Generally speaking I am an environmentally conscious supermarket shopper. I carry reusable bags in my handbag and I seldom use plastic carrier bags*. At home, my dustbin takes carrier bags so the ones I do use get reused as bin liners.
The problem is, because I don’t use them very often I have run out. So now I have a minor quandary. Do I buy bin liners especially, or go back to bringing my shopping home in a carrier bag a couple of times a week? I know which is best for my wallet, but which is best for the environment?
*apropos not very much, some Japanese supermarkets have bag packers. They may be a good investment; it is not unknown for me to choose one of those shops over another otherwise equally good one because I love not having to pack my own shopping 
At the level of a few plastic bags we may be splitting environment hairs in a manner similar to the great Christmas tree debate – so long as you are not using a car to do it (which you are not) then the degree of bad is relatively miniscule.
We get around this issue by actually forgetting our bags (really) about once every few months…
I’m waiting and waiting till we convert from plastic bags to paper/reusable then, BAM! I start selling plastic bags with 101 uses to Job Public (made from recycled plastics ofc!).
I’m starting to think this is a viable business plan;)
In seriousness, I don’t know how I’d get the kitty litter disposed of without them.
Yeah, I’m with Babs; plastic bags are not where you’re going to make your biggest impact on the environment. Better to cut out meat from your diet, or take one less plane journey every year.
Also, it depends on your actual reasoning. You’ve used the catch-all “environment” as your cause, but this is generally a mixture of two issues when most people talk about it; there’s the actual environment (animals and their habitats and so on) and then there’s the energy problem (using energy and resources to make large numbers of a disposable product). I think that most modern plastic bags aren’t too much of a problem on either count. Tesco now supply you with the thinnest plastic bags your imagination can deal with and they’re designed to bio-degrade so fast that they’ve practically disappeared by the time you get home. Actually, they’re not that useful as bags any more, since their main aim is not to clog up the throats of sea creatures and such. On the energy front, I’m not sure about the advantages. Like you, we re-use carrier bags in places where we’d have to buy a different kind of bespoke bag if we didn’t. I’d like to see a study that finds the average mass of the “bag-for-life” type bag and the average mass of a plastic bag. Since they’re often made of the same material, the ratio of the masses will tell you how many times you have to re-use the fancy bag to out-weight the cumulative damage from the normal bags. I wonder if they’re actually reused this number of times (on average).
Kevin out
Kevin – interesting stuff about the mass ratios of the bags. I imagine there is not much real benefit unless you are using locally sourced organic hemp bags produced in a fair trade co-operative
Ellie – just ignore that bit about one less flight a year – sod the environment, we wanna see you!
Word to Rob on the kitty litter front…
In terms of the plastics, I’m assuming a wash. Probably not right, because the bags you buy and the bags the grocery store buys are probably different. But no data, so…
Go with the bags from the grocery store.
1) That saves wear on your re-usables. It means each of the disposable bags gets used twice.
2) Money is power. Either you spend money on bags or the grocery store does. You are probably more environmentally responsible, so the money will benefit the environment more (or at least damage it less) in your pocket.
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Gah. I went to the supermarket and THEY GAVE ME A PAPER BAG. I give up.
Hullo Mike and Lenard Mangiapane and welcome
some people will think that if u want something u should buy it in a full price..i think that most of the people will think the opposite when they will find that the same thing they can buy less than half price.
I’ve enjoyed reading through these types of blogs. Intriguing stuff! Solar energy has always been a fascination with me.