Friday 24 February 2012

Bag for life or biodegradable.


Some supermarkets offer bags for life we can use time and time again, while others use biodegradable bags we can throw away.

Somerfield's bio-degradable bags enabled me to throw them away with no feeling of guilt. I even used to collect kitchen compost in them and, as they were bio-degradable, chuck them on the compost heap.

The most bizarre place to find a Somerfield plastic bag was in China. A department store was using them as  their own: when I visited the country in 2001. The exotic blue and white bags were a fashionable item in the city of Nanchang. How such a vast supply of a UK supermarket's bags had got there is a mystery. 

Somerfield stores have now disappeared, but their bags live on: real bags for life.

I planted a hedge ten years ago. When cutting it back today I discovered several plastic bags. Environmental friendly bags, according to their fresh blue print. Not even the ink had bio-degraded after months in a compost heap followed by ten years under a hedge. 

The moral.

Don't believe everything you read: especially on a plastic bag.

1 comment:

Graham said...

Simon,

I enjoyed your story about Somerfield bags being fashionable in China. Who would have thunk it?

I seem to have more luck with degrading plastic bags than you. I stored something in a cupboard in a Tesco's bag, and when I came to retrieve it a few years later, the bag disintegrated in my hand. Perhaps it's the climate?

Out of my head

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