Plastic Bag Free

Back in December 2007 the idea was discussed at the Bungay Chamber of Trade to make the whole town 'plastic bag free'. My initial reaction wasn't actually a very enthusiastic one because I felt it wasn't a problem I personally was contributing to. For over three years I had already banned 'new' plastic bags from the shop but would take in people's second–hand bags to be reused as necessary.

However, when I researched the situation more, I realised that I was contributing more to the waste than I thought I was. The fact remained that, even with my extra use of the bags, they were only getting used three or four times in their entire existence, and were then being thrown out when they fell apart, to fester in landfill for the next few centuries (at least!).

Another problem I was adding to was the imagined 'green credentials' of my customers – they thought they were doing a good thing by using plastic bags at the supermarket and then bringing them to me to reuse. As far as they were concerned they were doing a 'green' thing; as far as I was concerned I was as well, but the fact remained that between us we were still using vast amounts of plastic bags.

In fact, the first response from many of my customers when I announced I was going plastic bag free was “Oh no! How will I get rid of them all now?” I hoped that if people had to take responsibility for disposing of the bags themselves, without me taking them in, it may persuade them not to pick them up in the first place.

What I did was to make some clear announcements, both in the shop and in local press that there was a date coming soon when my shop would be 'plastic bag free'. Because we needed time to get the message out and to persuade people to get into the habit of using alternatives regularly, I decided on a date five weeks away, at the end of January.

During that time I continued to use plastic bags when necessary but advised customers that I would not be using them for much longer and suggested various alternatives.

The initial response was very encouraging with approximately 80% of my customers immediately getting into the habit of bringing their own. The one down side of this was that I was suddenly finding myself inundated with old plastic bags – with so few being given out and still plenty being brought in by well–meaning customers it soon became apparent that I was building a plastic bag mountain in the attic of the shop!

One week before the official 'plastic bag free' date I had a trial week, when I had all my alternatives in stock ready to use but did keep a stash of plastic bags under the counter, just in case.

In fact I didn't need to give out a single plastic bag during that whole week and by now the most common response from customers was that it's so easy, that they could've been doing this for years. What's more, why doesn't every other shop do it too?

That is the main reason for setting up this website. My catchment area is very small, I literally only service this small town and the surrounding villages so worldwide or even regional publicity is, as far as I am concerned, completely irrelevant. My hope is that shoppers and traders in other towns will be able to learn from my experience and rest assured that, although it sounds like a major upheaval simply because plastic bags are so commonplace, the reality is far less dramatic than imagined. As ever, people just make do with the situation at hand – if plastic bags are removed as an option then sensible alternatives are found, it's as simple as that.

Since then I have come up with another idea to get people thinking – to keep a tally of how many plastic bags I have NOT used! It's actually quite easy to calculate from the daily sales analysis on even my basic till printout. Knowing how many customers I've had each day and how many items they've bought I can quickly estimate, using past experience, how many bags I would have needed for each day's trading.

It sounds like a bit of a hassle, but just adding up those figures over a few weeks makes for a pretty phenomenal total and helps people realise the scale of the problem nationwide. If a tiny little shoebox of a shop like this can save over 12,000 plastic bags in less than 3 months, just imagine how many a 'normal' shop would use! It is also this sort of statistic that local newspapers and radio stations love to hear – it makes for an quick 'soundbite' and an easy way for me to get the campaign more free publicity!