Shopping Bags

Its funny you mention this now, as Whole Foods in my neighborhood just started allowing cloth shopping bags, and are even selling them for $1. My fiance' and I got two, and left one in the car just for convenience sake for our next small runs. (If we have a large run, I'm thinking of planning ahead and bringing the second bag.)

I don't own any cloth bags. But i do tend to shop more at Sam's club and save a lot. Which neither place offers plastic bags. Well, save alot does but you have to buy each bag. It is cheaper to go through the store and grab empty boxes to put your groceries in. I like doing this because I hate dealing with those plastci bags. i would rather deal with empty boxes instead.

Yes I am concerned with the volume of plastic bags being produced and discarded, but sadly I do still use them. I did try using the "Bag for life" when they first ceased supplying the free bags in many stores. The problem was that I never remembered to take them with me when going shopping the next time. All too often I would go shopping straight from work and since I do not have a car to leave them in then I would only realise once I was in the supermarket. I became fed up with buying new ones every time and I still have about 4 in the house now. I was not the only one because as you know all the supermarkets soon resumed supplying free bags. I have not used Tesco for some time for online groceries so I had not heard of this, but I am due to shop soon for Christmas so I may try Tesco again instead of Asda. I am pleased to see that you have resized your avatar, it looks much better animated.

We bring home our groceries in those plastic awful bags. We then use them to line our small trashcans. I keep a supply for the flea market I go to where I sell things. Then they go to other peoples houses. We can trade some back in at a few stores and that is a good idea. I had cloth bags til recently and will have to do so again. Anything to reduce the numbers of those bags.

We have Aldi's here in Minnesota and it's a store where it's BYOB. Bring Your Own Bag. It saves a lot of debris from thrown out. Also at Sams club a discount store, I use the boxes from the produce department. The ones that had grapes or tomotoes are very sturdy for cans etc when I shop. I keep 2 boxes and 3 bags in my trunk for when I grocery shop now days. HAPPY POSTINGS FROM GRANDPA BOB !!~

i dont like plastic bag, i more like cloth shopping bag or cardboard box. what u want, what u get! www.bagsworld.us

Here in the UK, Marks and Spencers have announced that from 6th May, 2008 all bags will be charged for 5p to stop the amount of bags ending up on waste fill sites. From 6th April they are providing a bag for life for their customers. Which is a good idea. I hope other supermarkets will also follow this because something has to be done. We always recycle our bags to help the environment, if everyone does this it will help a great deal.

hi sweetie, i am glad that you started this post. I was just about to start a similar post. as you know my country has little or no awareness regarding this, sadly ppl still use plastic poly bags. a few years back, we friends with all shines and ambition in our eyes, had started an awareness campaign which had this on its agenda. however, i could not be more active as i got entangled to some life matters which eventually proved to be futile. but then, that's some other story altogether. in my country ppl use plastics, only a few malls have introduced recycled paper packets and a fewer shops sell cloth shopping bags. i have seen my grandparents using cloth bags but soon those gor obsolete. i have initiated this again. i have hired atailor to stitch bags out of left over cloths. it looks quite good, like a designed collage. this is getting long...i just hope the awareness comes soon. thanx for a responsible discussion. smiles..

I reuse my bags for garbage instead of buying garbage bags. I dont know if its better for the enviroment but I am told to reuse anything I can.

We can buy bright green environmentally friendly bags from supermarkets for a dollar. They're great as I also use them for holding other stuff around the house and garage. I also have two thermal bags for coldies and frozen items.....handy (specially in summer) as I live 40 minutes from the shops. Unfortunately, even though many people have these bags they are often left "in the car", "on the kitchen bench", "in the garage" etc. People forget to use them. If only people knew how much the "free" bags cost they would stop using them. The cost is, of course, added on to the price of the groceries...not that they would reduce prices if people stopped using bags. Several years ago the bags cost the company (and therefore the consumer) about 3 cents each. Multiply that by how many each customer takes, how many customers in a day, week, month, year, and by the number of stores. We are talking millions. People think that "re-cycling" them as garbage bags solves the problem but it only makes it worse. An English lady told me once that when stores in Europe started charging for each bag to encourage shoppers to bring their own, lots of customers protested by discarding the unwanted packaging from their goods and leaving it at the checkout with a message to the manager to tell the manufacturers to stop using so much unnecessary packaging. What a great idea. LOL.

i always take a cloth shopping bag when i go to supermarket. i dont like plastic bag. i more like cardboard box.