EddScott

How do we feel about this?

Good for the environment or a bit of a gimmick? With all the money supermarkets make why aren't they coughing up the 5p?


Anyone catch the BBC story on it this morning?

Apparently in "Britain" as it was described we use 150 plastic bags each per year.

And yet, in the same article Ireland having introduced pay per bag have reduced each persons yearly use too 22 bags a year - from 320???

WTF? I'm sorry but how come people in Ireland used two times as many bags as those in "Britain" and isn't Ireland part of Britain?

Stupid BBC, stupid reporting.

However, 5p PPG?

Lydia72

No.

It's the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

LegacySTi

iTrader: (13)

How is Ireland part of Britain???

And plastic bag levy in here about 6 years. Makes perfect sense as plastic were been giving out for someone buy say x1 bag of crisps. There was no need.

Lydia72

I don't think there has ever been a free carrier bag anyway, the shops factor the cost on to the price of the goods, but I also doubt very much that they will start reducing prices when charging for bags.

I've been using big hessian bags for years, mostly because I got fed up of wafer-thin bags that split if you put more than two bottles in, having to wrestle with them trying to get them open, and then them rolling all over the boot of my car. The hessian type hold loads and also stay upright.
Tesco give you Clubcard points if you re-use bags so they have paid for themselves really.

Just be glad you get free hospital car-parking

Geezer

Pointless exercise. 5p a bag is nothing. £1 a bag may deter people though.

Geezer

TelBoy

5p isn't enough. £1 would make the green sceptics shop elsewhere.

I'd pitch it at 20p. There is NO HARDSHIP in remembering to take bags to the supermarket with you. NONE. It just takes an incy wincy bit of getting used to.

Lydia72

It will probably be the poor checkout staff that get the abuse anyway. I know Lakeland tried charging 10p per bag a few years ago but had so many complaints they went back to giving them away.

tony de wonderful

Ireland is part of the British Isles.

TelBoy

And it's ***** like that making a fuss of 10p which means it has to be imposed on a country-wide level.

Legislation in England can't come quickly enough, in my opinion. For some, it will be about the only scrap of self-responsibility left in their miserable lives.

Scooby Soon!

but it does make you look like a weirdo, no chance I will ever be carrying an old carrier bag in my trouser pocket or anywhere on my person unless I want to appear to look like a homeless person...

TelBoy

I despair when personal image is SO critical for the 100 yard walk from the carpark to the shop.

Get over yourself.

Gear Head

iTrader: (2)

Are you serious?
We have been re-using our shopping bags for years. They are only 5p to buy and if they fall apart, the supermarket will just swap it for a new one.

I don't give a f&ck if people think I am 'cool' or not when walking from my car to the store to buy my weekly shop.


P.S. You don't own an iPhone by any chance do you?

tony de wonderful

Are ******* spots still signed with plastic bags tied to trees?

jef

iTrader: (13)

haha^^ never new that, ill be keeping an eye out!

yip , total pointless p*sh , bump them up to a fiver a bag, people soon start reusing, all thats happening now is a stealth tax - either from government if they get the pennies or tesco if they get it - and pay more tax on there tiny marginal profits

davyboy

I use 3 big bags I paid for from a French Supermarket.

Most supermarkets sell big strong bags now. I don't see what the fuss is. Stop offering cheap crappy ones and make people take their own or sell the stongers ones for a quid.

Scooby Soon!

don't get me wrong if I go to a supermarket we normally have bags in the car that we take in but if i'm shopping in a town centre or shopping centre then if I buy something I want a bag for it, I don't care what sort of bag it is paper/plastic/fabric etc

We re-use all of our carry bags as kitchen bin bags (which means we don't have to buy kitchen bin bags and they are being "reused")

CREWJ

I tend to forget my "strong" bags all the time.

With this it may buck my ideas up.

TelBoy

You're not alone in being like that, SS. But the only reason you ARE like it is because you don't want to be the odd one out, as if carrying a bag of your own makes you look a cheapskate or something. Bag culture needs to change.

TelBoy

NAF

We pay 22cent a bag in Ireland which is equiv to 19p a bag in sterling

Everybody carries their own bags now when out shopping

Imho the levy certainly changed things over here

Chip

We don't here in Cardiff, and we have Wales largest hospital as well. It was just another Labour soundbite from Rhodri Morgan as a lot of hospitals had free parking anyway but the biggest as I said , is still £2.20 an hour I think.

And for those hospitals that did actually change to free parking where do you think the money came from to replace the parking income. Yep , it was cut from other NHS services with no extra money coming from the joke that is the Welsh Assembly.

Chip

Chip

Why do supermarkets use so much packaging anyway. It's pathetic. Everything is either double wrapped or has a carboard sleeve around it when there is no need for it. We didn't have shrink wrapped cucumbers and cabbages a few years ago so why do we need them now. I shop in my local village where all the veg is loose and I just pop what I want into a paper bag which then gets recycled. None of the supermarket or at least very little of their wrapping is recyclable as most councils do not have the facilities to process it.

It's about time those in power took the supermarkets to task.

Chip

EddScott

No free parking in West Wales either.

We get our scripts for free which is handy. My father in law moaned at me once because scripts were free in Wales and I pointed out that as is on incapacity, he doesn't pay either!

We find the plastic bags handy as we re-use them to collect cat poop out of the tray. Although thats not to say I don't agree with the charge as long as it truly does support the environment.

TDW - thanks for the diagram. I always thought UK and Great Britain was the same thing. Well, I guess I've learned something today.

I just found the BBC reporting laughable when it said that each Briton uses 150 bags a year whereas in Ireland they used 320 each before the charge?

Lydia72

Thanks for putting me straight. The only ones I have been to were free (North Wales though).

TelBoy

And all the thoughts i had following your post on the Carol Vorderman thread too

Will

The charge will not effect me as I have a few 'bags for life' always in the boot of the car.

Nout better than watching a muppet lift his over loaded free plastic bag from the trolley for all the tins to pop out of the bottom and all over the car park!

Oh, Asda in Wales are giving away those bags for life tomorrow. In the north any way.

Lydia72

"Thank you for correcting me" any better?

TelBoy

Much

Adrian F

It seems the logic is that as they end up in litter there should be a government charge if this is the case they better apply that to every other product that ends up in litter

FFS UK voted as a terrible place to live and this is a typical example of why we have enough petty rules imposed with out another the government sticking its noise in where it isn't wanted

madscoob

iTrader: (3)

why can't they be recycleable end of problem then