Hi. At Kingston IGA they've just put up signs making people feel guilty for accepting plastic bags, which is a good idea I think. I wonder though what people who don't accept the bags put their rubbish in? We accept the bags and use all of them for non-recycleable kitchen/household rubbish. (No bags for recycleable stuff). If we didn't, we'd have to buy plastic rubbish bags - so what's the difference in terms of the environmental impact? Perhaps one difference is that people only buy rubbish bags if they need them, whereas some people accept check-out bags then throw them out straight away?

We end up with a few plastic bags from the shops, but not many since we now take our green bags every time.

We don't actually generate all that much household rubbish now to be truthful. We have a compost, worm farm and 6 chooks which take care of anything edible, as well as any paper/cardboard/hair/vaccuum cleaner contents etc. Our milk comes in glass bottles which we return for a refund. We use cloth nappies/wipes/feminine hygiene products (incl. my Diva cup ) and any other stuff that we might need to throw out goes into old bread bags/packaging from items purchased etc. Once we start making our own bread (this month hopefully) then we will just wrap rubbish in newspaper if it's yukky, or just throw it straight into the wheelie bin otherwise.

Oops, just realised this was an ACT thread - sorry about that!

If you use those sorts of bag in kitchen/ bathroom bins, consider lining them with junk mail or newspaper instead. Or try buying the Multix degradeable bags in the small size (same size as shopping plastic bags)... or cornstarch/ biodegradeable ones from an online store, or perhaps Mooble or somewhere local also stock them. You are paying for them, so may try to make them last longer (ie. when emptying recycling into your wheelie bin, don't the throw the bag into your rubbish bin... if it's OK, just re-use it to reline the recycling bin again.)

And whilst I am here, those 'green bags' you buy at supermarkets are not that green. You are better to buy locally made organic-fabric ones, or make your own from scrap material, or try sourcing re-useable Australian made bags, not cheap, plastic-based ones imported from China!

Yea, sorry Dixie. I did actually mean "green" as in "greenie" not as in the colour green. LOL. Ours are hemp ones.

That's OK... I wasn't referring to your post anyways! just the belief that alot of people have that the re-useable bags they buy at Woolies or Coles are good for the environment... well, they are better than plastic bags, yes, but there are even better ways, if people are open to it!

We buy cornstarch/biodegradeable bags and reuse a cardboard box for our recycling.

Dixiebelle...thanks for the heads up about the 'green' bags.

I think shops should introduce paper bags (made of recycled paper of course) as an alternative to plastic ones. These could be used again for household rubbish.

Where do you get milk in glass bottles blissfulqueenbee? I didn't know you could get them anymore. I would much prefer glass to chemical-ridden plastic.

Oh, and if you have already have those 'green bags', keep on using them... the longer you use them, the less 'faux green' they become! (ie. the resources to make them and the carbon emissions used to import and distribute them, will be spread over a greater amount of time).

If you are the sort of person who just buys them each time they go shopping (obv. defeats the purpose and not really that good for the environment), then after you've put the shoping away, put the bags back into your boot/ car... next time you go shopping, they'll be there waiting for you!

And for anyone keen to know more:
http://members.essentialbaby.com.au/index....=411569&hl=bags

And for anyone who has any better ideas or other information, feel free to tell me!

Ah, well we are in WA and after searching for a supplier for nearly 12 months, we now buy "naughty milk" - ie: raw milk (only for the bath of course )direct from an organic dairy farm. It's delivered every Thursday and GOD IT IS GOOD!

We use shopping bags to line our bin,but we only need to accept the plastic bags about every fifth time we go shopping.

The rubbish you throw out should be a lot less than the shopping you bring home, unless you aren't actually eating any of the food you are buying!

I use the green bags the rest of the time. They work well for us - they stand up better than calico etc. And surely if they get used 20+ times they are better than disposable plastic bags.

I have raw milk envy

And I still use plastic shopping bags for lining our bins, but increasingly few of them. I shop at the markets or Aldi so we don't get that many shopping bags nowadays!

I'm particularly fond of the Borders sign that says "We charge <x>c per bag because it costs the environment more."

What's the go with raw milk? why so envious??? creamy???

Creamy and there are health benefits. At the moment we buy the organic unhomogenised milk (when it's not sold out!) and really enjoy the taste and health benefits, but raw must be a step up on that!

I'm sure I read a thread on EB about unhomogenised milk....aren't there some health risks drinking it though? Please educate me! Or I'll google it later.

ewwww i have bad memories of unpasturised, unhomogenised milk from my childhood , you can keep it and i'll drink my totally processed skim thank you!!

I always wondered what people did with their rubbish if they didn't accept plastic bags at the shops...apparently they line their bins with newspaper of just leave the rubbish in their bin without a liner (messy I would imagine).

we have those lovely (recycled) wood bins from the hall markets. so is it better to go out and buy new plastic bins to use or keep using plastic bags in them? dilemma LOL more environmentally friendly but harder to keep hygienic bin vs less EF but ETKH bin

We aim to refuse plastic bags, but sometimes forget to take ours, or often in clothes shops or target you almost have to take the bag, so we still have enough to line our bins.

