Under the influence of Thomas Newman’s haunting theme, something twirls and dances to the whim of the breeze and for a few minutes of movie history a white carrier bag is beautiful…
However, anyone who’s spent any time wandering down any streets in China can tell you that whilst a single carrier bag might be aesthetically pleasing, lots of the damn things blowing around, snagged in tree branches and sticking to your shoes are not.
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Since I came to China I’ve been waging a single-handed battle against a pet-hate of mine: the carrier bag. I’ve decided to share it in the hope that – in true Olympic spirit – others will take up the flaming baton and run with it.
I’ve observed the phenomenon of carrier bag dispensing and conclude that it’s a reflex action on the part of every check-out operator in China: an item appears and is carrier-bagged in the blink of an eye. Dry food, refridgerated food, soft food, hard food, fruit, vegetables, clothes, toys and toiletries (already carrier-bagged and paid for previously) are dispatched efficiently into individual carrier bags.
The result is that under my sink I have bags of carrier bags. Not unlike in England, where we also horde bags of carrier bags. Yes, we can re-use them for our bins, but eventually they end up in the ground and can take hundreds of years to “disappear”…which actually means they just break down, down, down into lots of smaller toxic bits.
Keep Britain Tidy really works and I’m secretly quite proud of it but the truth about carrier bags is not much to be proud of [see this fascinating piece from The Guardian]. In China, the prevailing attitude towards rubbish is that you throw it on the floor, wherever you are, and someone else will clean it up. The result is that waste is a lot more visible here and much more difficult to ignore.
What YOU can do
- Don’t tell me that there are more important things to worry about than carrier bags just because it gives you a reason to do nothing.
- Buy a cool, cheap canvas bag from any market in China.
- Take your bag with you on all shopping trips and when you’re at the checkout, use this opportunity to practise your Chinese (see below) and help clean up your little bit of China, reduce pollution, oil usage…
Just Say NO or 不要了
- I don’t want a bag
- I don’t want a bag, thanks (super polite)
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There’s the saying that goes – “When in Rome, do as the Romans” – but sometimes I think we need to give China a nudge and not just idly play along with her. I’ve even converted a Chinese friend. At the very least they now consider the idea of waste and though this is the tip (no pun intended) of the iceberg, it’s better than nothing at all.
Tam, despite an aversion to big cities, pollution and large numbers of people, is living and teaching in Beijing...happily.
I’ve been trying to reuse plastic bags recently or not get lumbered with them at all. It was a habit I had at home when I used the same Sainsbury’s carrier bag for about two years or so, and I sort of did the same thing with one of the supermarkets in Fuzhou last year.
Sad to say, my attempts not to end up wading ankle deep in plastic bags have not been a great success because I seldom go on regular shopping expeditions and have got out of the habit of reusing bags. I’ve been trying to grab single items before they get put in a bag, but need to be more vigilant.
Perhaps it’s about time the supermarkets started charging for carrier bags. Some supermarkets in Hong Kong have a day when they charge you for carrier bags, but they should be doing this all the time.
This is so true. I also don’t like those carrier bags and wish they would stop using them. Here in Germany you usually don’t get one, unless you explicitly ask for it. This is a much better way! In China everytime I go shopping with some friends and tell the salesperson that I don’t want the plastic bag, they don’t really understand why I would do this, because why would you not use a free service? So I hope more people would boycott the carrier bags and become more aware of waste and pollution,
I think the “charging for bags” thing is a great solution. A lot of bulk and no-label stores back home have switched to this, and though I usually end up buying a couple bags out of sheer forgetfulness, I am at least made more conscious of it.
As for places that do this in China – I know Metro does. God I love Metro. I mean, they sell Crown Royal for Christ’s sake!
That “supermarket in Fuzhou last year” was Metro. And we’ve got one here in Chengdu as well.