Virtually Paul

You Should Be Using Less Plastic Bags

February 6, 2007 on 9:12 pm | In Opinion |

I have a confession to make. Since sharing a house with Nathan, I have become somewhat of an honorary greenie. I don’t know if anyone else had sat back and thought about this… but how many times do you accept plastic shopping bags from the supermarket when you don’t really need them? I used to do it all the time. Then I wisened up to the fact that it actually really is damaging to the environment. Now, I don’t really have the impact of that in my face every day - not in ways that I can easily notice anyway - so if you don’t really care about your plastic bag consumption, think about it this way…

Using plastic bags is incredibly lazy. It makes you into the worst of the worst as far as consumerism goes. Not only do you not realise how privileged you are to be able to shop in a first world supermarket… but you can’t even organise yourself to bring a bag along to carry your shopping home? Seriously, how hard is it?

The supermarkets will talk all about their ‘reduction campaigns’ where the checkout person will ask you before giving you a bag for less than 3 items. It never happens though. Numerous times I’ve had to be quite insistent with checkout personnel about not wanting a bag. So, seeing as the supermarket empires have their bottom line at stake and don’t want to stifle your affluent convenience, you’re going to have to do it yourself. Here’s how. It’s not that hard.

1. Get Green Bags
When you do your weekly shop, if you don’t have green bags already, buy them. If you’re not sure how many you need, start with two. I’m a single guy. I shop weekly, for one. I have three. If they go to use plastic, stop them and purchase another green bag. They keep them by the register to placate the greenies.
2. You don’t need plastic bags for most of your fruit and vegetables
Once you’ve got your green bags, as long as you keep them clean, they should be fine for transporting most of your large fruit and vegetable items without using those stupid little clear plastic bags that are impossible for males to open. Put your fruit and vegies straight in as you shop.
3. Make sure you’ll have your green bags next time
Take your filled green bags home. When you’ve finished unpacking the shopping, put your green bags straight back in the boot of your car. Two car family? Two sets of green bags. They’re cheap enough.

4. Train yourself to remember the green bags
If you forget your green bags, you need to remind yourself not to do it again. If you just left them in the boot of the car, the helpful staff at the customer service desk will be more than happy to watch your shopping for you while you go and get them. If you’ve left them at home, maybe you need to give up your favourite sweet food item this week so that you remember for next time. Doing something like that, while it’s a bit of short term pain, will quite likely mean that next time you shop, you won’t forget.