I don't see anything wrong with paying for plastic shopping bags -- do you?

[AndrewR]

The story out of Ireland.

Briefly:
DINGLE, Ireland, Aug. 4 ? The shopping experience in this picturesque Irish town is not dissimilar to buying groceries in New Jersey or Texas ? except at the checkout. Garvey?s Supervalu will happily take your euros or your credit card, but the staff won?t offer any shopping bags unless you are willing to pay for them.

After living in a small Texas city for a year which had an amazing problem with those plastic bags, I would fully support this measure to reduce the pollution. I remember one chain in Atlanta used to have bins outside where you could drop off your old bags, but it doesn't seem like a common practice though it should be.

 

[loup garou]

huh...every store I've ever been to has had recycling bins for plastic bags.

 

[rudeguy]

we have a discount grocery store here that charges you for bags. Its only a couple cents each, but people always end up grabbing empty boxes from the shelves instead. They also charge a quarter deposit on shopping carts. You get your quater back when you return your cart.

 

[dman]

I pay for my plastic bags via the prices I pay at the grocery store for my food items. I like it that way. I also use lots of them.... screw my great grandchildren I say! Let them figure out how to cleanup this mess we're making.

 

[GtPrOjEcTX]

If I remember correctly Aldi's does this with paper bags....charges for them.

 

[TheCorm]

Tescos over here and Sainsbury's too (I think they are still doing this)...sell you these higher quality bags that you can use again and again and when they fall apart they swap them for free for new ones and recycle the old.

I think that if you are like going grocery shopping then it wouldn't be such a big deal paying for some bags....but say you went a bought like a CD and you wanted a bag for it...I would peeved at having to pay....or say it was a big not very heavy item that you wanted in a bag but the item didn't cost much...again would be annoying.

But it certainly would help the environment!

 

[notfred]

They can stop putting stuff in bags when they want to make 300 trips up the stairs to my apartment instead of the 2 I would have had to make had my stuff been in bags.

 

[Vic]

Maybe you could try educating people about littering instead of just instituting another new tax? We have no problems with grocery bag litter around here where I live. And plastic grocery bags are HDPE #2, easily recycled.

edit: and I always ask for paper bags anyway. They're biodegradable and work well as garbage bags.

 

[dullard]

In many countries it is typical to have to pay for the bags. The people there simply bring their own in when they shop. It doesn't harm anyone and can save a lot of resources - so I'm all for it.

Me: I always get plastic and recycle every single one (plus they work great as trash can liners for bathroom trashes).