A powerful voice in journalism. She will be missed.
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One of the worldâs largest sports retailers Decathlon will open its second Australian store in Box Hill South in Melbourneâs east in late November this year, taking up the space of former Masters hardware store.
Yesterday I was in a Woolworths that has had no free plastic bags for a couple of months and there were at least three customers going to the service desk demanding bags. The poor lady at the desk sounded very weary as she explained they didnât have any.
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I have no doubt that a lot of checkout staff will âforgetâ to scan one of the 15 cent bags if it means not dealing with abusive customers that are demanding plastic bags.
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I disagree that customers should have to pay for the environment friendly bags. Itâs the supermarkets decision to stop using plastic bags and in the some cases state governments. The cost shouldnât be passed onto the customers.
If you think about it, more plastic bags will be bought for bin liners etc. In the long run I donât think weâll be saving the environment at all.
Now people want a ban on plastic straws and disposable coffee cups. Whatâs next? Sticky tape.
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Thank you!! I agree with your view entirely. Plastic Bags Ban just open the floodgates IMO
If you pay for the bin liners then youâll use them sparingly. I canât tell you the amount of plastic bags that get thrown out in my lunch room at work. Itâs ridiculous.
People will buy one item at the supermarket, carry it 100 metres back to work and chuck the bag out. There is also a big problem with take away shops which now seem to give you a plastic bag to carry your lunch when previously people would just carry the take away box in their hands. A culture of change is needed.
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Decathlon in Tempe (in Sydney) is one of the best stores in town.
A seriously fantastic range of products and theyâre all incredibly cheap. Theyâre open until midnight every day.
All the products were generic branded, but seemed to be very good quality and cheap. There was a very large range of skateboards and scooters that you could test out on the showroom floor. Iâll probably buy my next bike from there.
I think Rebel Sport seriously needs to watch out, because this place will cream them if theyâre not careful. The impression that I get from Rebel is that itâs a premium store where most of the products are very expensive.
Decathlon on the other hand feels very accessible and quite affordable. It feels like what youâd get if you found the place where Aldi gets all the sporting goods they offer in their special buys, and presented in a Kmart style big box format.
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I do my bit by recycling what I can at home and work. But at the end of the day, corporations contribute to the worldâs waste at levels we canât even comprehend. Eradicating every plastic bag, straw and coffee cup in the world will make a blip of difference.
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Many people are lazy. Iâm meticulous about doing the right thing at home by separating recyclables and composting food scraps but have given up at work. Youâd think the generation that grew up with recycling would be a little more conscious about what can and canât be recycled. I got sick of fishing plastic out of the bins and trying to educate people so I no longer bother. People will become accustomed to paying for plastic bags and dispose of them in the ways they always have. This environmental initiative is the equivalent of trying to quell an out of control bushfire by pissing on it.
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Any expo or convention I go to, Iâve been making a point of grabbing all the reusable bags I can. 
One day, a ceiling-high stack of plastic bags will topple over and crush your body under it. 
I doubt that very much.
Wonât be needing a body bag then! Job already done.
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There are two things here and itâs important to separate the two
- The idea behind charging is to change behaviour, at 15c a bag it doesnât take many shops for it to start becoming a significant additional cost - now many people wonât care, but for others it will encourage a change to the way that they shop.
- The reality is that the retailers are making money off this - the profits arenât really being invested in environmental schemes (although I see Woolies are doing some kind of funding for Landcare, but for one-year) , itâs going to their bottom line.
Ok, itâs inconvenient, but I can guarantee you the world isnât going to end between now and July when the bans kick in.
And in many respects itâs time to consider moving away from these products - single use plastics are a scourge of the modern age, itâs a manufactured material that we have adopted in such volumes that we canât dispose of it properly - recycling it is difficult (and complex rules exist) so it ends up in landfill which is expensive to run and environmentally damaging
And our retailers are some of the worst offenders, but we have to start somewhere and send a message that plastics use needs to be curtailed
We need to stop living in the present and start thinking about the future in many ways and the environment is one key area we need to do a lot more work on protecting - and everyone needs to play a part in that.
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Woolworths in Perth city were giving away the new 15c bags for free today. Not sure if it was due to having no stocks of the usual bags left or to âsellâ the ban.
For what?
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They wouldnât hold back the water from the floodgates, thatâs for sure
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Coles in Frankston have confirmed theyâll be getting rid of the plastic bags on July 1.
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Would Scrapping Billions Of Single Use Non Biodegradable Plastic Bags would Save the Companies Millions In Revenue Annually?