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How much shopping must some people do for the average to be 54 bags a year!
I used to take the trolley to my car on the weekly food shop and basically empty it in to the boot. When I got home I’d use a rucksack or hold-all to carry it to the house.
Does seem a bit bonkers fretting about the plastic in bags when you’re (not you, I mean “one”) shopping by car
Not really - cos even when I shop by car, it's on the way home from work on the rare day that I've driven to work. And other folk just automatically jump in the car to go anywhere - they're the people I meant.
DrJ
No cos I don’t have a car. Does seem a bit bonkers fretting about the plastic in bags when you’re (not you, I mean “one”) shopping by car.
I haven't seen too many videos of turtles (& other animals) mistakenly eating cars, thinking they were jellyfish. Carrier bags on the other hand...
Does seem a bit bonkers fretting about the plastic in bags when you’re (not you, I mean “one”) shopping by car
I walk 90% of the time to shops. I still try to not use a carrier bag did so as much as possible before the big push, seems a bit selfish to think it’s Ok as you don’t have a car.
BEHOLD! The future
I assume that the 4 times use and 54 bought each year are for the 10/20p bags not the big thick ones. People are just buying those instead of using the previously free 5p bags.
I'm probably one of the worst offenders. My 'bag for life' collection is large and varied.
As ever, it was done with the best intentions, but Industry ****ed with the programme and ruined it.
You don't need to be a rocket surgeon to work out there's a hell of a lot more plastic in 'bags for life' than disposable ones.
Supermarkets already know they're putting out record volumes of plastic, but they don't care, once the cat was out of the bag that they could actually charge for bags they dropped the zero-revenue 5p ones almost over-night. Better to flog 20p ones.
Supermarkets already know they’re putting out record volumes of plastic, but they don’t care, once the cat was out of the bag that they could actually charge for bags they dropped the zero-revenue 5p ones almost over-night. Better to flog 20p ones.
...and they they're selling bin liners hand over fist now. Kerching.
What is the answer then, to getting shopping from the shop to your house/car?
I use Waitrose where they bring the food in crates which I carry into kitchen and unload and give them the crate back
I hate to think what the "payback" period for re-use is on one of those crates. Fortunately, they're everywhere and so easy to acquire, and (who'd have thought it?) are great for getting your shopping to the car and into the house:
1. Put 2-3 crates in car, drive to supermarket
2. Put crates in trolley, gather shopping
3. Put said shopping into crates as it comes through the checkout (if in Aldi/Lidl, watch the checkout person silently fume as they fail to get the shopping through quicker than you can pack it, no matter how hard they try)
4. Wheel crates to car, drive home
5 Bring shopping in in 2-3 trips
They're also useful for about a billion other things.
My massive cycle-panniers have handles. Job done. 15 years and going strong. A few stitches here and there. Everyone else can **** right off with their bollocks. #notevensmug
My massive cycle panniers are made from recycled truck tarps. #considerablylesssmugthanyow.
I heard a great idea on the radio this morning, the supermarkets should have collection points at the store entrances for people to donate the excess bags they bought and those people who’ve forgotten theirs can use them.
trouble is, the people who have too many bags are the ones who never remember to take them to the supermarket.
My massive cycle panniers are made from recycled truck tarps.
We have a winner!
Anyway… here’s the issue:
• disposable plastics bad
• treating non-disposable plastics as if they were disposable even worse
Selfish lazy idiots are the problem, ultimately.
(if in Aldi/Lidl, watch the checkout person silently fume as they fail to get the shopping through quicker than you can pack it, no matter how hard they try)
No way you can pack faster than the check out person can get stuff through the latest Lidl checkouts. They read the bar codes from any angle at any speed. Two of us fail to keep up.
yup, not tech, but v tough!
If I get a pair for my made in England and then refurbished by prisoners on a training scheme Pashley postie bike, whose purchase funded a second bike being sent to Africa, I definitely win the #smugOlympics? It's fuelled by vegan food and lubricated with Green Oil, which must be worth a few points?
From that article (with the handy comparison table of how many times you need to use a cotton bag to offset equivalent in plastic)
...regardless of the bag you choose, what is likely of vastly greater importance is what you choose to put in it and how you carry it around: Eating less meat, cycling or walking to the store, and buying locally-made grocery products are all likely to make a bigger difference in lowering your personal contribution to environmental problems.
It’s not a chore or hardship for me to grocery shop by bicycle, have been doing it since a teenager and still enjoy it maybe more than I should. So ‘smug’ doesn't even cut it.
There have been times when it’s been difficult owing to disability but friends have sometimes helped, or store delivery drivers. What really blows my mind that the only time I see other bikes tied outside local supermarkets are for a couple of weeks in the high summer. And then only (literally) a couple of bikes per a retail park full of parked cars. It’s mental on every level IMO.
