Checkout time for plastic bags
Single-use plastic checkout bags will no longer be available at any of the country’s main supermarket chains.
That era ended on Monday when the last of Foodstuffs’ New World, Pak ‘n Save and Four Square operations phased out the bags. Countdown supermarkets stopped providing single-use plastic bags in mid-October 2018.
Supermarkets were required to stop supplying single-use bags from July 1, 2019, but have implemented the change six months early.
Yesterday, Foodstuffs spokeswoman Antoinette Laird said customers should be ready for the new era.
‘‘Throughout the country some stores have removed the bags and had various re-usable options available, and that’s been going on for months,’’ she said.
‘‘There’s been lots of communication . . . in stores, saying, ‘if you come today, no single-use plastic bags’, Customers should be ready for it.’’
Many reusable bag options were available for customers to buy if they didn’t remember to bring their own bags.
‘‘I think consumers accept that a change has to be made, and I think they’re ready to move on without single-use plastic bags,’’ Laird said.
In the lead-up to the end of the single-use bags, Foodstuffs stores had run a range of different giveaways, through which customers would have received free reusable bags.
In August, managing director Steve Anderson said the process that led up to that point would remove more than 350 million plastic bags from circulation.
New World Ilam checkout manager Matt Parker said the Christchurch supermarket only had one ‘‘growly customer’’ yesterday, but most people were ‘‘getting on board’’.
‘‘We tried it before and it didn’t work. People got quite feral about it and walked out and they’d go to different shops. I think it’s great that the Government’s behind it.’’
He thought it was important for supermarkets do their part for the environment, as they played a big part in people’s daily lives.
‘‘There’s a lot of plastic in the shop already let alone plastic bags – if we can cut that down I think it’ll be really good . . . packaging is going to be a big one.’’
Customers Murray and Chris Thomson said they had been using reusable bags for the last six months.
‘‘We made a conscious effort to change. The environment’s certainly getting stuffed up with everything we do and I think it’s time we started taking a bit of responsibility ourselves,’’ Murray Thomson said.
Chris Thomson said she wanted manufacturers to change their packaging too.
‘‘The big guys have got to start changing, I think that’s the next step.’’
Shopper Sharon Henderson said banning single-use plastic bags was ‘‘great for the environment’’.
Her granddaughter, 6-year-old Acey, agreed, saying ‘‘plastic gets stuck around the jellyfish bodies’’.
The retirement of single-use checkout bags has come around the same time as problems with efforts to recycle the bags became increasingly obvious.
A few days before Christmas, The Packaging Forum announced it was suspending its soft plastics recycling scheme for the first three months of 2019. The problem was that 400 tonnes of plastic was sitting in storage after the Melbourne-based processor it was being shipped to stopped accepting New Zealand’s plastic.
The aim was to use the time during the suspension to work with processors to build capacity, and to come up with new ideas for processing the soft plastic.
Foodstuffs said it had collected two-thirds of the total volume of plastics that went through the scheme. Some of those plastics were processed into new long-life products including benches, bollards, decking, plastic posts and ducting for electric cables.
But by the end of 2018 only 20 tonnes of the 60 tonnes collected each month was being reprocessed through two small re-processors, while the other 40 tonnes were being stockpiled or sent to landfills.
When the scheme paused, Foodstuffs focused on reducing plastic packaging in its stores, and said it was exploring new ways to reduce soft plastic waste.
Some of the issues with reducing plastic waste more widely from use in supermarkets was illustrated in a picture posted recently by a Twitter user showing peeled onions wrapped in plastic at a Wellington Pak ‘n Save.
Countdown said the end of singleuse plastic carrier bags in its stores would also remove about 350 million plastic bags from circulation each year.
Among the options to replace the single-use bags were its $1 black reusable bags, which would be replaced for free when they wore out.
Associate Environment Minister Eugenie Sage has said single-use plastic bags affected by regulations to come into force from July will include heavier boutique-style shopping bags, as well as the lightweight bags commonly found at supermarket, retail and other retail checkouts.
Bags would be covered by the ban even if they were described as being made of degradable plastic – biodegradable, compostable and oxydegradable.
In a Cabinet paper, Sage said the degradable bags were designed to be single-use and may be no better than other types of plastic bag when considering energy and pollution impacts of production, and likely disposal circumstances.
‘‘It’s great that the Government’s behind it.’’ New World Ilam checkout manager Matt Parker