Friday 11 November 2011

Rubbish recycling?

Recycling - what? Plastic bags - or profits??

Sadly Morrisons in Gib has gone down the road of charging for plastic bags. I think they cost 2p and any proceeds (note - not profits) go towards local charities.

In fact, they tried this one on some years ago, but it failed miserably and free bags were re-introduced.

But aided and abetted by the likes of Eroski, Mercadona and Supersol (to name but three) supermarkets in nearby Spain, Morries has gone down the same road again.

Naturally this move is to help the environment by encouraging people to reuse their bags.

Hello, Morrisons (and every other supermarket under the sun). We DID recycle our plastic bags quite happily. 1) They got used in our rubbish bins and 2) they got used when we took out the dog.

It doesn't take Brain of Britain (and/or Gibraltar/Spain) to work out that no free bags from the supermarket means you have to acquire them from somewhere else. But where?

Sadly, we accepted the miserable fact that we might well have to buy some plastic bags. I picked up a bag of pedal bin liners. They cost £1.75.

We were standing at the check-out and I was gazing at 40 bags for £1.75 and doing the sums. The first thought was that 40 went into 175 more than four times - 4.375 to be exact.

So actually buying rubbish bin bags means paying more than twice the price of a previously free and now 2p carrier bag. Am I going to use any less bags for a) the rubbish bin and b) picking up after the dog? No. Is it going to cost me more? Yes.

There may well be people who got free carrier bags and chucked them in the bin. If so that was extremely silly of them. We did not.

This bright shiny environmental move to encourage recycling is going to make JSN difference in this household. Apart from costing us more.

Far be it from me to say kind things about the many tobacco smugglers who take their fags out of Gib and into Spain with more than the legally allowed limit - but at least when they take them out of the cartons and stash them in their cars/motorbikes - they throw away those lovely black bags.

We didn't buy the pedal bin liners. Just in case anyone was interested.

1 comment:

Totty Teabag said...

For the first couple of months after Mercadona introduced their new bag policy, our local store was giving you a free biodegradeable 'plastic' bag for every bag that you took in of your own. I say plastic, but whatever they were made of, the ants loved them so they were useless as bin liners! About once a month we go to Iceland for luxuries like Daddy's sauce, meat pies and teabags; their huge plastic bags make ideal pedal bin liners.