As you no doubt already know, plastic bags = bad. Supermarkets have been giving out 17 billion of the blighters a year, and when you consider they each take around a thousand years to decompose that’s an environmental disaster in itself; a tragic waste that will be difficult to eradicate even if we all rush out right now and purchase bags for life (and use them).
But the less carriers we idly amass in the name of convenience, the less oil wasted and the less birds swooping on decoy jellyfish and choking to death. And all because some lazy swine couldn’t be bothered to carry his frozen lasagne home from Iceland in his grubby mit.
The good news is supermarkets are reducing the number of bags they’re handing out to customers. The superstores were however delivering lots of plastic in clandestine ways, to customers via their home delivery shopping services. Thanks to the vigilance of dissatisfied home shoppers, the stores have had a rethink and are working to eradicate the profligate use of carriers in their delivery orders.
The trade magazine The Grocer recently conducted a survey, monitoring the amount of packaging used by the major players in the retail game, and check if their claims of being environmentally friendly were in keeping with their practices.
Sainsburys had a shocking January, averaging a staggering 1.7 items per carrier bag. Thankfully now this has been brought to the store’s attention, Sainsburys halved the number of bags used. Per 30 items that went out to customers, just nine bags rather than 18 were used in this last quarter. Asda and Ocado also lowered their tallies, though Tescos used more. However their usage was fairly low in the first place compared to some stores.
A spokesman for the Grocer said: “Retailers are finally using fewer plastic bags in home deliveries. Excessive use of plastic bags in previous online deliveries has prompted damning headlines and condemnation from environmentalists.
“However, the latest quarterly survey reveals that, as well as improving availability and promptness, retailers have reduced the number of bags used in their orders.”
Campaigners have however called for further, much-needed action to be taken, and sooner rather than later.
Jill Pirie from Friends of the Earth said: “It’s good to see supermarkets reducing the number of plastic bags they use, but still we aren’t cutting down enough.
“Plastic uses oil, remains in the environment, causing marine and land-based litter which is harmful to wildlife, and little of it is recycled but we continue to use it like it’s going out of fashion. It really needs to go completely out of fashion.”
Plastic Bags
The Canal’s banks
Are badly dressed
Soiled and spoiled
With the ravages
Of floods’ past
Plastic bags that
Last and last…
Long after their use has passed
That nature can’t digest
In nature, rests and infests
Carriers carried by strong
Currents tugged along
Snagged and tagged
On branches jagged
Like worn out rags
Left out on washing lines
Now ragged and ravaged
Ripped, stripped and straggly
Flags of our consumption madly
In nature’s dumping ground
Now found and bound
Sadly
Comment by Jane Air — April 30, 2008 @ 3:41 pm
wicked scribblings Jane Air, it reminded me of this black plastic bag, looks like a tattered flag, at the top of this tree opposite my house which has been there since i moved there.(3 years ago) asked the council but no response. its a constant remindr of the damage that humans are doing to our one and only home.
Comment by Leila Maza — May 10, 2008 @ 12:51 pm
Plastic bags are very harmful i can’t imagine how people still use them around the world i see people in the super markets that put double bag for a milk a gallon which i think is plain stupid plastic on plastic? i really felt like slapping the person i would really like to see reusable bags around
:)
Comment by victoria — June 3, 2008 @ 5:35 pm