This is one of those 'everyone said it was going to happen, and now it is' stories.
For as long as I can remember, we've been encourage to reuse plastic bags for shopping. Some of the big supermarkets, like M&S, then started to sell re-usable, durable bags to encourage this kind of low-level recycling and make a bit of money on the side (which is probably the best way for big business to approach recyling).
Now, Ikea are going to charge for plastic bags. It seems like that are a lot of green initiatives like this popping up over the UK now. We've all known that plastic carrier bags are pretty nasty things, now it's nice to see companies giving shoppers an inventive to recycle.
Having said all that, though, I do miss those big, square, brown paper Ikea bags. They made the best cat toys, after all.
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This is an excellent idea, I think. They do it in Ireland (for example) at most of the supermarkets, and it is one of those things that seems inconvenient to start with but rapidly starts to seem normal once people are used to it.
And then Hey Presto, reduced plastic bag usage....
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Does anyone else remember when this was common place? I'm sure that about 15 years ago we were always charged for plastic bags (ok, it may have been longer, but I'm sure that before these cheap flimsy, use once bags were common place, we had to pay for them)
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