Thirroul Newsagency has just been awarded a Healthy Cities Award for its pioneering decision to ditch plastic bags in favour of environmentally friendly paper packaging. What a great story of leadership on environmental issues from a local newsagent. Well done Thirroul Newsagency!
Are there still newsagencies using/giving out plastic bags in australia?
BBC radio this morning reported that in mexico city, it has just become against the law for shop keepers to give out plastic bags for free. $90 000 fines and 36 hours in jail.
I have the newsagency in Bundanoon, australia’s (and possibly the worlds) first bottle water free town. see http://www.bundyontap.com.au for details on the project.
yep i use plastic bags and will continue to do so untill such date they are unavailable .
i still offer my fellow senior customers with strong quality plastic bags and especially during rainy days .
I took plastic bags out of the four stores I was involved with two years ago, and while at first some of our customers grumbled (mainly the newspaper-only customers) most accepted it and became used to the paperbag-only policy fairly quickly (in fact the encouragement we received for our stand outweighed the grumbles).
We had varying sizes in paper bags to suit most goods and for heavier or bulkier items we sold at cost the reusable enviro-bags (we also gave away a number of these to our regulars for their reuse, as well as including them complimentary at back to school times or with larger purchases)
It saddened me though after two years and having changed our customers shopping habits, to have the stores change ownership and the new owners immediately reintroduce plastic.
Man up and do something environmentally proactive guys! We proved quite successfully that you did not need plastic bags in newsagencies.
Many paper bags sold to retailers contain harmful chemicals and are actually more unhealthy for the environment that most plastic bags. I’d always check paper bag suppliers to ensure they guarantee their product is 100% recyclable and contains no bleaching/paper treating agents that can be harmful to the environment.
We find this all a bit of a dilemma. While, on the one hand, plastic has always been the bad guy, we question the efficacy (in general, that is) of paper and fabric packaging. For example, the ‘green’ bags are anything but! And you see squillions of them discarded everywhere. How many of you have a pile of them in the boot of your car, or near the back door, ready for the shops. I’m certain I’m not the only one who keeps forgetting to take them with me, or out of the boot on the way out to the shops.
As an advertising tool, they’re great, but they’re not all they’re cracked up to be.
We recycle our old shopping plastic bags for the customers who insist on a plastic bag for a paper. We also buy in new plastic for customers who buy their groceries – not everyone on holidays think to take their string bags. Actually the prevailing demographic of residents and holidayers here don’t generally think to take a bag of any description. We need to sell our stock. We don’t need arguments with a customer over the necessity of a bag, because as anecdotes about the previous owners of this business have borne out, such arguments lost them customers big-time. And we’ve worked too hard winning them back to undo it all.
But a bag for a paper?
Most customers already have plastic bags on them from other shopping.
And a paper is easy enough to hold in one hand. The customers that say “What am I going to hold it with?” after being told we don’t stock plastic bags still amuses me.
An amazing number of my regulars still insist on a plastic bag, but, they have brought back the one I gave them a year ago, which they use every day for the paper.
There’s no accounting for ignorance, or even refusal to take responsibility for their pushbike ride / dog walk to the shop. It’s infuriating to hear ‘oh, I do have a bag, but that’s for the dog’, when it’s suggested they scrunch up one of their own plastic bags into their pocket for the paper. And aren’t happy to get a used one.
And bugger me, one of these argumentative types claims he’s a newsagent!!!!
Some customers ask me for a plastic bag to put the postcard they just bought in! Granted the shop that happens in is in a ski resort but most of them post the card up here.
Almost all the seniour customers in our ski resort Newsagency ask for a plastic bag with their paper purchase. Whilst I might understand it on a snowy day I don’t get it on clear days. I have suggested that I may get rid of plastic bags next year and get dirty looks. To appreciate why I hate them so much you would have to witness the thousands upon thousands of plastic bags in the surrounding left in surrounding
landscape and blown up into the trees and rocks around the place only to blown further into trees for kilometres away. The local shire is thinking on banning them and I for one and all for it.
In my view there is a blurred line between what might be considered offering a service and what is giving in to lazyness.
Okay, seriously. A lady just bought a newspaper and demanded a plastic bag.
Then goes on to say “I can’t believe you don’t have any plastic bags. Do people actually buy stuff from here? What do they carry it in?”
It was hard to not give her a smartarse reply, but honestly, is it that hard to use a bag that you ALREADY have?
We have tried to eliminate plastic bags on several occasions in the past without success. The complaints and – sometimes – abuse far outweighed the compliments. One guy actually told us outright if we refused him a plastic bag he would get his paper from the other newsagency down the road. This was from a guy with masters degrees in economics and marketing and who actually lectures to local businesses on those topics. Damned if you do and damned if you dont.
I know what you mean Shayne. Verbal abuse over a plastic bag is uncalled for.
We had customers demanding refunds when we first switched for paper bags only because they couldn’t get a plastic bag.
Are they buying the paper or buying the bag??