The end of single use plastic bag - success starts at home!

I feel quite pleased with myself this week since I've taken another step to forcing my housemates into using linen bags.

Every time one of them goes to the shops they come back with a plastic bag, no matter how few items they buy. It's an issue which thoroughly winds me up and in turn winds them up because of me harping on about it!

But at Camden Green Fair on the weekend, I picked up of a load of linen bags that were being handed out for free and have hung them on a hook on the back of the front door. Now I have given all my housemates the strict orders that when they go to the shops that they have to take one off the door to save on plastic bags.

Now all I've got is beast them enough that they continue taking them!

Budget 2008's plastic bag policy

It seems that the government obviously note plastic bags as a serious waste of global resources since plans included in the recently published Budget for 2008.

Alistair Darling said when delievering the budget:

"Given the damage that single-use carrier bags inflict on the environment, we want to be able to take action. We will introduce legislation to impose a charge on them if we have not seen sufficient progress on a voluntary basis.

"Legislation would come into force in 2009 and based on other countries' experience, it could lead to a 90 per cent reduction, with around 12 billion fewer plastic bags in circulation. The money raised should go to environmental charities."

It seems that the responsibility still lies with the supermarkets and other shops, very few of which have done anything up til now about. It seems that enforced reduction of single use plastic bags is the only way to solve the problem, as we have a stunning example of in Ireland.

Lets hope that these and the other fairly meager enviromental promises made in the Budget are actually carried out.

Plastic bags - customer service over the evironment

It seems now that whenever you buy something from a shop you are automatically given a plastic bag to put it in, even if you are buying only one item. if you try to persuade the cashier that you are fine and have a rucksack, you're often given a look that says either 'how on earth will you carry that?' or that they haven't done their job well enough!

Customer service seems to have taken much higher worth in the minds of the cashiers than the gratuitous waste that accompanies purchase. When reading so much about the enormous environmental issues associated with the vast amount of plastic that is starting to litter the world, it is odd to see that such a negligent attitude is taken to shopping bags- hundreds of thousands of which surely are discarded into a larger bin bag when the shopper gets home.

However rather than the cashiers being to blame it is beyond the store managers and up to the regional managers. It appears that some of the supermarkets (Marks & Spencer and Budgens) have already returned to charging a fee for plastic bags and it seems that the Government seems to be taking heed of this problem. This is especially good news given the amazing success a similar scheme has had in Ireland (with a drop in plastic bag usage of a whopping 90%). Lets hope that the Government move on this and if they operate it as a taxation scheme that the tax actually goes into other green schemes.

As with many things it's more of a shift in attitude that is needed rather than individual actions like this. However it takes people in responsibility to pass that change down. Charging for plastic bags is a start but there is still far too much plastic packaging on most products from shops, which also needs to start being tackled and this is something that would be great to see.