Excess charging for paper bags at Fresh Choice

Jon from The Wood

I’ve been out of town for a couple of months. While I was away our local supermarket, Fresh Choice on Collingwood st, has stopped supplying plastic carry bags that it still charges for, and now requires shoppers who may need one, to purchas a paper bag for 20c on top of what they have already paid for the plastic bag they no longer receive. I know they are still charging for the plastic because I asked a checkout operator if an adjustment had been made to pricing in compensation. She said no, we are still paying for them. I have not checked lately the actual cost of a paper bag, back when I use to buy them for my business, about the same size as Fresh Choice are selling, they cost 1.25cents each. Fresh Choice are asking 20cents. Profiteering? You decide. Let me state here that if you do not need a plastic bag, take along you own shopping bag like our grannies use to do, that is a good thing and keep doing it.
Their reasoning is that plastic is finding its way into our water ways and the sea and causing damage. That is quite right. But is it happening to any significant extent here in Nelson. Or indeed New Zealand.
How often do you take your, so called, single use plastic bags and through them over Rocks Road in to the sea or in to the river? I don’t. Never have. Never seen it. I bet you don’t either.
So where is all this plastic coming from. International research has determined that 90%, that’s 90% of the plastic is coming from just 10 rivers around the world. Just ten. Guess what? None are in New Zealand. The Nile and the Niger and the other eight are in Asia. The Mekong, Yellow, Pearl and five other smaller rivers.
I have personally seen the amount of plastic dumped into the Mekong. It is massive. There are rafts of plastic long, deep, thick and wide floating along the banks that will eventually make its way to the sea. Yes, it needs to be stopped. Will it ever? Very unlikely. That is another story. Will ripping off shoppers at our local Fresh Choice make a difference. Not one bit. All it is doing is acting as an excuse for the owner to increase profit as detailed earlier.
On my recent trip I was in Ireland. I noticed thousand and thousands of single use plastic bags lying on the peat bogs. They are now used to cover the cut peat as it drys. Millions of them. Under the sun and in the wind they break down. Tear and fragment and blow across the bogs to the sea. Our tour guide was very proud of how these single use bags were being put to good use.
Also, the so called single use bags we are still paying for every time we shop there but no longer receiving when needed are going to have to be replaced in the community. How? By buying from the super market more plastic bags. Pushing up their profit even more.
Are dog walkers going to pick up their pet’s poo in their fingers and carry it home in their pockets to flush later. I don’t think so.
By far the biggest second use for these single use plastic bag is to line the kitchen/bathroom rubbish tins. Without single use plastic bags bought from a supermarket when you buy your shopping, you are going to have to add plastic bin liners to your shopping list thus pushing up the profit line of the super market even more.
How is this reducing the amount of plastic used? It simply is not. It is just replacing one source of plastic bags with a more expensive one.
Our local supermarket in Christchurch, a New World, tried this several years ago. They lost so much business they stopped the practice within two months returning to the normal.
How can we get Fresh Choice to stop ripping us off under the guise of ecological concern?
STOP SHOPPING THERE!
Let them see through our action, that we see through their action and are not fooled.
Clearly if you have no choice but to shop there. Elderly, don’t drive etc. Go right ahead. No one will blame you. But if you have a choice, choose to go elsewhere.