Sunday, 15 July 2007

Grocery Shopping Goes Green

The Waitakere City Council is taking the first step towards reducing the 'environmental nuisance' of grocery bags, according to today's Sunday Star Times.
The West Auckland council plans to issue 5,000 households with reusable cloth bags and wants to extent this to all city house holds within two years.

While I think it is fantastic that councils are waking up to the possibilities of waste minimisation there are better ways to reduce plastic bags without dipping again into taxpayer's pockets.
Last year one well known chain store has incentivised using their own reusable bags by offering a discount to shoppers who returned to the shop with their reusable bag.

It is great that initiatives like that come from the industry and the uptake would be even better if shop assistants would be encouraged to welcome reusable bags.