‘Edit’ nah, ‘smug’ is sitting in a big car sneering at someone on a bike while thinking ‘they only cycle to the shops/eat free range/less meat etc in order to be smug showoffs’
(facepalm)
Reuse - reuse - reuse.
That comparison with cotton bags doesn't include the problems with litter from plastic bags.
It is based on a a study in Denmark, which assumes the plastic bag is used once, then go to incineration. Whereas here they will probably just go to landfill.
Or they get chucked away, and littering the countryside, or ending up in the sea. At least cotton will biodegrade eventually, if it is chucked away.
Am I missing something obvious? You can't measure the success or otherwise of Bags For Life from the plastic footprint. The issue isn't how much plastic you use, it's what you do with it after. They were never meant to reduce the consumption of plastic, and probably never could.
I have about 20 bags for life probably, because I'm incompetent, and yes that's used up more plastic than if I'd got a disposable bag. But they're all in the car, or in the cupboard, none of them are in the sea.
Plastic footprint sometimes gets used as a proxy for plastic wastage when dealing with packaging, because so much is single use by definition, and because it's easier to track usage at source than it is to track disposal at end of life. But it's not the same, it's just a somewhat useful equivalent.
Take lego... Lego has a horrendous plastic footprint, but most of the disposable part is recycled and recyclable, and the plastic part is mostly reusable for decades. I have lego that's older than me, if I ever have kids they'll get it all, none of it's going in a fish.
As brant mentions above the virtue bags are even worserer.
What about my hessian (I think) ones? We have 4 plastic "bags for life" which we have had for years. Somehow we always manage to go shopping with bags. If you can remember to put your shoes on you can remember the shopping bags surely?
[strong]molgrips[/strong] wrote:
What is the answer then, to getting shopping from the shop to your house/car?
Really? If you shop by car then leave a strong box in the boot. Empty trolly to till and bang it back in the trolley as fast as they can scan it. Pay. Push trolley to car as you woulld anyway and transfer goods into box in boot of car. Drive home, carry box(es) into house. Empty boxes and replace in car. Repeat ad Infinitum. A good plastic Eurobox can be used for holding dirty biking gear after a ride too. If you take the bus then use a rucksack. We haven't used a plastic bag for shopping in this house for 20 years. And neither do we use the thin veggie bags, just bang the veg loose in the trolley.
Why not put the box in the trolley to start with (along with funkmasterp's rucksack)?
I've just realised the bag I carry my lunch to work in is 5 years old! It's from a snowboard shop in Canada, s'how I know. I flew to Canada and did a leisure activity on a mountain, which I got to by bus. But! I'm still using the carrier bag. Smug doesn't cover it.
I have about 20 bags for life probably, because I’m incompetent, and yes that’s used up more plastic than if I’d got a disposable bag. But they’re all in the car, or in the cupboard, none
A portmanteau for you, you smastard!
And neither do we use the thin veggie bags, just bang the veg loose in the trolley.
Very much this. Except for sprouts and peas. We reuse a decent brown paper bag for mushrooms, easy. Can do the same with sprouts etc. **** those plastic punnets. **** ‘em.
Thiugh obviously the way forward is to reduce convenience via banning polluting shit, as that’s the only way to get everyone onboard. Onboard, that is, without winding up in a retarded anti-cultural situation where 86% of ****s thinking/projecting that the other 14% of ****s are simply smug ****ers with ‘posh’ ‘pretentious’ shit, and so therefore 86% wouldn’t be seen dead with a brown paper bag, recycled box, or the ultimat hip smug ****mobile - a cargo-bike. If it wasn’t for cyclist being such tossers then more people would be cyclists. I read that on youtube, i think.
The solution is clearly the string shopping bags every housewife carried the shopping home in in the 60s. 90% air, far less material than the alternatives. Unless you are buying your grapes individually the gaps in the bag aren't a problem.
Also, you might want to rethink the plastic bags as bin liners, as it appears they may be leaching chemicals into the water.
I flew to Canada and did a leisure activity
Monster.
If you shop by car then leave a strong box in the boot.
Good solution. If you walk to the shop though you still need a bag, preferably shoulder bag.
a leisure activity
No way you can pack faster than the check out person can get stuff through the latest Lidl checkouts. They read the bar codes from any angle at any speed. Two of us fail to keep up.
Am I the only one that moves deliberately slowly when the stuff starts to pile up mercilessly?
There are some seriously unorganised people out there. We have around 12 of them
I'd suggest you stop feeding them, they'll soon leave.
PS I use a 25 year old laptop bag (which is made entirely of plastic). It carries lunch to the office every day and small grocery hauls picked up on the way home. Yaa boo sucks.
It will probably break tomorrow, now I done wrote this, and I'll be forced to use some inferior modern disposable rubbish.
[strong]Cougar[/strong] wrote:
Why not put the box in the trolley to start with (along with funkmasterp’s rucksack)?
