Your view: is your supermarket gripe in the top three?

Thanks for telling us about the plastic bag situation in Wales – I was starting to wonder what would happen if [or when, more like] the bag tax was going to be introduced in England because Sainsbury’s seem to be rather wasteful with the bags, sometimes only putting one or two iems in a bag. Our Sainsbury delivery driver always asks if there are any bags to go back, so that would appear to be the way round the problem – they can just take them away again without charging for them. I don’t really see why they can’t put the shopping straight in the totes without plastic bags – everything except bakery, fruit and vegetables are already wrapped, and fruit & veg end up loose in the fridge drawer or the fruit bowl anyway [or they could be put in those small thin bags they have next to the counters: surely they’re not taxed or banned in Wales are they?]. Do the other supermarkets in Wales do the same as Sainsbury’s for home deliveries and charge for plastic bags?

I remember when, around forty years ago, Sainsbury’s provided very sturdy large paper carrier bags that would do several shopping trips before they failed. I still have some. Safeway [now Morrison’s] also used to provide them but American-style, plain, without handles. I still have one of those as well.

Jane – Paper bags are not an environmentally satisfactory solution for various reasons. Have a look at the information available online.

Recycling is better than putting waste into landfill but can hardly be described as environmentally friendly. We need to focus on reusing bags as many times as we can. When they are unfit for further use, that is the time to recycle them and make sure they are not a threat to wildlife.

I have no experience of ordering groceries online but since it is becoming more common, we certainly need to explore ways of minimising waste.

The paper bags Sainsbury’s used to provide could be reused over and over again [so long as they didn’t get wet!] and if the handles came apart I used them as waste paper receptacles which, when full, could go straight in the recyclng bin. In contrast the plastic bags in use today are not reuseable more than once in my experience as they rip and disintegrate too readily and then generally end-up in landfill or incineration [neither being good for the environment]. I used to like reusing the cardboard outers that supermarkets made available at the checkouts for packing away the groceries; these are rarely available nowadays because the cartons used for conveying the products have rip-fronts so they can be stacked straight onto the shelves letting customers take the product out of the box. This makes the boxes useless, and leads to a lot of packaging waste littering the store, but boosts the company’s recycling score I suppose and ticks another box in their annual report under “corporate social and environmental responsibility”.

It is not difficult to install shelving that means that cardboard boxes can be used intact, John. There must be a lot of cardboard to recycle. We could speculate about whether it is better for supermarkets to collect this and have it recycled in bulk or if it is better for customers to use the boxes instead of bags to transport their groceries home. Some people are not very careful at separating their waste and cardboard and paper can easily become contaminated. A better solution might be to have reusable crates that are both durable and will remain reasonably presentable for display purposes.

I’m happy with my Bags for Life from various supermarkets and Tesco Big Green Bags for heavier items. Bags can be damaged by overloading and sharp objects puncturing plastic, but with care they can be used many times.

One of the problems with paper bags is that making them water resistant makes biodegradation very slow.

We always take long-life canvas or jute bags when we go to the supermarket which never seem to wear out; even the plastic bag-for-life type seem to last a very long time; only once have I needed to ask Sainsbury’s to replace one f.o.c. in accordance with their promise [which they did without demur].

This trend for stacking the products on the shelves inside the outer carton with the perforated front panel ripped out is quite recent and I believe is due to the competitive pressure from retailers like Aldi and Lidl who have presented their wares this way from the outset. This style has been copied by Tesco and Sainsbury in their Express or Local formats and it has spread to the major stores [not sure about Waitrose].

The retailers have presumably required the manufacturers to repackage products in smaller cartons containing, say, eight or twelve items rather than in the traditional big cases containing up to a gross [depending on size/weight]. At a stroke this has increased the amount of cardboard in the supply chain [offset marginally by the lower grade board used for the smaller cartons]. It is noticeable how many more product lines per metre of shelving you see in a small supermarket compared with a superstore, but it does require continuous replenishment with all the hindrances of large trollies in the aisles and absent products. Store tidiness and product presentation suffer but perhaps that is a price worth paying for greater overall efficiency provided it keeps prices down [which Aldi and Lidl would say it does].

Another innovation that the Germans have brought us is bar-codes on all sides of own-brand [and some other] packaging so that whatever way the item is put on the check-out belt, it can be scanned instantly without the operator having to hunt the bar-code. Saves milliseconds each time I suppose which all add up and cut out one staff position.

I forgot to mention that if the customers can take the boxes there is much more likelihood of them being re-used whereas if the store sends them back to the central warehouse for bulk recycling they never get re-used and there is an additional environmental impact in the transport of the cardboard from the warehouse to the processing plant.