Well it’s almost the end of January and we have changed lots of our plastic bag behaviour so far this year. Today I added a new idea that we hadn’t tried before. Not only did I bring our shopping bags with us to do the shopping, I also brought with us our small plastic bags that came from the fruit and vegetables last week. We will just continue to use these same bags each week.
We are also sharing our wheeli bin with my mum as now that we are trying harder to reduce our waste there is very little rubbish in the bin each week. My mum saves money as the price of plastic rubbish bags has risen to $2.16 per bag and it also means one less rubbish bin bag a week gets bought.
We could probably share our bin with at least 3 other people in the street and share the cost, rather than all of us putting out our bins and bags each week! It’s a pity that we don’t really have that sense of community in many of our streets anymore as grouping together often makes sense economically.
You shouldn’t need to use the small plastics bags in the fruit and vegetable department. We just put them straight in the trolley and they weigh them at the counter when paying. That, with our reusable shopping bags, and we don’t have to use any plastic bags for our weekly shopping.
I used to do it that way when I shopped at Countdown but now that I shop at Pak n Save they have the preweighing machines so I always feel guilty not weighing it and making them do it at the counter! Of course doing it the preweighing way also creates a wasteful sticker for each item which I have been thinking about lately. Thanks for the comment – I’ll have a think for next week’s shopping trip.
Have you noticed throughout the countryside how many plastic hay bale wrappers there are? Each of theses weighs heaps more than a supermarket bag – in fact a friend weighed one and calculated that each haybale wrapper would make about 1500 supermarket bags.
I think the lobby to restrict supermarket bag useage is mis-directed…
Yeah, not a bad point. I guess I’m the kind of individual that thinks if we all work at changing what we can then it’s going to be better than pointing fingers at others and saying if they do it (e.g. farmers) I’m going to keep doing it also with my supermarket bags. However you do raise an interesting research area in general in terms of hay bale wrapping so I went off looking! About 4000 tonnes plastic is used each year – this interesting pdf article is by agrecovery who have started a recycling scheme for hay bale plastic http://www.fieldays.co.nz/resources/7647-1241584092-Agrecovery%20launches%20Wrap%20Recycling%20Programme%20-%20Agrecovery%20Media%20Release%20060509.pdf
Some other providers are also providing recycling schemes http://www.mpdc.govt.nz/our-services/rubbish-a-recycling/agrecovery-and-silage-wrap.html
NZ definitely does need to look at its agricultural practices – there are many areas where our environmental record is shocking.