Selfsufficientish.com

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Good on you for tackling the problem in this way!

If you search for 'newspaper bags', there are quite a lot of designs around that you might copy. People are making these to sell, but you could knock up a few to give away free if you needed to. You can probably find a design online somewhere for folding that doesn't require glue.

Another idea for a bring-your-own fabric bag product is to sell a fabric bag or a set of several sizes in a climber's chalk bag or a modified version of it. You could make groovy and sedate versions for all ages. When shoppers leave the house, they just clip it on their belt or whatever. Chalk bags used to be really popular a few years ago, and they could be again, as a fashion statement of self-sufficientishness.

I'm in Ireland and there has been a government tax of 28c each on plastic carrier bags for the last couple of years. It has certainly cut down on the use of them and most people bring bags or use cardboard boxes from the shop to take stuff home. You can then compost the cardboard or re-use. Aldi sell some nifty little cloth bags for about 35c (if I remember rightly). We use these most of the time.

When we had free plastic bags there was a problem with them being discarded and they would blow around in the wind and inevitably end up wrapped around the branches of trees. These bags high in the branches were known as 'witches knickers' Not a pretty thought.

here in ireland theres a charge for plastic carriers,and since being here i have noticed that unlike the town i came from there is no thrown away plastic carriers in the hedges,roadside etc,i have 2 cotton carriers that roll up into my handbag,one came from aldi 35 cents, and one from the organic market costing times the price,

Does anyone remember the old brown paper carrier bags?
Apart from carrying the shopping, I remember as a young lad in the mid 50's buying a homing pigeon from the Green Market for half a crown, it was supplied in a brown paper bag with string handles, as I walked back towards the bus stop the bottom fell out of the bag and the pigeon flew off, presumably back to its loft,
I hadn't noticed that the bottom of the bag had been dipped in water to soften it,
Just one of the many scams of those times
Regards,
Laurie

We do our major shopping on line from a place that delivers locally produced food. It's delivered in brown bags which we then use to pop stuff for the compost in - when it's full the whole thing goes into the compost!