Bags

Let’s talk about bags

Carrier bags are the blight of our world, they fill our seas, our streets and our nature reserves. Of course bags are vital and like everyone I’m currently sitting in a house with a few bags hidden in a cupboard for when they are needed, but how many do you really need?

Plastic bags are everywhere and used for everything whether it’s for your weekly food shop or that shopping spree on weekends but it is in these areas which you need to attempt to reduce usage. In the UK and a few other countries the disposable carrier bags are dying out, at large super markets such as Tesco and Sainsbury’s there are now rewards in the form of points for using a bags for life and they’ve moved the disposable kind and now store them behind the counter requiring people to ask for them instead of just grabbing loads. I believe this to be an excellent and effective idea which should be in common use globally. However this method isn’t consisted across the world, during my time in Australia I have learnt that bags for life aren’t in wide usage which is a great shame.

I want to take you back to your first years in primary or secondary school at the age of 10 or so, you were all kitted out with a new bag which is, to use your parents terms a bag ‘you’ll grow into’. Now this image is exactly what I looked like and the method I use to

carry my shopping. I hike back from the shops looking like I’m making an attempt on Everest or as if I’m about to spend months in the amazon, but then again I do tend to eat a lot more than most people.

As a student in Cardiff I don’t usually use a car to get around and about 90% of the time it’s faster to walk, but this also leaves you with the inconvenient fact that you have to carry whatever you buy home. This is why I and many others use backpacks and do our very best ant impressions to carry everything. There are several beneficial reasons to using a backpack. It’s easier and you don’t end up with the welts across your fingers from the bags carrying the heavier items. It’s safer, you have no need to worry about double bagging heavy things to stop the bags from splitting, this method is also twice as wasteful as simply using a stronger backpack, and finally it’s more environmental friendly as it reduces the demands for plastic bags and rucksacks don’t tend to wear out.

I do understand that disposable carrier bags have their own part to play however and many people do in fact reuse plastic bags as bin bags or simple to carry other things, and to separate items such as dirty shoes from clothes. I’ve even seen children in developing countries tie bunches of them together to use as balls, which is a great use for unwanted things. But their usage needs to be reduced heavily for the good of the planet.

So next time you go shopping please take your school bag, work bag, hiking bag whatever and use a few less carrier bags.

You can also reduce the number of plastic bag you need in the house by simply not using them in bins and instead tipping the internal bin into the external bin to empty it before giving it a quick rinse out with water (from a rain water tank if you want to be super environmental).

Thanks for reading