winter wrote: 
In many cases here it's an easy call - just look at the girth of the person pushing the basket and the number of cartons of Twinkies in it.

 Manbird wrote: 
Interesting. It always amazes me to see someone pushing a shopping cart stacked high with groceries - I think, "wow, they must have a really big family".

I have re-usable shopping bags for Fresh & Easy and Trader Joe's. Very handy. Plus if you only have two bags, you try to buy no more than two bags' worth of stuff. 

 oldslabsides wrote: 
The store whose name must never be spoken. 

In Ireland, they shop differently. Frequent smaller shopping as opposed to the 2 cartload family style you often see here. It was pretty easy for them to adapt to the bring your bag routine. They do have some hypermarkets like the German chain, Aldi, with loads of euro-product but even those are kind of small compared to many yankeedoodle supermarkets.  

 oldslabsides wrote: 
top down, the player is the game

 oldslabsides wrote: 


Why do they scatter their bags everywhere? Seems unprofitable.

 Manbird wrote: 
yes.  around here most of them come from valdamart.  one more reason to hate that place.

 JrzyTmata wrote: 

Okay, so I guess it's different than full-on biodegradable. The project was to show how long some things break down compared to others. But our plastic definitely started decomposing. Especially when heated.

In Ireland everyone uses shopping bags. If you happen to forget them, the shops will gladly sell you bags
for about seventy five cents each. But they are heavy duty and can be used over and over. I've never
seen anyone buy bags, though (except myself because I always forget to bring my own). You never see
grocery bag trash laying about like you do here. They are pervasive here. Even when I'm out in the middle
of nowhere with my hawk, I find them all over the place.  

 kysmet wrote: 
hardly any store does double coupons anymore. and now with Extreme Couponing on tv, watch the manufacturers start pulling major limits on that too.

 Alexandra wrote: 
are we talking about plastic bags?
they will break down into small particles, but it's still plastic.

 winter wrote: 

The recycled ones ARE biodegradable....my class did a science project on it. It takes a little longer than paper, however.....

 kurtster wrote: 

dangerous third cola radical

 oldslabsides wrote: 
  R C Cola

 Alexandra wrote: 
I think I'm going to start using paper for that. I read something about that recently (I forget where) that struck me: we're using non-biodegradable plastic to get rid of very biodegradable stuff.

Imagine archaeologists in the future: "Wow, these guys REALLY liked cat sh*t. They went to a lot of trouble to preserve it in these plastic bags."  

 JrzyTmata wrote: 

Our grocery stores do.......I always use re-usable until I need some more plastic bags to put kitty litter in.

 JrzyTmata wrote: 
Very cool! None of our stores down here do that (that I know of). No double coupons either! :pout:

 kurtster wrote: 
No, not plastic shopping bags - Coke or Pepsi.

As the thread title suggests, the country is going to come apart over the issue of plastic shopping bags.

Crisis ?  What Crisis ?

 JrzyTmata wrote: 
Of course, I meant to me. I only speak for myself.

 hippiechick wrote: 
it doesn't matter to you.
but others do shop at those stores. I was just offering the information.