Every time we go to the supermarket we pick up a few more plastic bags. Quite a few as the packers don’t seem to want to put more than 6 items in each bag.  95%+ of mine end up in the landfill.

They are the perfect size for lining my bins in the kitchen – so they do get some reuse but….

Now, I am slightly green here as the front part of the bin takes the rubbish and the back part the compost.  But even the compost section gets a double lining of bags as the compost can get quite ‘juicy’ after a few days.

When retailers introduced a small charge (5 or 10 cents) for each bag at the local supermarket, people were not happy.  I think we even got a credit if we used a recycled plastic bag and in the first week or so if you spent more than $50 they gave you a free reusable bag.  The local hospice was even given the money the retailers raised from the bag sales – so you couldn’t even accuse the supermarket of profiteering. This industry lead initiative failed badly.

The Warehouse has introduced a charge on bagsand has stuck to their guns.  I don’t think I have used a bag from them since then.  But I normally only shop for one or two items at time – not like the supermarket were I have a whole trolley full.

A story on Treehugger.com says that in Washington DC they introduced a 5 cent tax on all bags (plastic and paper)  and the number of bags used dropped from 22.5 million per month to just 3 million in January.  This is a huge reduction and the money raised from this is going to be targeted at cleaning the Anacostia river.

So why can’t New Zealand get its act together.  I guess the key thing in Washington was that it was a specific tax – government regulated and not just seen as a marketing gimmick by one of the major supermarket chains. Well done to New World for trying this out – so how about another crack at it?.

There is still the problem of me wanting a bag to line my bin. I probably don’t need so many as I could look for food with less packaging but  maybe I’ll just keep buying the supermarket bags as they were cheaper than the bin liners available on the supermarket shelves. Can we win this one?