Popping over to Waitrose (with my reusable bags)

I know that I've been promoting Independent Shops lately and I still stand by my convictions to support our local traders as part of my Zero Waste challenge. However yesterday, despite it being market day I chose to pop over to Waitrose.

I was in a rush and having hurt my back recently I needed the support of the trolley to carry the weight of the shopping, so a quick visit to my favourite supermarket fitted the bill nicely. I still managed to do the shop successfully with limited packaging (hoorah)...and (no doubt much to your relief)... this is where this particular monotonous tale ends.

What is much more interesting is that I also popped over to Waitrose's Managing Director's blog, where Mark Price posts regularly about work, family and his healthy eating plan.

One of his latest posts is very interesting indeed, where just a couple of days ago he discussed the issue of banning/taxing plastic bags.

I deliberately kept quiet about this topic when it hit the headlines last week as it holds little relevance to me. Although I am glad to see the country wake up to the disposable plastic lifestyle that we all take for granted, I regard plastic bags as just the thin layer of landfill icing that sits on a huge stodgy cake of unrecycled packaging, disposable products and food waste.

So it was highly pertinent to read Mark Price's thoughts on the whole plastic bag thing and I agree with him that aside from plastic bags, the country needs to address "the much bigger issue of resource management".

In his post, Mr Price offers the following facts: "Domestic household waste represents 9% of all UK waste, compared to 32% construction and demolition and 29% mining and quarrying. Packaging in general represents 25% of household waste, with carrier bags themselves representing just 0.3% of household waste".

When you look at things this way, it is possible to dig deep into the layers of landfill that the country creates and see the benefit of giving one's life a gradual makeover, changing habits that go beyond the notorious plastic bags, just as I have done with the Zero Waste challenge. However, I draw the line at quarrying for my own stone and building my own house, you will be relieved to hear.

What was real music to my ears is Mark Price's statement towards the end of his post, where he confirms that Waitrose "will continue to recycle plastic carriers returned from our customers but keep our real focus on the big issues of packaging and food waste, sustainability and health and well being".

Now that is fantastic! I don't know much about the other supermarkets but I hope that the "giants" in particular Asda, Sainbury's and Tesco are doing the same. They've signed up to the Courtauld Commitment, with the aim of reducing the amount of packaging and rubbish that ends up in our bins, so progress is hopefully going in the right direction. According to RecycleNow, supermarkets and producers are making great in-roads. However the latest news is that as a result of reducing primary packaging that sits on the shelves, in certain cases there has been an increase in the packaging used to transport the goods.

Oh dilemmas, dilemmas! What a complicated world we live in! It just goes to show that managing packaging is not easy, whether you're a consumer at home or whether you run a huge national supermarket chain.

Anyway, I thought I would share the details that I happened to email Mark Price's office last weekend, politely inviting him to comment on packaging on his blog. A personal message goes our to Mr Price to thank him for doing that. Whether his comments are as a result of my cheeky email or simply just a happy coincidence, I am just pleased to hear that my regular supermarket is looking at the bigger picture and taking the right action, which makes me a happier customer indeed.

You can read Mark Price's post To Ban or Not to Ban at The Grocer's Blog:

http://www.waitrose.com/blog/entry.aspx?uid=8c77ae06-4566-46f8-9981-810b5f594e46

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No Bags Please

Yesterday I had a great shopping day from a Zero Waste perspective. I bought a few things in town and managed to return home with no plastic bags, not even the little tiddly one that was almost thrust upon me!

The first stop was very early in the day to buy an emergency present for a birthday party. I found two fabulous dinosaurs in the Early Learning Centre. They weren't boxed, so no useless packaging to discard. After politely refusing the carrier bag, the next stop was Clinton Cards to find a gift bag, where I declined another offer of an even larger carrier bag. After all, we were en route to the birthday party (which actually reveals how disorganised I was - too busy with the worms I think).

After picking up some craft paper and a bunch of bananas (and then balancing them carefully through the market), I spotted a stall that was selling daffodils without the usual plastic wrapping that is used to protect flowers.

As I paid for the daffodils, I asked the stall-holder for permission to take a photo and whilst doing so he kindly dropped my bananas into a small carrier bag.

I teetered over rebuking his kind gesture, as I hate saying no to people and I never like to offend anyone. However I stuck to my guns and politely gave it back. He probably thought I was a mad old toad...but eh... so do plenty of others.

However, I am certainly not unusual in rejecting carrier bags. There is now greater awareness about their effect on landfill and the ecology and an increasing number of people are now using reusable shopping bags.

There are several shops in Bury St Edmunds where shopkeepers make the effort to ask if a plastic bag is needed and top marks go to shops such as Boots, WHSmith, Rymans, The Body Shop and Woolworths who always pose the question. There seems to be less proactive measures taken by the independent shops, with the exception of a few, Butterworth's being one of them.

It would be great to see Bury St Edmunds follow in the footsteps of Modbury, which is the UK's first Plastic Bag Free town. This trend has since seen Overton, Hebden Bridge and Tisbury all signing up to be free of carrier bags. According to this link on the Modbury site, it looks as though the local towns of Ipswich and Newmarket are also in the planning stages, which is encouraging news, so maybe things will happen in Bury St Edmunds after all.

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