Plastic carrier bag politics

If I am going on a supermarket shop, I remember to take my re-usable bags.

If I do a spur of the moment shop, I expect a free carrier. The Spar are terrible at this though. They don't provide single use carriers, only 10p re-usables.

I got fed up with the pile of re-usabled bags I had collected at Spar so stopped shopping there for small items. to me, that shop is no longer usable because of this silly 10p bag thing - which let's be honest, is a money spinner for the Spar.

If these shops were so very concerned with the environment, their products wouldn't come from half way around the world with all the pollution involved in their carriage.

We can make nuclear fusion, surely some clever scientist can invent a cheap, biodegradeable single use carrier bag?

has anybody noticed that some shops only have tiny tiny carrier bags that will only just fit a few sweets then you stand there struggling to bunch them together and put one item in each one....the checkout person grunts a few times whilst agressively pointing at a rack filled to bursting with £1.99 bags of which you will need 4, 5 or even 6 ..the other people in the que are there pitchforks at the ready.....um um ok ok ok I'll take 6 of these...and...just wait until I put my stuff in....beep beep beep....hey don't put the next guys things through yet....(checkout person...UH...ROLLEYES).and that will be £11.94 for the carrier bags....oh b^gger the handle fell off ....smash...rolling noise...

A nice little earner, 60p, what sorry, 3 carrier bags 20p each. sir....its for the environment....actually its because we dont give you cardboard boxes like we did in the 80's because we sell those by weight to get recycled and they get shipped to china and made into new boxes for next years things we will sell to you...
Carrier bags- make about 20 for a penny, sell them for 5, 10 or even 20p each, ha ha easy profit, more markup than the stuff in the basket...an ever super duper lasting jute or cotton bag, sir....made in india or china for 4p and that will be a pound each, the slightly thicker bags with plastic handles are £2.20 each.....still wont stop illegal dumping of rubbish in the sea by large companies in various countries or "waste management " companies managing to ship rubbish abroad to dissapear.....just like the certain £2000 allowance which is eaten up in mark ups, both are beneficial to corporate tycoons...
All that will happen is this, they know that you need carrier bags unless you reverse the car up to the shop door, which you are no longer legally allowed to do, if you bring a bag back, the checkout person will beep in the price of the bag anyway because they have been warned to or else by "head office" so you get peed off and think if I'm going to pay every time for a bag I might as well get a new one each time" and you will end up hoarding expensive carrier bags until, guess what , you get fed up and out of space and throw them away anyway, then they will probably charge you for recycling by that point...

One in three tv sets that arrive at the tip still works, so do a lot of other things, computers, tools, lawnmowers ect,(I know someone who works there)

A conservative guess at the "average" age of items dumped there, would be well less than ten years old,

And yet carrier bags seem to be the root of all evil, even Gormless Brown had to give them a mention in one of his budgets.

I re-use my single use carrier bags because in a way I dont like waste so wont throw them away and have a cupboard full of them at home. I re-use them to stop me from adding to my collection and also because I get extra clubcard points. if I shop on spur of the moment or forget my bags I have never had a snooty look or been refused bags, I have read that asda bosses only allow the checkout clerks x amount of bags a day and thats why they get in a huff about it, but I shop in tesco or sainsburys so dont really get that problem

Since it now is a thing of the past to expect that there will be carrier bags at the checkout in our local Tesco, I have bought numerous of their bags for life, BUT, just how long is life? as the handles regularly break on the day of purchase. I have pointed this out to customer services, and was told by a particularly uppity assistant that they had broken because I was using them for the wrong kind of shopping. I pointed out that there were no guidelines on just what your shopping should consist of, and I assumed that they were designed for normal grocery shopping, to this she replied that heavy items such as canned goods or potatoes should not be placed in them, and perhaps I should buy myself a good leather shoppimg bag. Next we will see Tesco selling leather shopping bags [SUITABLE FOR HEAVY SHOPPING] So it would appear that "Bags for Life" are designed for customers who have a short life span. I've given up trying to understand their logic, I now shop at Morrisons.

Apology accepted Rori, btw are you jewish? I do my bit for the enviroment anyway I throw all my old newspapers and plastic cartons on the coalfire to keep my frontroom warm.

When the world ends you will burnt/cremated in a recycled plastic bag on top of a pile of logs cut down from an Amazonian forest. They said you were irreplaceable. But I don't believe them. I married an old carrier bag, and we ended up in land-fill. For fifteen years we were on the council-house waiting list, only ending up on the waste heap. So much for our wonderful society. We are all throw-away citizens nowadays. We all ought to be banned.

Youthful Griper, Grumpyoldwoman & Gainsborough Lad & others

I have a fridge freezer that is 20 years old, I forget how long I have had the microwave but it is the only one I have ever had and my armchairs came to me third hand. I buy new stuff only when the old runs out.

I don’t own a tumble dryer and air dry washing outside and have not flown anywhere for 11 years. I walk everywhere or get the bus and have been taking my own bags for the weekly supermarket shop for 40 years.

Apparently I am a threat to the environment though because, having for once forgotten to bring my own, I asked for a carrier bag in the supermarket and got a lecture from the snotty kid serving me.

When the world ends I will, apparently, be to blame so can I apologize in advance for the inconvenience?

Grumpyoldwoman, yes, that will never end up down the tip, I can see it on antiques roadshow in 2350 ad.

I hate the way Sainsbury's checkout people ask, "Do you have your own bags?". "Yes, that's why I'm stood here with all of my shopping piling up (with no bags in my hands)".

Wow, GL, that's a big one! A very worthwhile investment I should think; a place for everything and everything in it's place.

grumpyoldwoman