Question about supermarket shopping and plastic bags

[Ceolas]

The Dispatches programme the other night got me thinking...

We get plastic bags with our weekly shop and keep them to reuse as bin liners. If we took reusable bags to the supermarket, we'd have to buy bin liners, woudn't we?

What's worse?

well if you are going to resuse plastic carrier bags then I would hope the supermarkets would make them a little thicker so they dont break and you end up recycling them after half a trip.

why don't supermarkets start charging 50p each for carrier bags? That'd deter people from using too many and encourage them to reuse them surely?

Or do as they do in parts of France and just NOT provide them at all...

I see where you are coming from Ceolas - but how many people actually reuse them? I bet not many people do.

If we all used reusable bags at the supermarket and bought biodegradable bin liners, that would be better I guess.

I take our carriers to our local shop who use them instead of buying in carriers; or as far as possible we take banana boxes from the supermarket and pack our shopping in those (but we have a huge minibus to take it all home in!!)

The dispatches programme was quite good but I was a bit disappointed that they didn't give a lot of time to the point that we all need to change our throwing habits and buy less food (a third of food is thrown away), use less disposable products and boycott overpackaged food - ie cut down on the amount of waste we generate in the first place.

You could buy biodegradeable bin liners?

I've started eschewing fresh veg for frozen as I found that I was chucking a goodly portion of it away. OK it went in the composter so the worms got to enjoy it, but that isnt' really the point.

When we were in France, the supermarket had reusable bags for 1 euro (so about 60p). I am still using them nearly two years later. My main fault is that I often forget to put them in the car, or, if I do put them in the car, I forget to take them into the supermarket with me (but that's just age I guess).

it was a genuine question about our personal habits!

Completely agree Miaou. We need to cut down the amount we throw away, not just look at which bin we put it in.

Will look into biodegradable bin liners.

I'm same as ceolas. I reuse all my plastic bags as bin liners. I sometimes run out even!
Have got some sainsburys part recycled bin liners (50p for 40).
Perhaps I should use them all the time. That would mean I couldn't justify using plastic bags at the supermarket though!

the french got it right and it has worked - people had to change and did. You can buy paper bags at the checkout if you haven't brought anything with you.

we use our supermarket carrier bags to wrap stinky nappies in.......

I use jute bags atm. Will always try not to have a carrier bag or if I get a bag in one place I'll put other bits in rather than getting loads of bags- if I'm shopping in town or something that is

One of the benefits of having a "suitcase" for a handbag is that I can mostly say "no thank you" when asked if I want my purchases in a bag. Makes it a complete bugger to find anything in it though .

like you Ceolas i reuse my carrier bags as rubbish bags or for DH to take his lunch to work in. I have what my DH calls my funny farms moments where i roll the bags (fold in half then roll up) into batches of tidy rolls to go under my sink and are is to get to .

I mainly get them when i do a big top up shop every few month, on a weekly basis i have a couple of reuseable bags and just get them i need extra bags. I have cut down on what we buy so have reduced our waste.

Compost waste goes to my mums on a weekly basis on to her compost heap (I don't have room in my garden and she lives around the corner) a weekly rubish is normally 3 or 4 carrier bags in the bottom of the wheely bin.