Anti-Plastic Bag Lobby

[echnidna]

Actually I reckon its a conspiracy by the supermarkets.
Not only do they reduce costs.
They profit by selling us cotton alternative bags.
And they must sell a LOT LOT more plastic garbage bags.
Smart Merchandising

[RETIRED]

My father has a friend that is well into his 70's. He shops at the Safeway store in his town and takes a gunny sack that he has used for 40 years.

He takes most things out of the packets they come in and tells the staff: "Your rubbish, you deal with it."

He then places everything into the sack and toddles off.

[vsquizz]

You have to wonder about consumer rubbish. It seems we are deemed to need it that way, by experts in marketing, packing, presentation, distribution etc.. I recently bought a new mobile phone with car kit and there was two shopping bags full of crap that came with it, foam etc:eek:

I have a pine (ssshh) workbench made entirely out of crates from the Glaziers. It normally goes in the Skip.

Cheers

[ozwinner]

We, my missus and me, are the greatest recyclers, come to my shop and see.


Al

[Grunt]

We, my missus and me, are the greatest recyclers, come to my shop and see.

Does this mean I can take my drawer full of used plastic bags to your shop and you'll give me money for them?

[Sir Stinkalot]

The Stinkette and I use the big green bags from Coles ..... they are much better than the plastic. We can fit the weeks shopping into four or so of the green bags as aposed to 10+ plastic. The greenies (bags that is) are much easier to carry and it saves multiple trips to the car. It is quite easy to carry the entire weeks shopping in one load as the bags don't dig into your hands.

As for the local pick up ... we have a 120L for general garbage ... picked up weekly and 2x 240L, one for recycling (paper and glass etc) and the other for green waste, these are picked up on alternative weeks. All are picked up by seperate trucks and I assume that it all goes where it is ment to. As far as I am concerned I think it is a great idea and it is about time that we started to do something.

[DanP]

I don't mind the whole use less bags thing, but what I find insulting is the marketing ploy used by the supermarkets to get you to buy the green bags.

"You're a dirty filthy environment wrecker and we're all green. We're so good to the environment that you can purchase green bags from us, only $1 each".

I would be interested to see the profit margin on the green bags, which is where the supermarkets true interest is (IMO). They could not care less for the environment, if they did they would do what Bunnings are doing and give the proceeds to charity. I don't care if they recover their costs to produce the bags, but I find their profitting from it abhorrent, especially when they play this moral high ground rubbish.

Dan

[ozwinner]

Does this mean I can take my drawer full of used plastic bags to your shop and you'll give me money for them?

I think you have the concept of "shop" wrong.
We sell, not buy.

Al

[silentC]

I think you have the concept of "shop" wrong.
We sell, not buy.

Al

Where do you get your stock from? :eek: On second thoughts, you'd better not answer that question...

[ozwinner]

Its donated by people who come to the door.

They come to sell but, we have that much stock that we get it for peanuts, just because they want to get rid of it. Mainly because its out of fashion or something.

Al

[silentC]

I suppose it's better to get a few bucks for it than to pay to dump it at the tip

[ozwinner]

See, its a win win situation.


Al

[JackoH]

Want some well used band-saw blades?.

.

[jackiew]

I would be interested to see the profit margin on the green bags, which is where the supermarkets true interest is (IMO).
Dan

If i remember rightly the profits from the green bags do go to charity - I think it says so somewhere on the side. The white calico type bags however ( some of which are so small they are useless) do bump their profits up.

On the subject of excess wrapping ... BI-LO often do offers where you can get 3 loaves of bread cheaper BUT you have to put them in a special plastic bag with a bar-code on. So I give the check-out chick the empty plastic bag, tell her to scan it and to count the loaves before I take them off of the conveyor belt. I then leave her clutching the empty bag.

Safeway currently have a special on canned fish . I bought two slabs - the girl at the checkout then asked me to get a can from the display and scanned the same can 24 times!!! I do wonder who writes their software that they can't enter an item once and then multiply it by 24.

[sl_wilks]

This has all gone a bit silent I reckon.

Is the whole idea of a "green" plastic bag a bit of a misnomer? They're imported, made of polypropylene, in China.

What ticks me off are the people who buy half a dozen of those thick green 'replacements' every time they shop. Must be a lot of garages and laundries full of the things by now. What about the effects of this stuff on the environment?