Talk:Thumb up or down

Plastic bags

Here in the UK, the folks at Tesco (one of our biggest supermarkets) have an interesting way of encouraging you to recycle carrier bags. They have a clubcard onto which they add a point for every £1 you spend. If you bring your own bags, instead of using new ones, they add an extra point on for each and every pre-used bag you use. So never mind paying £0.05 for each new bag, you're (sort of) getting paid £1 for every old bag. (Well…actually each point adds up to £0.01 when it comes to redeeming the points but, as the Tesco slogan goes, "every little helps" ;-) HTH HAND —Phil Boswell 02:49, 4 November 2006 (EST)

Hi Phil, Sounds good - any system than encourages recycling of plastic bags is better than no system at all! I'm afraid I've begun to get slack about it, and started using fresh plastic bags each time. The problem with the supermarkets here is that if they supply the bags, the checkout people will neatly pack your shopping into the bags ... but if you supply the bags, they get you to pack it, and they fling your shopping through the checkout at the most amazing rate, which means even when there's two of us packing, we usually don't get it done in time before they onto the next customer, and there's unpacked stuff everywhere and a mad rush to pack things. So there's actually a complete disincentive to using recycled or reusable bags - not only do you have to remember to bring them and carry them around as you shop, you also get less service and more stress. The predictable result of course is that only a tiny percentage of people reuse or recycle bags in Australia. So any system to encourage reusing or recycling, including making it no more painful than using new bags, has my support. -- All the best, Nickj 16:08, 14 November 2006 (EST)