The average household buys 54 bags for life every year.

Greeneyed Girl. I misunderstood, but I saw the news about the bags online first. Now what is the carbon content of an online newsitem

Ive still got a few of the "single use" ones from a years ago, I used to always re-use these free bags each week when we used to do a big shop from one of the big supermarkets, we did used to buy about 10-15 bag fulls of shopping and we did forget occasionally and got more at the supermarket so did have about 60/70 of them but I would never throw them unless they were split but then an Aldi opened up nearby so I decided to buy a shopping trolley, which I've had for nearly 4 years, and walk to the shops (used to go by car), we also have a small asda, iceland , B & M within walking distance so are very lucky, hubby is still using the old single use carrier bags if he goes to the shops for any bits and bobs

Just seen in today’s paper suggesting buying cloth gift bags from Aspiga. Made from off-cuts, £7 for three, different sizes, but when I looked they were out of stock. Look pretty, good for odd sized presents, and can be reused, assuming you can buy them in the first place I suppose.
Not suitable for supermarket shopping I realise, but seasonal.

I was joking about the newspaper MOnica which has a carbon footprint all of its own ie production and transportation, but I guess some is offset by recycling, which we do with our papers, cardboard etc.

A paper bag needs to be used about twice to
have a carbon footprint equal to a light plastic bag.
www.bbc.com/news/business-47027792

Ah ha, but what is the carbon footprint of the paper

131 doesn't seem much - just use it twice a week for a year. I have one hanging on the front door knob that DH takes out every morning when he walks down to the co-op for the paper. 113 is roughly four and a half months of daily usage.

However the presenter clearly thought 131 usages was an an unattainable target.

Yes I saw that too MOnica. Cotton has a heavy environmental footprint, as does cotton clothing. Nothing is simple unfortunately. Polyester fibres shed and end up in the ocean. Some hessian/cotton bags contain plastic to make them more durable and so on!

If you order on the Internet it is delivered wrapped in plastic very often in a diesel van......

Mine have bad a lot more uses than that Monica, and have a lot of life left in them yet. (My Yorkshire and Scottish blood will make sure of that )

I saw a clip yesterday that a cloth bag has to be used 131 times before it is more environmentally as friendly as a plastic bag.

It seems an easy enough solution to stop offering reusable plastic bags if they aren't being "reused"- Offer baskets or recycled fabric sacks at a cost- There's plenty of surplus fabrics and basketry around the globe- But as long as corporations continue to offer plastic bags to consumers, for free, consumers will continue to use them "once"-

Ah. Tesco and Iceland (with its 10 fold increase) have stopped stocking the “single use” bags. Even so, the figures are shocking. I agree the stores should charge a lot more for plastic bags. £1 each and everyone would surely think twice.

This is the report, and the self-reported figures for bags for life are on page 24. Tesco’s seem to me to be way out of sync with the others.

eia-international.org/wp-content/uploads/Checking-Out-on-Plastics-2-report-embargoed.pdf

Does this 'average' mean the mean or the median? Makes a difference.

To illustrate, when £n is stated to be the 'average' income of a country, what it really means is that most people earn are paid less than the figure stated.

You only need relatively few "high fliers" to skew the mean, which then gives the impression that a lot of households buy an excessive number of bags. It would be interesting, as some commenters have intimated, to know from which groups within society the 'skewers' come from, or even if it is confined to, or largely by, certain groups

Meanwhile in Waitrose this morning I saw a customer grab a Bag for Life. As he did so another bag fell to the floor. He left it there. I was shocked. If this happens in Waitrose..... ??

?

They are only about 20p each, 5 for a £, 54 cost £10.40, twice that, just over £20. Over a year a small sum. I think the price should go up to £2 each, better still supermarkets should not have any bags at the till.

No wonder students are always hard up if they constantly buy new bags each time they shop, have they never heard ‘Look after the pennies etc?’
No, probably not.

Maggie you may not believe them but they are a sum of the number of bags sold by supermarket chains divided by the number of households in the country.

I suspect that were we to go to shops frequented by students and single young people we would see lots been bought,

Shops are open over 100 hours a week, we spend 10, 20 minutes at the till.

Here is the link I gave further up the thread. www.independent.co.uk/life-style/supermarket-plastic-waste-environment-lidl-asda-aldi-sainsburys-a9220611.html but the story seems to have been in most newspapers.

I just don’t believe these figures. I rarely see anyone asking for a bag these days. I’ve bought one this year when I was caught out - it’s now in the car boot with the rest that we take shopping with us. An average of 54 per household?! Never.

I think I bought 3 bags fir life last year, only because I shopped without my cloth bags. I have some hessian type bags that I have had for about 20 years, back in the days when I saved the coffee bean off a famous brand of coffee and sent for my free bags. One or two are getting a little tired, but still lots of life in them yet.

We use the ones from Lakeland (set of 4) which open out to twice their size. Had them for 2 years and love them

Maybe plastic bags should all have the year of manufacture printed very boldly on them. There could be some pride in showing off old dates!

I must just a add when my daughter bought some books from India they arrived wrapped in cloth and tied with rafia type string with the address written on the cloth I thought they looked lovely

I confess to buying two when caught on the hop in the last year.

One for food, one for clothes.
Both recycled or could be waiting for re-use.

Who’s buying all these bags no one I know Everyone here seems to have their bags or shopping trolleys with them when they go shopping I have a whole bagful of bags which people have given me things in and always have a couple folded in the bottom of my handbag

When I come out of the pool with my wet towel, water shoes and swimming costume, I'm glad of my plastic bags.

When I buy a hangi (popular fundraiser here), no paper, bamboo or other container will do as the juice runs out if it's not in a sealable plastic box. Ditto any takeaway with liquid content.

Nor do any of the things in my pantry (flour, pulses, rice) survive in paper and I cannot afford glass.

I have multiple cloth bags used regularly and refuse paper bags from the supermarket as their use, now massive, kills precious trees

And how do you successfully re-use, multiple times, a paper bag, as I do with plastic?

The bags which hold my swim things were from seafood: fresh unshelled, live mussels, kept in iced, filtered water before sale and of course, dripping when packed.

Well washed, these bags are now ideal for my use. Just 3 bags, re-used every week this year.

When the supermarket put my things in paper bags, they were torn before they even got home; a criminal waste of resources.
Now I insisted on their re-using cardboard boxes from their warehouse stocks.

Yes, the eco-cost of manufacturing cloth bags, which often have some polymer content for durabilty, is contentious.

So when we are considering eco-sense (and NZ is possibly one of the more eco-minded countries) it has to be tempered with a little common sense.