For reasons I won't bore you with I was trawling through my posts in the Blogger window the other day when I came across the draft below. Somehow it had slipped unnoticed onto the second page without ever being published and, thus hidden, had languished there ever since. Which is a shame because (a) it was a finished post and (b) it's a rant, and everyone loves a good rant.
So I've bumped it and, although when it reads "yesterday" it actually means some time last year, I think the rest of it still holds. We've bought our own canvas bags for shopping now. Pass the hummus...
Hulme Asda were doling out warnings yesterday about their stopping supplying carrier bags from next week. This warning is accompanied by a relocation of the bag supplies under the till, thus making it more awkward to insist on using them. They've been replaced by "bag-for-life" type bags on sale for 5p, or 10p, or something.
Doubtless I'll get pilloried by the hummus-lovers, but (and pardon me for saying so) I think there are about a thousand environmental problems in need of more urgent attention than plastic bags. But sure enough, the "plastic bags" issue is the one this bankrupt government concentrate on, and the major supermarkets, with all their massed commercial might, are only too delighted to toady up to them and go along with it.
And why wouldn't they be? Supplying carrier bags for free has, until now, been seen as a cost of being in business. Here's a chance for them to pass that cost onto the hapless consumer, and LOOK GOOD IN THE PROCESS! Oh look at us, we're being environmentally conscientious. We're doing our bit for the planet. This is such utter b0ll0cks. How many billion pounds a year profit do these ba5tards make? I don't know, but almost certainly enough to swallow the entire cost of recycling every single plastic bag in the country. They could even afford to pay us a penny every time we reuse one, as an incentive. Oh look! Some of them HAVE been doing that already! Until the government let them off the hook by declaring the plastic carrier bag Public Enemy Number One. A nice, easy target. One whose destruction will only affect the poor old consumer, right at the bottom of the corporate food chain, who now has to cart around a dozen bags every trip, bags that will get dirtier and smellier as the weeks go by.
Meanwhile the number of 4x4s on the roads continues to climb, the icecaps keep on melting, China and India continue to pour millions of cubic metres of concrete, the rainforests are almost gone, fish are being caught at unsustainable levels and drug companies defy testing regimes and outright bans. But it's OK, the planet is safe. As long as you use a sustainable form of plastic bag. God.
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4 comments:
Here too. One chain is charging 5 cents *plus one cent tax!!!!!* on each plastic bag to encourage you to bring your own. Their store brand carrier bags are 99 cents (plus tax). Actually since i usually have to schlep my stuff on the bus, the fabric carrier bags are a bit easier on my hands and they hold more. Which is another problem, incidentally because the clerks then stuff so much into the bags, and all the heavy stuff into one, you can't carry it anyway half the time!
One chain did not jump in and charge people for the plastic bags but have their own carrier bags you can buy anyway and lots do. None of the shops here have stopped carring plastic altogether, they'll just charge you for it and the clerks have to ask you "Would you like a five cent plastic bag for your groceries?" Doh. It's actually 6 cents with the tax so you're lying are you? I ought to point that out next time.
I usually get my groceries on the way home from work and i'm a bus traveler. I don't carry all those canvas bags with me all the time. Another reason to shop at the one that doesn't charge me though i do have a nifty little fold up one that does fit in my handbag and i'm getting another one of those.
As you probably know, my wife works at a popular grocery store, and it's gone non-plastic now. Not without some resistance, but previous to doing so they polled as many of their shoppers as possible, and went with the result.
If you don't have a bag, they provide you with a paper one or provide cheap reusable ones.
In May, I went to Ottawa to visit my mom. I didn't see anyone who wasn't carting a cotton re-usable bag with them to the store. I was quite surprised. Mom kept them by the door to the garage where she would just pick them up on the way to the car if she was going to the store.
It didn't seem like a huge transition for her, and she's 94.
Don, you're right. It wasn't such a huge transition for us either in the end. We keep the supply of canvas bags in the boot (trunk) and, although we forgot to take them in with us a couple of times in the early days, now it's second nature.
And not a big deal.
So yeah, whoop-di-do. We're doing our bit for the planet and it ain't all that hard. I still think my point about there being a thousand more important things to tackle is valid though. If we only do these simple, trivial, headline-grabbing things, the planet is doomed.
I agree with you there, my friend.
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