Cleanzine: your weekly cleaning and hygiene industry newsletter 25th April 2024 Issue no. 1111
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My daughter (newly back from university) and I fall out more about our weekly food shop than we do about anything else. I'd rather go to the store myself - although admittedly I come back with things I'd not intended to buy - but she's become a real advocate of Internet shopping, which has its pros but also some real cons.
For as well as the fact that we are invariably delivered the odd product that differs from what we've ordered, we become inundated with unwanted plastic carrier bags - many of them torn and no longer usable - and it's this that actually makes me angry.
Indeed sat here at my desk, thinking about the growing numbers of people using this type of service and all the new carrier bags that are produced as a result... Well - let's just say it makes me think that we need to find another way of doing things. How about using returnable boxes, as we did with our doorstep milk deliveries years ago where we'd wash our empty glass bottles and leave them on the doorstep for collection, subsequent cleaning and refilling ready for delivery to someone else (or possibly even back to us)?
We need to stop the waste!
As you can imagine, Bill Bryson's email, below, about what he refers to as Witches' Knickers - discarded plastic carrier bags that have been blown into trees where they remain snagged and are buffeted by the wind, really hit home.
I fully support the campaign for a 5p charge on all single-use carrier bags, of any material, in England... And anywhere else in the world come to that (Marks & Spencer donates all the money collected to charity, which is wonderful!). If charging for each new bag handed out, makes people stop and think about their unnecessary use of what so often becomes a blight on the landscape and which can also injure wildlife, this scheme and those like it in other parts of the world have to be worth supporting, so do please read the email and then do your part to effect a change - not only by joining the campaign but also by taking your own bags with you whenever you shop.
Yours,
18th October 2012