Don't do it for a couple of reasons. Not packing a box/bags directly from the the till means I can re-load the trolley faster than the assistant can scan items off the belt, so zero time wasted there trying to pack stuff, just load trolley and pay. Also we keep a cool bag in the car as well so frozen/chilled stuff needs to be repacked in there anyway (it is a 25 minute drive home from town), then heavy stuff into bottom of box, light stuff on top. Just far more relaxing packing at own pace without a queue of people waiting behind you.
I usually walk to Asda with my rucksac. Then I press the button on the till that says "I brought my own bag" and it says, put your bag in the bagging area. Then it says "You've put something in the bagging area that shouldn't be there, remove it". I assume they've only set it up to accept bags for life and my rucksac is too heavy. It would be useful if they could program the the till to accept proper reusable bags.
We use Sainsbury delivery and they use about 10 of the cheap bags putting various random things in a bag, mainly vacuum packed stuff which doesn’t need one. Completely unnecessary.
If you give them back to the driver they will get reused. I was told by a driver they have to separate out the different foodstuffs by law, just before he said Ill have them back to use.
I used to take the trolley to my car on the weekly food shop and basically empty it in to the boot.
Some places get arsey if you try that with basket. 😀 apparently people like to steal them!
I’ve seen lots of hijacked trolleys but don’t ever recall seeing a basket abandoned.
I used to leave the rucksack for similar reasons to Welshfarmer. Not a massive fan of supermarkets and in trolley, scan, back in trolley, car is the quickest simplest method I found. Sometimes I’d even tip the trolley in to the boot for maximum efficiency. Mrs F used to frown at this.
If virtue signaling was a currency, we'd be a rich country once again....
Sometimes I’d even tip the trolley in to the boot for maximum efficiency.
Do you own a low slung sports car or are you just hench, a fully loaded trolly has quite a lot of mass!
What is the answer then, to getting shopping from the shop to your house/car?
How do you get your stuff to and from school, university, work, the gym etc etc? I'll bet it's not in shitty plastic carrier bags (yes, I know some people do, but they'll just have to make changes).
Costco do this. They’ve never offered bags.
Exactly. If the worlds 2nd, 3rd or whatever they are now largest retailer can do without plastic bags then they all can. There should be an immediate blanket ban against them brought in through legislation at the next available opportunity.
If you only have a baskets worth then bring in a backpack or tote. If you have a trolleys worth and have a car in the carpark, take trolley to car, empty shopping into easily managable totes in the boot.
Ikea blue bags are great and virtually indestructible in normal use. Everyone should have a few even if they don't shop at Ikea.
On top of that SWMBO doesn’t keep bags for life in her car so, guess what, most trips she buys new bags for life. (Sometimes because there’s a cool design on sale!) SWMBO regards this as good for the environment because buying bags for life is good, yeah? They are too bulky to keep so they get thrown away in significant numbers.
I was having a conversation with my g/f about this earlier this evening. She’s on the tills at B&M, and people whine about the cost of the heavier bags for life, because they no longer do the 5p single use bags, but she frequently gets customers who are worse than SWMBO; they come to the till, complain about the price of the bags, then say ‘oh, we’ve got ten of them out in the car...’!
Bloody hell, you’re too ******* lazy to bring some of the bags that you already have in a car forty feet away, but bitch about the price of a new one? Sweet baby Jesus, what is the matter with people.
I’ve got a heavy duty plastic bag that I put my lunch stuff into, that goes into my rucksack, it keeps splitting, so I just stick it together with white duct tape, and I’ve had other thick plastic bags I put my lunch into that have literally lasted for years.
The average household is buying 54 bags for life a year.
I call balls on that.
Not surprised at all.
Every time I go in my Sainsbury's Local I never see anyone else bring their own bag. They pick up a "bag for life" every time. Sure they're not the heavy durable ones but are the 10p reusable type which seems the main ones these days. Seen this in many other shops, though less so in the big shops where people make more of an effort.
Often the shop try to hide the bags at the self scan but the public moan and ask for bags.
If I go to the "person" checkout they instantly reach for a bag and are shocked when I present mine.
Much of the public don't see it as an environmental duty or feel guilty picking a bag. They just see it as an annoyance of being charged for bags. While initially they may have cut back objecting to the charge, they've just accepted the cost. Higher price will do the same, then they'll accept the new price.
The bags get thrown in the normal bin too. Seen that at work. Stuffed with rubbish and just chucked in the waste. Perfectly good new reusable bag. Though the amount of recyclable stuff I see chucked in regular waste at work is shocking. I see it with neighbours too. Some attitudes are it's too complicated or don't have time to separate out (really is dead easy), some just don't care or think it's all a scam or why should they do the job they think the council should do instead.
I reuse a set of Italian supermarket bags we bought a few years ago. Take three. Fill two unload into third at the checkout.
Bags of this quality are still unavailable in the UK. The old blue Tesco bags were close, but they stopped those.
Ocado recycle the bags they deliver with.