Wednesday 7 November 2007

Should we ban plastic bags? - The Wright Stuff topic

one of the talking points on The Wright Stuff today was "should we ban plastic bags?"

in my opinion - Yes! they had the lady in devon on the phone who got her village to ban them, the first village/town in the UK to do so. it turns out that she had been in hawaii which due to its location and ocean currents collects all the worlds waste on its beaches. the tourist beaches are cleaned regularly but the more secluded location are only cleaned once a year which results in 4ft (!!!!!) of plastic (mainly, as it doesn't degrade) lining the beaches. they now even have their own cloth bag design

one viewer sent in a text saying that they would miss plastic bags as they are good for cleaning up their dogs mess. well surely something like the cornstarch bags that they used in the village in devon would work just as well.

the only time we use plastic carrier bags is to line the bins. but we are almost at the end of our supply now that we have stopped gainig them from shops. the only time i ever get one is if i'm in a hurry or am distracted and don't realised that the sales assistant has put the item in a bag etc. the reason i think thats it taken so long to use up our "collection" is that now we have the 3 wheelie bins (brown for food waste - which is put in double lined envelopes that we recycle, green for other paper/card, black for non recyclables and i take glass, plastic, tins and cans to tescos recycling centre when i'm passing to get my green points!) we only have 1 maybe 2 carrier bags of rubbish per week.

i have a cloth bag and a plastic Bag For Life in my handbag, and if its only one item, like a net of oranges etc i will just carry it out of the shop after paying. i mean why do you need a carrier bag for one item??!!

it makes me wonder, having seen our own collection that we built up over the years, what people do with all their carrier bags that i see them taking their weekly shopping home in. before we started using our Bags For Life and Bag for Life wine carrier for our shopping we used our old carrier bags until they fell apart.

Lidls have been selling their plastic bags for a while i believe but as they are not one of the biggest supermarkets i think this seems to have gone unnoticed, as on today's Wright Stuff they mention how a major supermarket was going to start charging for their carrier bags, i think it was Marks and Spencer. Yet when you go to Lidls you see most people leaving with either cardboard boxes, which i recall my grandparents doing when i was younger or with their items loose in their trolley.

In April Sainsbury's banned carrier bags for a day.


Tescos recently took away their carrier bags from their checkouts and left it to the checkout assistant to give them out. i don't know if they are told how many to give out etc, but all you have to do is find an assistant who it having a bad day and doesn't care and once again you have more carrier bags given out than you need.

At the beginning of October there was an online petition to ban carrier bags, this was the governments response.

i would love to know what people do with all their carrier bags! please let me know!

1 comment:

Jules said...

We are using up our supply too. We use them for lining the bins mainly. We have a composter, a recycling bin that takes paper, card, plastic bottles etc, and I take the glass to the bottle bank. I have a hessian type bag for life that I got with my nescafe bean tokens :-) My next campaign is to bombard tesco (and others) with emails about their excessive packaging - I can't believe they sell four apples in a plastic dish, and then it's sealed inside a clear plastic bag! Good work Jenny, we need more people like you.