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Let's make SG a 'no plastic bag' zone
Here's a good intention for 2011 - let's make Stroud Green a plastic bag free zone.
I hate it when I go into a grocers to buy some piffling thing - a pint of milk for example - and they automatically put it in a plastic bag without even asking. No matter if I actually have an armful of bags already. And even a proper *shopping bag*. You have to get them to take it out again. Let's name and shame - my local food store does this all the time - but they are all the same.
It's pure ignorance.
Any ideas on how to achieve this?
I hate it when I go into a grocers to buy some piffling thing - a pint of milk for example - and they automatically put it in a plastic bag without even asking. No matter if I actually have an armful of bags already. And even a proper *shopping bag*. You have to get them to take it out again. Let's name and shame - my local food store does this all the time - but they are all the same.
It's pure ignorance.
Any ideas on how to achieve this?
Comments
# In the UK, banning plastic bags would be the equivalent of taking 18,000 cars off the roads each year
# Between 500 billion and 1 trillion plastic bags are used worldwide each year
# Approximately 60 - 100 million barrels of oil are required to make the world’s plastic bags each year
# Most plastic bags take over 400 years to biodegrade. Some figures indicate that plastic bags could take over 1000 years to break down.
# China uses around 3 billion plastic bags each day.
# In the UK, each person uses around 220 plastic bags each year
Plus: plastic bags are crappy, irritrating and in poor taste.
If you want a bigger issue, look at the amount of packaging for most products.....totally unnecessary. I for one HATE that supermarkets stopped selling fruit & veg loose...so now you buy more than you wanted, and add tonnes to landfill. Oh, and the stuff probably came from Africa on a 747 too.
The idea that paying for bags isn't much deterrent is supported by the number of Lidl bags one sees about. That's a shop people are using in order to save money (although it's seldom actually cheaper, that's another story), and yet they're still OK with paying a few pence for the bags, such that it just becomes another earner for the store.
As someone who regularly visits the Republic of Ireland I realise policy is also important. There it's 20 cents a bag and as a result very few people ask for them now. A lot of the packaging boxes that the goods come to the supermarket in are available at the back of the store to transport your goods back home and many people use those cloth bags. In london, I think the problem with Lidl only having the policy of charging for bags (5 pence or so I think) is that a culture of refusal is not widespread.
I think leaving packaging for some low paid shop assistant or cashier to clean up just results in them thinking of the particular customer as a nuissance and isn't going to have an effect on long term policy concerning packaging. Maybe it would in a small shop especially if the owner or manager has to do it.
But what really depresses and irritates me about the whole plastic bag business is how it betrays a general level of ignorance, stupidity and lack of awareness among most small shopkeepers and quite a lot of their customers. More rubbish? Who cares! Another pointless bit of plastic? Why not!
What is needed is a general change of attitude. It would be so easy to stop expecting a plastic bag - but we won't. And if we can't get something as simple as that right, what hope is there for the really important issues like car use, energy consumption, air travel, population growth.......?