Kitchen Garden Forum

A friend of mine recently gave me an excellent home-made shopping bag. Really easy to make - the idea being to cut down on the number of potentially hazardous plastic bags in the world.

For more info on how to make this bag - and perhaps make one for a friend too, go to http://www.morsbags.com/morsbagsblurb.doc

Hi Diane - the 2nd link doesn't seem to be working.

Good evening Diane, i know a very nice lady that makes these shopping bags. She's very good at embroidery so they really do look very nice.
She also makes embroided advent calendars, and these are of the highest quality.

What second link Tigger? If you mean the one in the pdf then you need to cut and paste, or click here www.morsbags.com . I saw this website a while back but don't own a sewing machine so it seemed an awful lot of work. A very good idea though so I may employ my mother (and her sewing machine) to convert one of my old duvet covers.

Thanks Diane

It doesn't cost a fortune to stock up with a Bag for Life,or several, you never need to pay for replacements. The real trick is to make sure you always take them with you when going shopping.
for most of my shopping it comes pre-wrapped so I pop it into my shoulder bag, no need for any more than that.
Allan

on a similar theme,I collect wicker baskets, because I love using them,I have 2 recent stories one was the last one I bought from a 'garage sale' the lady insisted in putting the basket into a huge designer plastic bag,my protestations fell on deaf ears and so I just went round the corner and put the placcy bag and everything else I'd been carrying into the basket and walked smuggly off up the road.The other is that there is a phenominum concerning wicker baskets that are in charity shops,the best ones are guaranteed to be "not for sale" either they have a little message sellotaped to them or you are told this when you ask "sorry its not for sale." They are always filled with rubbish,coat hangers or other assorted crap, I say put the coat hangers in that other basket over there I'll give you a fiver for that basket. No chance! I say just give me a good reason why its not for sale, they say its our display basket! I say its full of crap! name your price!I recently rescued one it did finally cost me £6 and I caused such a fuss that the whole shop ended up on my side. I'm leaving the sticker on and am on a quest to rescue more....S.T. God I needed to get that out!

I agree Allan, I have around a dozen bags for life and have so far had one replacement (in 6 months). I use them for all sorts, not just shopping and I think they're brilliant. In that time I've used only 3 or 4 disposable bags and they've been recycled (at Sainsbury's).

I do sometimes forget to take bags for life to Sainsbury's so I just shove everything out to the car in the trolley and dump it in the boot.

I do like your wicker basket rescue scheme ST, I own 2 baskets and 2 trugs so I don't know how much space I have for more, but I'll look out for attractive ones.

I use bags for life too, when I remember, but most of the time I just fill the boot as per Chanters!

Your link works Chantal, so I may make a few of those. I'd prefer a panel down the sides though rather than a flat bag.

As our nearest shops are nearly 2 miles away and I tend to walk there, I always carry a large rucksack and refuse all plastic bags in shops, even when offered. My regular haunts know by now, but some shops seem to be quite surprised. To do the main food shop at the supermarket (we use Tesco, Booths and Waitrose), we always take re-usable bags now, so you see we are trying to be very green.

Speaking about being green, we were very pleasantly surprised when our road tax demand came recently that we now pay just £35 for our little diesel Toyota Yaris, quite a change from the more than £150 we used to pay when we ran our Landrover Defender for more than 30 years! Im addition, of course, our fuel bill has more than halved.

I shop at Morrison's for my main items and have been using the same Morrison's bags for 19 weeks I know 'cos I mark the bags each week. They are strong enough to be reused and I notice many people doing the same thing. For all those who are against them, then if they refuse the use of them that's fine, but why is it that these people cannot understand that they are not in the majority and carry out their wishes quietly.
It always seems that the minority are always trying to rule the majority. What has got to happen is that people must be educated to use the bags responsibly.
With a large percentage of the population it will all fall on deaf ears but eventually it should improve the so called problem. Hereabouts we still have to put our household refuse into black polythene bags and there is no sign of a sensible graded collection system in sight in the future. Until councils take responsibility for their actions why should I stop using polythene bags to transport my shopping? I use then responsibly and do not burn them but when they have outlived their use I have nowhere to dispose of them so they go into the household refuse bags this is what is wrong.
I have to pay over £2000.00 council tax each year and get very little for it. The only service I get is my refuse collection. I have a place where I can recycle things, and I do, but I do not make any special trips, as many people do, and waste any advantage that may come about by the recycling using fuel especially to recycle things.
JB.