watervole | (no subject)

But I've taken to carrying a carrier bag in my handbag recently. I mean well, but I tend to forget to take a handful of bags from the huge selection I have hanging in the cupboard with me when I go shopping. With so much else on my mind, bags seem a small item in the bigger scheme of things.

Taking a carrier tucked up in your handbag is a good idea.

I agreee bags are only a small part of the overall problem, but even if you only reduce the total ammount slightly, that's a number of bags that won't blow away from a landfill sight and potentilly kill birds and other creatures downwind.

Every time you resue a bag, you're reducing the possible damage - has to be a good thing.

that's a number of bags that won't blow away from a landfill sight and potentilly kill birds and other creatures downwind.

I have a *magic* conservatory! I put paperwork or other stuff into a carrier bag and put it in the conservatory ... the next time I go out there to search for something, I find the bag has started to turn to powder and just falls apart and blows away in teeny-tiny pieces ...

... I didn't answer the poll because I'm pretty terrible about this, even without a car ... though the last time I did a "big" shop I took a rolling trolley with me so I could bring back the diet coke, orange juice and milk in that and so that also reduced the number of plastic bags used ...

... still, I'll try to do better!

I have a *magic* conservatory! I put paperwork or other stuff into a carrier bag and put it in the conservatory ... the next time I go out there to search for something, I find the bag has started to turn to powder and just falls apart and blows away in teeny-tiny pieces ...

Biodegradable bags can sometimes be a real pain. They're energy intensive to produce, last long enough to suffocate something if they escape and then turn to powder when you're using them for something useful. Find ones that aren't biodegradable and they'll be fine in your conservatory.

... still, I'll try to do better!

Hug. Trying is good. None of us are perfect, so don't worry if you forget, just give yourself a pat on the back if you remember. Why not keep a supply of bags in the glove compartment - then you'd have them easily to hand.

Did you catch the BBC3 'Bulls*** Detective' progamme earlier this week? They took three lorry-loads of excess packaging to a few supermarkets to demonstrate an average day's output per store. Add the carrier bags to that and the amount of waste is frightening.

Lil and I have two big insulated 'trolley bags' from Lakeland which take the weekly shop, and I have a beautiful fitted basket for farmer's markets, and a plastic shopping bag from Accesorize which goes everywhere else with me for odd things I may pick up while out.

I also have a couple of very good crochet patterns for shopping bags, must get round to doing them.

In fact it's sometimes difficult to find plastic bags to clear the litter trays into...

To elaborate on my no: I seldom "go shopping". I drop in at the grocery store on my way home from work. I don't have a handbag. I need plastic bags for the trash. I'm sure I could find a way to get around all this, but I'm not entirely sure how.

I think you could keep a supply of plastic bags in a desk drawer and tuck one into a pocket when you leave. That would reduce the quantity you use.

You're allowed to use some for putting your trash in as you'd only be buying some other kind of plastic rubbish bag if you didn't.

Asda's self service checkouts are very annoying - they insist I use their bags or they shout "Item not bagged" or "Unexpected item in bagging area" at me and won't proceed. Otherwise I shove everything in my backpack and maybe take one extra bag to tie to it when it gets full. But then my bags go home and live in the cupboard, coming out to hold my overnight clothes when I'm away and have a new life as bin liners before making it to the dustbin. When Tesco deliver I hand back a bundle of bags.

I have the same problem when I take a rucksack to the Tesco self-servers. The only solution I've come up with is to put everything, unpacked, onto the bagging area scales, and then, after paying, pack it into the rucksack. But it does hold the queue up somewhat.

In Australia the check-out people still pack your bags for you (or did when I left) which initially made using your own bags tricky as they didn't like to use them and people would look at you like you were a dangerous lunatic trying to break the order of society (or delay the queue).
To get around that Coles started selling cloth bags designed to neatly fit their check-out packing frames, and a short time later using them was a perfectly normal and acceptable thing to do so we picked up the habit of remembering to take them with us.

