommend everyone to try it.

Oh granted, people lose them or don't take them back but surely they're not as 'free and easy' with them as they are with the free thin plastic bags?

This is what we have in Australia. I have 6 & my weekly shop fits in easily. We keep a few in the boot of the car & some in the house. Take them everytime I shop. Also easier to carry, as if heavy they don't cut into your hands like carriers & don't fall all over the boot of the car, meaning you have to scopp all your shopping up again!

99cents (around 40p) per bag. Mostly every store sells them now & they are highly promoted. I can't understand why Tesco et al still have the plastic "bags for life". These are available in the UK according to here. Go to Contact Us & click on UK on map.

Maybe someone should tell Tesco et al!

The first link is a 'wine bag' but it is the best pic to give the idea.

good idea wk007.. I think our green grocer has just halved the size of his shop, due to lack of support, i would like to see those plastic trays with veg banned. Some shops do use less packaging on stuff, co-op pizza has less packaging than tesco, but still too much, totally agree with

dominiC about the tokenism of re-using plastic bags in the face of huger environmental crimes, still, I always have several au naturale bags .....

£1 lightweight, pack up really small, they are fab Suedonim perfect for those moments when you didn't plan on shopping, they take up so little space in my handbag, so if you have forgotten your bag for life(too bulky for my liking) or mile for maude, lovely but not as spacious as the au naturale bags, these are the bags for you...

from little acorns... we've got to start somewhere, I do think there is a slow shift towards supermarkets being seen to be more environmentally friendly

if you were to buy organic fruit and veg in Sainsburys it mostly comes in cardboard trays, sometimes with compostable plastic. So why can't they do that for the run of the mill stuff if things must have packaging. And why oh why do we need our cucumbers shrink wrapped. Has anyone here unwrapped everything that is overpackaged, think I might give it a go.

cat64 - yes sainsburys have given away Bags for life on a few days recently, but what about little ole me who goes shopping on a Thursday? Oh yes, I'll have to pay 10p for mine. Not that I'm bothered as I have my own bags anyway but can't see why Sainsburys can't give them away all week to catch most of their customers not just the Tuesday shoppers IYSWIM.

co-op bags decompose in 5 years, both the shopping bags and the fruit and veg ones, not sure what they are made of, but I still prefer to take my own bags

I suspect it will take a heavy push to get supermarkets to change over-packaging policies.

The most over-wrapped goods are those with the highest margins. Organic and fair trade food is vastly more profitable for them, and they've long known that the premium they can charge is a function of customer perception.
We tend to feel that heavily wrapped goods are more precious, and if you are paying twice the going rate for a peach, you don't want it to be bruised.
Ditto cosmetics, which for the highest price products (and thus most profitable) seem to be 80% packaging, with hardly any payload.

Thus a few bits of litter by annoyed customers aren't going to move them much.

Nestle kills babies, everyone knows they do it, they sell baby formula to people who have no safe water to mix it with.
Do their products get boycotted ?
No enough to care.
It wouldn't be that hard to make them care enoguh to stop would it ?
Given a choice between a 20% drop in sales of breakfast cereal and selling formula to poor people, it would be an easy decision to make.
But it doesn't happen, and since this has been true for 20 years, my expectation is that it never will.

Supermarkets are thus entirely up for Anita Roddick/ Body Shop tokens, but let's be realistic about what can be achieved.

Problem is that most people have the attitude of 'my effort won't count to change anything' - and ok one person won't make much difference but if no-one does it then of course nothing will change. I'm starting to kick myself up the arse and think its my responsibility to do everything I possibly can and if no-one else does then that's their problem.

Supermrkets over wrap the organic produce because it prevebts people form pretendign that it is non orgainic and therefore cheaper. If it was loose, the cashier wouldn't necessarily relaise that it was, or wasn't, orgainic.

I take my own bags. I put them in the boot when I next go out to the car, then they ar ealwys there for me.

Oh just make it law that the bloody pakaging and bags should be made from biodegradable and enviromentally friendly "corn plastic" and be done with it.

Aefondkiss, is that the folding Sainsbury's bag? I have a couple of those but what I really need is a bigger handbag.

