There was a song by Radiohead, going back a few years now, which talked about everything being plastic: trees, people, surgery. Everything seemed fake. I'm starting to understand how that feels. I know that there is a profusion of plastic bags in this world but I guess I'd never realised how hard it can be not to acquire them, particularly when you're really trying not to...
We decided to try doing a bulk online shop for this month, the idea being that,
1. we would cut down on car usage by not driving to the big supermarkets once a week.
2. we would not be buying all those little things that are impulse buys as you walk around the shops but only buy what we really need.
3. we could properly compare prices of 'regular' products with their fairtrade or organic alternatives.
As mentioned before, we were going to try to use Ocado - green retailer of the year and all that. Unfortunately they don't deliver to our address at the moment. Odd, given that we're hardly living in the belly button of the navel of nowhere. Anyhow, as an alternative we decided to use a combination of Sainsbury's for the general stuff and the Ethical Superstore for other items we couldn't find there.
It was interesting seeing the difference in price of some of the products. Usually you can see a slight difference between fairtrade and 'regular' products but it was quite amazing and rather disturbing to see that, where we would normally spend around 70p for a bag of pasta, the fairtrade cost for the same size of packet was £2.40 - over three times a s much. It really made us think, is this the price we should really be paying for basics like pasta? Quite startling really.
So, one evening of internet shopping complete (v. exciting way to spend a whole evening but these things take a lot longer when you're trying to be more careful about the ethics of what you buy!), we looked forward to getting all our lovely ethical things...
Then the delivery came.
Plastic bag hell. There were so many of them. Some bags had just one item inside. Some bags were doubled up for no apparent reason.
Now, I'm not sure if I just didn't see the 'no plastic bags' box on the Sainsbury's website (and I'll be looking carefully next time) but this seemed to be an excessive use of plastic for a shop in which they make an issue of asking if you need a plastic bag when you buy in person. Tesco do a green no plastic bags option, that we've always used before. Is this another area for lobbying? The home deliveries all arrive in big plastic containers so surely there is no need at all for plastic bags.
This is so frustrating. Day one and we acquired two bags because of our own lack of thought. Day two we acquire another EIGHT when we were really trying not to. I know we can send them back at the next delivery but this shouldn't be an issue at all.
If nothing in life is free then why are there so many plastic bags in my life?
Later that evening I went out to the local shop to get some milk. The shop assistant automatically put it into a bag. When I said that I didn't want a bag and I would just carry the milk I was met with a sigh and a sneer for the inconvenience I was causing for making them take the milk back out of the bag...
So, like Radiohead said: plastic. Everywhere.
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