We brought them to the UK when we moved (they doubled as packing material), and despite packing our own bags got to experience The Looks again. Happily since the local Sainsbury's started selling their reusable bags we have become moderately normal again and it's only the occasional fund-raising Scouts who aren't sure what to do with them. They're getting a little old and soft so tend to flop:)

Still get some plastic bags from unplanned shopping, but they get reused.

I tend to use the Waitrose Bag for Life bags since they'll swap them for a new one if I break it. Those big blue Ikea bags are handy too, I can attach them to Scarlett's pushchair making carrying large amounts of shopping much easier.

Waitrose car park has now got a recycling bin specifically for plastic carrier bags which is great, got rid of all of mine last week.

I've got at least one (maybe as many as two!) Ikea blue bags but I find their handle length inconvenient (too short or dragging on the ground) but obviously I can do something about that ... :-)

What do you mean by "try" and "a bag"? I never go shopping without half a dozen, mostly doubled (ie I put one inside another, because I used to find the handles broke under the weight on the walk home, though this doubling isn't strictly necessary now that I usually take the wheely bag (http://kalypso-v.livejournal.com/99863.html) on the weekly shopping trip). The bags are used until they split at the sides.

The reasons my stock of bags continues to be replenished are (a) evil assistants who sneak things into bags before I manage to get mine out, and (b) weekend trips when I get back late on Sunday night and work out my best chance of fresh food for the next few days is the late-opening Sainsbury at the railway station. Most of the local shop assistants have learned not to do the former, now, and I should be able to cope with the latter since I started carrying a parachute-silk carrier bag stuffed inside my ever-bulging handbag.

Also, the Cheese Hamlet (http://www.cheesehamlet.com/) started selling reusable fabric bags (price including 50p donation to local hospice) months before Sainsbury thought of it.

Well, you've inspired me to try out a different online grocery shop; the one I've been using packs everything in tons of plastic bags, more bags than I would have used if I'd been shopping in person and hadn't taken a bag -- and when I asked them if I could have it delivered with no bags, they said no. 8-(

Whereas I've just found that http://www.greengrocer.com.au delivers in a cardboard box. Yay! And also that one doesn't have to be home for the delivery, which is also a plus. They probably have a smaller range of food though. Well, I'm trying them out anyway.

Good for you!

Oooh! I get a gold star!

I've answered both yes and no to this poll. Yes when I go out to shop as opposed to going out to work or for some other reason I carry two shopping bags, one large stiff bottomed one which bottle wil stand on if you pack right, and a foldable one, usually one of the bags for life I've picked up at various stores because I've forgotten to take one with me, inside the other one.

I answered no because I often go out to work and buy something in nearby shops and realise I don't have a shopping bag. In this case I get a plastc bag from the first shop then use it for all the rest of the shops. The bag is then used for my recycling. My idiot council (Caerphilly) insists that all recycling must be sorted by the home owner and the different categories placed into their own plastic bags. Any that I don't recycle are gathered together periodically and posted to my cousins in Dublin who have the same problem with recycling that I do but can no longer get plastic bags for free from their shops. They are still available but you have to pay for them (10pence I think)and my cousins would rather pay me the postage for the freebies than pay the shops ten pence. They do not take the carbon footprint sending them the bags makes into consideration but they get it overland so it travels on a ship that would have been going there anyway

I have a number of bags for life which I try to have with me when I go shopping. They live in the car much of the time, which helps. Also, sometimes when I've left them at home and have a big shop, I'll take the trolley to the car, but the loose items in the boot and bag them when I get home to get them into the house. More work and annoying, but when you've done it a couple of times, it helps to remember to take the bags with me in the first place. ;-)

Oh, I do the loose things in the car, and I also leave some bags in the back as they are useful for rubbish and such, so if I have things that might roll, they go into one of those bags and hang from the little hooks around the sides of the Mondeo Estate (assuming that the car is working, which it isn't at the moment)

I could do better, but I certainly try to reuse bags. And I have trained the corner shop staff to just give my my milk instead of putting it in a plastic bag -- it's a plastic bottle with a moulded handle and I only live around the corner.

