I'm not a plastic bag lady

An amazing thing happened this week. We ran out of plastic bags. At one point we had a fetid, ever expanding nest of the things, sweating away in the corner of a cupboard. Then Norwegian got a smart blue plastic bag holder from the Swedish shop (you know the one) and they were all tidied away. But it was still stuffed to capacity, spewing forth slippery paper thin bags at any opportunity.

We must stop using bags we agreed. As committed environmentalists it is the very least - if not only - thing we can do to halt the tide of rubbish that threatens to engulf the overburdened landfill sites around the capital. So we started bring our own bags to shops and saying, ‘no, no bag please’ – even as the autopilot shop keepers opened and started to fill their pristine new bag. ‘Just put everything here in my rucksack/pannier/hemp bag.’

But now after months of vigilant (and smugly) shunning of all these weak plastic receptacles, we have run out. '

With your admirable regime of hip hempness why, why,' you cry, 'do you need them?'

Well the kind men who come every Monday to collect our recycling have asked that we separate bottles from cardboard, plastics from paper. In fact they kindly will leave uncollected any unsorted recycling for us to reconsider during the following week. So every week we use 6 or 7 bags. Sure they get recycled but reuse is better than recycle as all green warriors are aware.

So what’s a green girl to do?