Had a shock at the self-service checkouts in Morrisons today - picked up a normal, nothing fancy, not insulated or anything, plastic carrier bag, scanned it and up came 60p!
Saw them in Morrisons today, no indication of price on them either the tractor or paper versions at the self service.
A couple of weeks ago there was a chap on the bus, on holiday with his family (quite a few kids), he was telling us that he had been food shopping in Morrisons, the only bags they had cost over a quid each, he needed a few so that would have made an indent into his holiday budget. I refrained from telling him that next door to the supermarket there is a large 'sell just about everything' shop that would probably sell him three large garishly coloured plastic bags for a quid. Most supermarkets make a lot about how the profit goes to charity, well that is after HMG have taken their 20% (
Carrier Bag Charging in the UK - Morrisons Corporate (morrisons-corporate.com)).
Like you, I use public transport so
I bought a Morrisons paper carrier bag - carried it out of the store to nearby car and it got soaked in a passing squall. When I got home and opened boot of car to get the carrier out, I realised the bottom of the carrier bag was about to collapse, taking my bottle of wine with it. Transferred contents of carrier bag to a small box I had in car and put carrier bag into paper recycling! Will never buy another one.
resonates with me. I bought a couple of frozen items today and the bottom of the (much used) single use plastic bag was wet. If you use the bus you cannot afford to have the bottom of the bag disintegrate, (in my case, depending on the supermarket I may have a 30 minute walk home).
When Safeways first set up in the UK they had what they called 'Tree Saver Bags' which I presume were made from recycled paper. They did not have handles so unless you used your trolley, you would have difficulty carrying them. I presume these were American style which they had brought to the UK.
I remember them well, there was one not too far from where I used to live. Tree Saver Bags - pretty useless, unless you drove and this particular Safeway had a pretty small car park! I think I used to put, say, meat in one bag then put it inside a plastic bag (Sainsburys did really strong ones at the time).
A couple of teens left a bag behind a 'Bag for Life' at a self service checkout today, I tried to get their attention but before I succeeded someone had snaffled it up. Curses!
An annoying feature of some self service is I have found that I have needed to check the change given by the machine, a coin has sometimes got trapped inside or the machine has run out of a particular coin type. Never had an argument but I've had to wait until they find someone with a key. The 'run out of a coin type' was the pound coin and instead of giving me stacks of 50ps, all that happened was a message flashed on the screen. The time I saved through using self service was lost.