Did my bit by actually mentioning this problem in my book Dolphin Dreams. Remember, ladies and gentlemen, your shapeshifter heroes could be killed by a plastic bag.

MEntioning the problem in a novel gains you bonus points.

One nice thing that seems to have taken hold here in Australia is that when shopping, if one has bought only one or two items, they don't automatically put it in a plastic bag, or they tend to ask you whether you want a bag or not.

Yes, the supermarkets in my parent's town have taken to doing that. If you have only one or two items, you have to explicitly ask for a bag (other than if it's an item that would be difficult to carry without one), and they have notices up on each till explaining that policy. And they all sell the heavy duty reusable bags made from recycled polypropylene.

I don't take a bag, but I get my groceries in paper bags, which then double as my garbage bags, or wrapping paper, or get sewing patterns made from them.

I use paper bags. Mostly.

I tend to have Tesco bring my shopping here. Which is much spoon saving for me, and when the delivery chap has finished filling my kitchen with stuff I don't remember buying he (or indeed she) gets a plastic bag full of plastic bags.

Tesco have been doing thick plastic reusable 'bags for life' for years and I've certainly been flogging them to death ever since they came out. I've got a couple that must be coming on five years old, and I always take one with me when I set out to shop.

Most of my top-up shopping is at the One-Stop over the road, and since I'm usually buying only 2-3 things I can carry them home without a bag. Though I nearly always have to ask not to have a bag, even though the checkout staff ought to know me by now.

But I still seem to accumulate flimsy carriers. This morning I bought a packet of quorn chunks on my way home from work. It was going in my rucksack but because it was frozen (and ice-encrusted) it got popped in a flimsy first.

The one thing I'm really bad at is remembering to take a handful of transparent poly bags for fruit and veg whenever I go shopping. I keep meaning to, but always end up coming home with another half dozen. Why can't they use paper bags like they used to?

remembering to take a handful of transparent poly bags for fruit and veg whenever I go shopping

Mm, good idea. I'll try that, as those bags are my biggest problem. I'll go and put some in the wheely bag now.

I don't have one of those. I don't think it would suit me, somehow.

I take my rucksack and/or bike panniers.

I like going to Tescos and digging through my selection of plastic bags and Bags for Life (most of which I inherited from the previous tenant) from Sainsburys, Asda and Hobbycraft. And only the occasional Tescos bag. And then getting clubcard points for them.

I always have a rucksack with me when I go shopping, simply because when you have a guide dog you need your hands free, however, occasionally I have to take a plastic bag for delicate items. My bags then go to a charity bookshop to be reused.

I have a pile of those Bag For Life bags (from just about every supermarket you'd care to name) and always carry one of those around with me. There's still the inevitable accumulation of plastic carriers from various places, but they get stuffed into a holder in the kitchen and I use them to carry my lunch in - we have plastic recycling bins at work. :)

We don't carry plastic bags, as we use cloath or nylon shopping bags and we always keep some in the boot of the car for that random shopping moment.

I get miffed when I'm standing at a checkout with rucksack or pannier ready and the cashier tries to pack things into a plastic bag. Also, supermarket checkouts so stuffed with loose bags that you can hardly get your own bags in to pack. *headdesk*

OTOH, points to certain shops for giving money off when you use your own bag :) A much better incentive than simply charging for bags, I feel.

I've just been talking to the woman at the One-Stop counter, and she tells me she often gets customers who insist on having a bag even if they're only buying a newspaper or a bar of chocolate.

It gets very tempting to despair sometimes.

Like everyone in Canberra, I carry a supply of polypropylene Green bags. Except that all my Green bags are blue. I figger it's only a matter of time before they start charging for plastic bags.

Some places already do charge for plastic bags. Bunnings does, or did the last time I bought from them, which was when they still had a store in the city.

California is phasing out plastic bags but, till then, I have my fabric rucksack I carry with me (I'm such a frickin' hippie).

I have a fabric backpack that I use.

My parents do use plastic bags, but they get continually reused until they split; the bags get used for many trips.