Plastic Bag and Lockdown

We've had weekly deliveries from Ocado for many years. When the 5p per plastic bag charge was introduced Ocado charged it but also refunded 5p for any plastic bags you handed back to the driver. It didn't matter whose bags, you got 5p back whether Tesco, Sainsbury's, Morrisons, whatever.
Come the virus and Ocado stopped the driver collections, for obvious reasons and promised to reinstate when safe.

We've had about 15 deliveries since collection stopped, at an average of 7 bags per delivery, that's 105 bags, plus several additional deliveries by Iceland and a couple of click & collect from Morrison's, I reckon we've about 150 bags waiting collection. That's about £7.50 worth, but can you imagine if the refund scheme restarts and everybody returns all their bags. One: how long will it take an Ocado driver to count 150 or so bags at each delivery to arrange the refund. Two: how much space will all those bags take in his van.
This lays open whether there's a different way to handle the scheme restart, or whether it will actually ever restart. If it doesn't restart I'm storing 150 plastic bags under the stairs for no purpose.

Tesco are much more sensible Andy.

Their drivers accept them with no quibble, so we just put all the ones we want to return into one bag and hang it for the driver to collect.

It doesn't seem too difficult to me, and the drivers never have a huge amount ot bags at any one time.

I never thought to check, but I don't think we get charged for the bags, so that aspect is of no consequence.

The Ocado bags are very flimsy affairs, like supermarket bags used to be in their latter days. Iceland also charge 5p for the bags used in their deliveries, but they are much heavier weight plastic and could be reused.

Are you sure that tesco still take back bags Dave, Ocado stopped as a precaution to reduce the risk of drivers catching the virus.

steamdrivenandy wrote:The Ocado bags are very flimsy affairs, like supermarket bags used to be in their latter days. Iceland also charge 5p for the bags used in their deliveries, but they are much heavier weight plastic and could be reused.

Are you sure that tesco still take back bags Dave, Ocado stopped as a precaution to reduce the risk of drivers catching the virus.

Ours did up to yesterday Andy.

More than that, I don't know.

Asda deliver with flimsy non reusable bags, fixed inside a crate. Crates are dropped by our front door for us to collect the bags.

Tesco don't charge, as Gromit said. I have a garage full of their bags.

Tesco would take our bags too but we have been using them for bin liners for household and food rubbish. They fit perfectly in our bin that has 3 compartments to separate rubbish and recycling.

Back in the day when there was no charge for bags we used ours as poo bags when walking the dogs, so they got a second use. Since the charge and Ocado refunding 5p a bag we've had to buy poo bags, actually baby nappy bags. I think that probably means we're responsible for producing a greater quantity of plastic than before, though a fair bit is normally recycled by Ocado. But overall it probably isn't within the original intentions of introducing a charge. The law of unanticipated consequences again.

I love plastic bags.... ingested one in to the water cooling inlet of our yacht a few years ago and it only cost £3500 for a complete engine rebuild when it overheated! 

Interesting article on BBC news tonight how vast amounts of the UK's carefully sifted recycling including the dreaded plastic bags is shipped to Turkey where an industry has grown up burning it!! Perfect, that's worth doing then

Sian religiously washes out plastic bottles, jars and any other containers, and shouts at me if I don't do the same.

I think I'll pay more attention to her from now on. The plastic must be quite difficult to light if it's smothered in runny sauce, or whatever!

I’ve been gathering the hundreds of Tesco bags delivered since March and putting them in the greenhouse to quarantine. I’ve always hoarded poly bags so have not had to buy any for bin liners etc as I still have those left before Tesco stopped supplying them altogether.  If the quarantined ones have not biodegraded then we have enough to supply most of the neighbours as well. 

As Andy says above, it does seem daft having to buy poly bags made of thicker polythene than those supplied for 40p with each Tesco order pre-plague.