I don't know if this is a global trend or if it's something that is happening in my country only, but recently supermarkets have started to charge for each plastic bag we need. Sure, it's just 2 cents per bag, but at the same time I can carry a couple of bags and save this expense. Is this happening near you too?
Wow, your community is a decade late. Many of the cheaper grocery stores have been charging 2 cents a bag for ten - if not 20 - years in my area. Our current fad is to take reusable grocery bags with us everywhere we go. They cost about a dollar and last more than 50 uses so it is a win/win situation. These bags are a little lager and more sturdy than basic plastic ones so they have a tendency to get rather heavy. The current debate now is whether to ban plastic bags entirely and to force the stores not to hand them out. While it is just at the discussion stage, I would not be surprised to see plastic bags all but disappear from our city in the next five years.
Yep, welcome to Portugal lol, but please note that there are only a few supermarket chains charging for the bags, others still give the bags for free, which is better of course lol. There is no debate here about banning plastic bags, why would they do that? Where are you from?
That is ridiculous. How are they going to charge you for a bag? That is part of their customer service as a business. I know that 2 cents is not a lot. But this is more about the principle. What has the world come to. If i were you i would bring my own bag. I wouldn't give them any extra money. Just because they want to be cheap. I would beat them at their own game. Nest thing you know they are going to charge you to use the shopping carts. That is unacceptable.
Here where I live, they charge 20 cents for a plastic bag. Some clothing stores even want 50cents for a plastic bag. They usually point you towards the stand of reusable bags, which are always very colourful and made of a tougher type of plastic. I think it's not about environmental issues, but about sales strategies. If corporations were really concerned about environmental damage, they would offer string bags or other types of bags made of natural, biodegradable fibres. I have three cotton string bags that I have been using for over a year now.
Basically they can do what they want and it's our choice to go there or not. Instead of giving they sell better plastic bags at 2 cents saying that in this way we will protect the plastic from more and more free plastic bags being produced lol, really environmentalists eh?
Where I live, some stores charge for paper bags also. Something like .10 a bag. Which I think is ridiculous. I can't get that much use out of the bag once I've gotten it home. I have reusable cloth bags, but sometimes I go to the store on a whim and don't have the bag on me. Luckily not all of the stores do this. But I'm afraid this trend will catch on really soon.
Yes, most, if not all of the shops around me have been doing this for quite some time, in order to be environmentally friendly. Honestly I usually just bring my own backpack with me when I go shopping these days, and use it as my shopping basket as well.
There are stores around here that charge for bags, .20 cents, it sure isn't only 2 cents! They are stores that typically sell discount priced food and items. Not giving bags is a way to cut costs. We have one discount chain that makes you pay a quarter deposit to use the grocery cart. When you return it, you get your quarter back, but it's ridiculous.
A county nearby is charging 5 cents a bag so it's only a matter of time before my county does too. They expect you to clean up after your dogs but often the bag dispensers are out and sometimes they don't even have a dispenser at all so the bags we get from the grocery store I have to use for that. Now you may have to pay to clean up after them. It's only 5 cents but still when you have two dogs it adds up and dogs go more than once a day. Also I don't know if it's the case where they are charging you but grocers never know how to pack groceries so if we hand them our own bags they mess them up and you have to redo them. It's just regular plastic bags so they are not even worth 5 cents so I don't know why they're charging for them.
Well honestly, because it IS about principle, I kind of like that a lot of stories are transitioning to this. It's actually not about the money either. It's put in place to encourage people to use reusable bags. Yeah, it can be annoying, but it also encourages people not to be even more wasteful by constantly using plastic bags that are frequently thrown out.
That's true, they say it's about the principle, don't use plastic and so on, they advertise how much less plastic they have been using, and at the same time they are making money, it's a great move from them, just we are paying more lol, but that's what happens always right...
Around here they do that as well, but they sell the bigger, reusable bags, so I just got a couple of those and I'm set. There are no paper bags here though, they only sell plastic ones and charge about 10 cents I think.
The store I mentioned has been doing it for over 20 years. For them, it is about money, not the environment. It's been part of their advertising for as long as I can remember. Sure, some stores are jumping on the environmental band wagon, but their bottom line is still money.
I am actually averse to using carrier bags, not necessarily for the environmental reason but simply because they cause so much clutter within the house. You can make savings be re-using but these are usually miniscule anyway. I just find it a lot more convenient to only have a few lying around.
The stores where I shop offer the reusable bags, but they do not charge for the plastic ones. I have a few of the reusable bags, but often forget to take them with me, so I end up using the regular plastic ones. I have a friend that goes shopping with me, and she has a whole pile of the reusable bags that she takes along when we go. I do need to start getting a few more of the reusable ones, and then remember to use them, since they will also probably start to charge for the plastic ones here as well.
That's a similar situation here. I don't recall any stores in my area that actually charge for bags, but they promote other types of bags for convenience and to be environment friendly. I mainly just go to Walmart for groceries and the very rare time I'd go to another store. None of them charge though. I heard about them doing it in more places a couple years ago, but completely forgot about it.
Well I know there are some places who advertise it being about the money because they offer it as an explanation for their own lowered prices. For example, Aldis has always had bags for you to buy. They also encourage you to simply use the empty boxes throughout the store. And they make it very clear that part of the reason their prices are able to be so low is that they don't supply free bags, they don't hire baggers, they don't carry name brand products usually, etc.
That's true, that happens in discount supermarkets like Aldis or Lidl, they even boxes there for you to carry the stuff. Other supermarkets sell better bags or even their worse bags lol, but no mistakes there for me, it's all about the money and their image, no ecological concerns what-so-ever.
Yeah, they have been doing that in a lot of the supermarkets and local shops for a while, the local shops would charge anything up to £0.05 for a plastic bag 25 years ago! It doesn't really bother me as I keep every plastic bag that comes into my house so I just take a load with me.
