Back to John Gapper's Business Blog homepageI am encouraged to return to the topic of supermarkets and plastic bags by the Daily Mail, my former employer (a long time ago). It has just launched a campaign to stop the proliferation of plastic bags in the UK under the slogan: Banish the Bags.
The Mail estimates that 13bn flimsy plastic bags are handed out by British high street stores each year. It is a classic example of companies and consumers not having to pay the financial cost of environmental destruction and therefore not caring about it.
There are some efforts to curb plastic bag use in the US but I have a suggestion for one thing that all US supermarkets could stop: the pernicious habit of “double-bagging”.
Most stores in New York hand out extremely flimsy and cheap plastic bags which tear if any heavy load is placed in them. The staff therefore routinely place every plastic bag in another one, thus doubling the number of plastic bags at a stroke.
This is an absurd practice that all stores, even if they do nothing else, ought to stop.
I am the FT's chief business commentator and this blog is about business, finance, media, technology and related matters. I live in New York so there is a bias towards US topics but I range more widely. Comments and criticism, which hopefully are at least as interesting as anything I write, are welcome. There is more about me on 
