Bring back mum's shopping methods...

This Greenbanger has a problem – she is 30, single and childless, so how come she has more plastic carrier bags than handbags?

As a little girl, this Greenbanger’s mum had to feed a family of five and shopped more frequently, but her cupboard never exploded with an endless supply of supermarket bags.

So how do you deal with the excess plastic?

Mum would shop for fruit and vegetables at the local market stalls in her small hometown. 
She would always put the food into a tough plastic bag that she reused again for years. (It was blue and had pretty flowers on it 🙂 ).

It seems a bit barmy that supermarkets don’t really promote this today – at least not until recently.

Everyone has seen “I’m not a plastic bag” but it’s more of a fashion statement than a push by the supermarkets to cut plastic usage. You don’t see big banner ads asking customers to think about plastic usage. Nor do you really see any efforts to cut down on food packaging.

Saying that, Tesco is now launching a scheme where people can earn loyalty points for using their own bags to shop with. But how long has it taken supermarkets to catch onto that!

This from the BBC:

“The 13 million holders of Tesco clubcards will earn points for every old plastic bag they use and for using their own bags to carry their shopping.

The retailer hands out 4 billion plastic bags every year and hopes to reduce this figure by 25% by 2008. Retailers are under pressure to reduce consumption of plastic bags to protect the environment and save energy.

Every year, about 17 billion bags are picked up by consumers from the UK’s stores, only to be thrown away.