Panic and chaos

When I was in Ireland ten years ago (with my sister, Denise) I was surprised when told I’d have to pay for a plastic bag at the supermarket. This had never happened to me before. I thought it was a splendid idea.

It started there in 2002 and has just become part of the whole shopping experience that you either take your own bags or you pay for the alternative.

Bangladesh banned them in 2002 because of huge floods in the late 20th century directly caused by discarded plastic bags. Two thirds of the country was submerged! That’s an excellent reason for banning plastic bags.

In typical French fashion, in 2007, they were completely banned in Paris.

Many other countries have seen the light and have since either banned or now charges for them.

Here, in the UK, things have sort of dribbled along with Wales (2011), Northern Ireland (2013) and Scotland (2014) all, eventually adopting charges. In fact, in Scotland, plastic bag use quickly dropped by 90% as a result.

The reason I’m writing at length about plastic bag charges is because today England finally fell in line with the rest of the UK and started charging for them. The papers and the radio each proclaimed there would be chaos and millions of shoppers would be left confused and angry, bald patches left from violent hair pulling and throats hoarse from complaining.

I don’t know about the rest of the country but here in Farnham we’ve had signs up everywhere telling us it was happening today. When I asked the woman who served me today how much chaos there’d been she told me there’d been no more than usual.

I think most of the chaos would have come from the exceptions. Apparently if you buy a load of meat or fish or loose fruit and veg, you can have a plastic bag for free but, as soon as you include something with packaging, you pay for the plastic bag. Now that is going to cause some chaos as well as making no sense.

It did occur to me the other day that I don’t know why people with cars even need plastic bags. Surely they could pack the boot directly from the shopping trolley then unload at home with or without bags. I think the whole plastic bag thing has made people incredibly lazy and has now forced us to make these insanely chaotic changes.

Meanwhile, in NSW, Queensland, Victoria and WA, climate change doesn’t exist and no-one seems to care about giant turtles swallowing discarded shopping bags…