Bin liner alternatives

Lining rubbish bins is one of the crunch points for many people when it comes to cutting back on plastic. But there are options other than buying more plastic. Use plastic bags you still have coming into the home, like chippie bags or packaging. It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t fit the bin perfectly. It can still work fine. Learn how to fold old newspapers into containers for rubbish that fit inside the bin. Have a naked bin. That’s right, don’t use anything. Wash out the rubbish bin when it needs it. Use composting, recycling, reusing to make your rubbish pile as small as possible or even disappear. Up to 85 per cent of household rubbish can be covered by this. had overwhelming support.’’

Hannifin says Countdown wants shoppers to bring bags rather than sell them bags.

And the company has worked hard to promote alternatives to using bin liners at all, including posting videos on how to make bin liners out of newspaper.

If shoppers forget to bring a bag then they can buy a 15c Good to Go bag at the counter up until the July 1 date when the official Government ban rules out any single bag sales.

Hannifin says any profit from the 15c bag will go to charity.

The longer-term option will be Countdown’s $1 black Bag for Good, which will be replaced for free when it wears out.

‘‘As you’ll appreciate, this is not an offer designed to make us money,’’ Hannifin says.

‘‘We wanted to reduce our environmental footprint and our customers wanted us to do it so that’s why we did it. Hand on heart, it isn’t about the money. It’s actually been really expensive to do.’’