I'd like to think I'm greener then average. Not in the colouring sense, but in the environmentally friendly sense. I have energy saving bulbs all over my house, I recycle my rubbish as far as possible, and I take special reusable bags to the supermarket. Ah, yes, the great carrier bag debate. When I was a child back in about 1980, we would travel miles to find a Sainsburys because my parents insisted it was better then all the others. The nearest Sainsburys back then was in West Wickham, some 6 miles, and one of the perks of shopping there was the bags. Something environmentalist MPs could take note from today, in that these bags were made of something called Paper. Like the American system we all see in average Hollywood movies, the shopping would be put into tall paper bags that would then be mysteriously magicked away never to be seen again. Companies like M&S (short for Made badly and Seriously expensive) and the German giant Lidl (German for "spend your benefits here") already charge for the bags, whereas Asda are talking about doing away with bags altogether. Meanwhile the voice of the silent majority (45, living in Chelsea, driving a 4.8l Range Rover, reads the Daily Telegraph) say that we must reduce our use of these bags, and yet their trip to John Lewis in Sloane square isn't complete without high quality carrier bags that are half a millimetre thick and will probably be the only thing left to signify our existence after doomsday.Meanwhile The Co-op in my town no longer has carrier bags on the hanger thingys and the staff have to be asked for one, which is like asking a green person if you can crap on their rhubarb. And then out the back they have huge trolleys full of discarded packaging that neither man nor beast can make use of.
We need to sort out our priorities methinks.