But at least I don't build up the ridiculous number of bags that I used to store in a cupboard before I got my green bags.

I keep two small cloth bags rolled up tiny in my handbag, use reusable bags at the supermarket, and bring the veg home from the market in one of their leftover cardboard boxes.

I've recently moved here from Ireland where for the last threeish years you got charged 15c per bag. I got stung many times before I learned

The small plastic shopping bags don't fit our bin anyway. For those that line their bin with newspaper, I thought rubbish had to be in a tied bag in your wheelie bin? Is that just some places?

I tried raw milk once for a city girl like me real milk is skimmed Cows?? no no that's just a myth, it comes from shops.

I'll say it again. You don't need to use plastic bags to line your bins. Lining your bins with junk mail/ brochures/ newspaper not only means you are saving money on bags, and putting less plastic into landfill, but you are making the most of junk mail (that you still manage to get, even with 'No junk mail' signs on your mailbox! It does mean that the paper you use to line your kitchen waste/ rubbish bins is not getting recycled, though. It does take a bit longer to line the bin, or to carry the whole bin out to the wheelie bin, but it's not that hard to do, if you feel so inclined!

Where we came from, you could also use the green waste (garden stuff) bin for kitchen waste/ scraps, but not if they were in plastic bags, which meant either lining with paper (soiled paper was allowed), or not using anythign and washing your kitchen bin each time (waste of water). You could continue using a plastic bag in your kitchen scrap bin, but then emptying it out was messy and smelly. Better to use paper, then wrap it over, take the whole kitchen bin out to the wheelie bin and dump the paper/ scraps. Occasionally the paper would get wet/ sloppy, but mostly your bin didn't need more than a rinse out.

Obv. there is less 'green/ garden' waste here in Canberra!

Thanks for your replies Ladies. I didn't know there were bio-degradable bags Will definitely try them. Will also try wrapping with newspaper.



This is my main concern too. Although lining my kitchen bin with newspaper could be a bit messy (we eat a lot of "saucy" food eg. curries, so our rubbish often leaks ) I could live with that - we only have a small kitchen bin which wouldn't be hard to wash. But I wonder what the Garbos think about loose rubbish in the wheelie bins that has leaked/fallen out of the newspaper wrapping. I might ask the ACT Govt what the rule is ie. if rubbish has to be inside a sealed bag.

Maybe there is different rules here in the ACT (didn't think about it ) but why would the Waste Management people care about loose rubbish in wheelie bins? They don't touch it or even see it, I would think. The truck lifts the bins and dumps it in, and isn't the rubbish squashed before the truck dumps it out at landfill? Wouldn't the bags be split open during this anyways?

We found with our kitchen waste bin, that a double layer of newspaper (I preferred junk mail brochures, but DH liked newspaper better!) overlapped as you put it in, and fold the top over the lip of the bin. Fold up a sheet and pace this in the bottom as an extra layer to help absorb. This kept the scraps/ juices in quite well... when you go to empty the bin, fold the top of the paper down on top of the scraps, and it made it a quite compact, secure parcel, that stayed together as it went into the rubbish bin! (We would carry the whole bin out to the wheelie bin, though!) BUT that was into our 'green waste' bin... Here we are using degradeable bags in the kitchen scrap bin at the moment... and must say, DH and I both felt guilty doing that when we first moved here! But you can use the same method with newspaper in your larger rubbish bin...

i think we should get rid of plastic check out bags all together, look at Aldi stores, no one complains there about having to bring or buy there bags.
i am guilty for forgetting my green bags when going shopping, and yes coles use to (not sure if they still do) have paper bags, they cost you 6c each to buy and every time you used them you got -2c off your shopping (that was a few years ago)for re using the paper bags.
i think we live in a very disposable society, we need to turn the clock back and go back to how it was say 20 or 30 years ago.
i remember my grandma taking a big black bag and 2 or 3 mesh bags shopping with her, and you only bought what you need for the week and there was a lot less wastage too.

i say if you want plastic when shopping you pay for it and that might make people stop and think, do i really need another plastic bag?

Yes, I am a 'meal planning' advocate too!!! (Don't get me started on eating less meat!)

And make it a law that checkout staff don't immediately put things in plastic bags, that you have to ask/ pay for the plastic bags... I find when I am at shops (not grocery shopping) I am always remembering to get my Onya bag out (compact shopping bag made of parachute material, that you push into it's own carry-bag, and it goes in your handbag) at the last minute, and they've already put everything you've bought into plastic bags (which I make them take out again )... AND some people would get offended if a check out person said "Do you really need a bag for that?"...

Unpasteurised milk is the one with health risks (ie nothing has been done to kill bacteria in the milk) and I think this is what Carla's referring to as "raw" milk?? Unhomogenised just means the cream is still able to separate instead of treated so that it doesn't separate. Homogenisation is done by forcing milk at high pressure thru very small holes.

If you want more info look up pasteurization and homogenization on Wikipedia.

Steph