I agree with you, SD, that would be the best option. Then we could reuse/compost as we wish.

no Suedonim, do you know Au Naturale... it is a shop, sells cheap things like throws, cushions, etc?

these bags are like the onya bag, but much cheaper, they come in different styles, shopper can go on your shoulder, backpack which is a bit naff imo, but the thing is they are cheap, pack up small like a cagoul, but smaller, in the pocket that is attatched to the bag... I can't see them online, sorry

www.aunaturale.co.uk/aunatsite.php

that is a link to the page that gives you the store finder, everyone I know who has started buying these really likes them, because they are so small you might not find them in the store, they are quite popular, they used to come in all colours and patterns but have just been changed, they are great.

"me and my bag blogs.gettyimages.com/entertainment/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/72889111.jpg"

Cat64, no one is more cynical about capitalism than me. Supermarkets get better margins from fairtrade goods.I know that's not how it's supposed to work, but...

But yes they do respond to consumer demand, but as a function of profit, and my view is that when dealing with highly profitable goods, that requires a big push.

I'm being realistic. The class act in fair trade and organic food is the Co-Op, always has been.
What % of people round here go out of their way to shop there ? Any takers at all ?

Not saying they are prefect, but no one works harder on the eco stuff. Has the Co-Op suddenly grabbed huge market share ?
No.

Any business has a balance in spending between "better" goods, and telling people they are better. In the case of greenery, PR is all.

Stopping free plastic bags actually saves them money, and gets good PR.
That doesn't make them bad people. To me someone who can do good whilst making more money is cause for admiration.

But they're not really doing much good with bags.
A big thing they could do is only stock food that is in "natural" season. The impact of heating, artificial fertilisers, pesticides etc of giving "local" food is huge.
I'm old enough to remember when British Strawberries were not available 7 months of the year, but one or two.
But out of season fruit is a big thing for supermarkets, would cost money, and the farmer & supermarket PR people have skilfully avoided any whinging about that.
Indeed they've swung it the other way, with people genuinely seeing "food miles" as bad.
Who does that benefit I wonder ?
Hmmm.

I've only skimmed the thread, so forgive me if this point has already been made. But, what is Tescos going to do when I shop online? Are they going to charge me for the many bags (many of which will only be 1/4 full) they bring to my door that I didn't ask for? They could put the food directly in their crates, but then they would have to stand there longer waiting for me to unload it. And time is money so they won't do that.

I'm afraid I agree with DC on this one. Taxing bags while it does help a very little bit is more about generating revenue. This is absolutely true inIreland (where I was living when the platic bag tax came in).

To answer the OP, yes, I would stop shopping at Tesco if they charged me for bags and say Sainsbury's didn't. Of course, if they all charge, I'll have no choice.

If I were running delivery services, I wouldn't do bags, I'd do "boxes for life".
I'm no expert on home delivery, but having flimsy bags full of delicate items must be a pain, crushed goods cost money and annoy paying customers.
Also there are health and safety issues. I'd not want my staff hurting their backs.
Hence they use more bags.

I'd go for stackable trays, barcoded and collected when you get your next delivery. Much easier to make trays insulated, so cold & frozen goods travel better.
Better for customers, cheaper and because less food gets trashed much greener.

In all this debate on bags, little has been said about the huge % of fresh food that gets thrown away. I've seen numbers like 1/3 of fruit never gets eaten.
Sort that problem, and you get more people eating fruit which is good for them, and less waste.

And, another thing that annoys me about tesco is the sometimes tie the handles in a tight not so I have to rip the bag open and then can't reuse it. How stupid is that?

I'm being realistic. The class act in fair trade and organic food is the Co-Op, always has been.
What % of people round here go out of their way to shop there ? Any takers at all ?

Well I do, the majority of my shopping is done in the co-op, has been for the last 7 years, but I do think people see the co-op as too expensive and with more limited choice than the "big" supermarkets

Back to the bags - my local Waitrose has just done a 2 week experiment without carrier bags. Not sure how it went as when I went to pay the cashier asked me if I had my own bags and I could see loads of carriers under the checkout. She still wrapped the frozen items in a small plastic bag.
I have bags for life as well as other permanent shopping bags - but I don't see many people using their own shopping bags in the High Streets (apart from old ladies).