Tuesday 10 November 2009

How Green Is My Baggie?

My shopping bag is this green:



Okay, maybe you think it's orange, but the printing on it says 'this bag is green'.

Yes, this Guardian-reading, tree-hugging, eco-minded person now does not leave the house without this thing stuffed in his pocket. And when he gets to Dia, he smirks at their offer of advertising material at 3 centimos apiece. If he goes to Carrefour, they are welcome to keep their undersized, underpowered biodegradable bag-ettes at 5 centimos each.



But now we have a slight problem: we need plastic bags to stick in the kitchen waste bin. So now I occasionally go to Caprabo and stuff my pockets with their free, but ecologically-sound* bags.

*About six months ago they had notices around their shops explaining how they were no longer printing a white background on their bags: this was being done to save white ink and therefore made their bags environmentally friendly**.

**Now they give you credit on their loyalty card every time you don't use their bags***.

***Obviously the next step is to charge for the bloody bags, and then I'll have to buy waste-bin liners. Or just chuck the stuff out the window, like we used to in the olden days.

3 comments:

Jayne said...

I use my Gulf News 'eco-friendly- hessian-esq bags, which are actually pretty good. They appear to attract a few green glances of envy in my local supermarket :-)
One cashier was confused when she couldn't find the barcode to scan them though......

Macthomson said...

Pure snobbery, I guess, but in style-conscious Munich I enjoy the puzzled glances my Spinney's jute tote gets. But I'm slightly jealous of Jayne's Gulf News number.

hut said...

An orange bag which says it's green probably owes more to Magritte than Al Gore - so it's well worth having!