The great bag for life enterprise is a giant con – there’s only one big winner and it isn’t you or I
BENEATH my kitchen sink lies a veritable treasure trove of hidden wealth.
Probably under yours, too: Yep, approximately 500 bags for life.
We are all on/in paper, millionaires.
But the great BFL enterprise, which we were led to believe was saving the planet, is apparently a giant con.
A new investigation from the Daily Mail has revealed what, deep down, we all probably suspected: The only winners of recycling are our supermarkets.
And the Government.
Not the poor turtles, dolphins nor our green and pleasant land.
And not the hundreds of charitable organisations we thought were benefiting from our diligent recycling crusade.
And, crucially, certainly not us, the mugs repeatedly forking out for a fresh one every time we forget to lug a couple of unaesthetically pleasing bags down aisle 14.
(Still, these military-grade Kevlar bags will come in handy for lining the roof come the apocalypse).
According to the Environmental Investigation Agency and Greenpeace in 2019, the average household has a stockpile of 57 bags for life. 57!!
The agency’s study shows that a BFL has to be used at least four times to be considered “better” for the environment.
I think my record stands at two uses.
It takes 1,000 years for plastic bags to degrade in landfill. And that plastic is quite bad. (Albeit handy).
But when the Government phased out single-use supermarket bags in 2015, imposing a modest levy on them to encourage us all to be more mindful and less wasteful, the idea was for the “tax” to be given to charitable causes.
It was a good idea. It worked. Everyone was happy.
But now, the Daily Mail has claimed just 0.07 per cent of this money is going to environmental causes.
And since then, supermarkets have introduced this insidious practice of selling so-called bags for life — costing anything from 30p to £1 — at what appears to be a huge profit.
And it is claimed these bags, when recycled, end up travelling hundreds of miles, via ship and lorry, before being burned in Polish incinerators.
How very Greenpeace!
It is estimated that these bags also, brilliantly, contain three times as much plastic as the demonised single-use carriers.
Corporate conglomerates are passing off their plastic use on to us — making the individual feel guilty and do their bit, rather than doing anything themselves.
The investigation also found that Waitrose owner, the John Lewis Partnership, has a supply deal with a number of plastic manufacturers in China.
So it isn’t even boosting the British economy with this great recycling con, it would appear.
Last week a Sainsbury’s worker was sacked after 20 years of employment for not paying for multiple reusable bags at the self-checkout.
Bosses claimed he couldn’t be trusted . . .
Of course, the big winner is the Treasury.
Deemed a “retail item”, every bag sold is subject to VAT at 20 per cent.
We already have to empty our rubbish into 27 different coloured bins, and no one really believes our washing-up liquid bottles are diligently being recycled to turn up again as tennis courts.
The whole system is a joke. But we’re not laughing.
SEEING Mick Jagger, 80, leaping around the stage like a gazelle while on tour with the Rolling Stones this week should be a lesson to us all: To get old is a privilege, ageing isn’t.
He is said to train for up to two hours a day and, having inhaled every drug going in his youth, is now a de facto, born-again wellness guru.
There’s hope for us all.
FELINE GOOD
BECAUSE no one especially loves a Tuesday in April, here’s a photo of a cat that looks like a Battenberg cake. Cattenberg, if you will.
Meet Domiino (two i’s), the British shorthair with 71,000 followers on Instagram.
Confusingly, this British shorthair was actually born in Belgium.
But her gorgeous, two-toned fur – created, appaz, when two separate embryos were fused, giving her two sets of DNA – and different coloured eyes (one blue, one hazel) – are rapidly making her a social media starlet.
Anyway, enjoy.
LAST week, while bingeing on gripping new ITV1 drama Red Eye, an advert popped up for Harpic toilet cleaner.
So far, so standard.
Except, inexplicably, this ad showed a teenage boy merrily scrubbing the loo.
Which, as any mum of teenage boys will surely confirm, would simply never, ever happen.
One for the Advertising Standards Agency.
CLASSY CHOICE
LILY ALLEN has been slammed for revealing she flies first class and shoves her offspring in cattle.
She said she put 12-year-old daughter Ethel in economy for a recent flight from New York to London, while she enjoyed the perks of a flat-down bed and, hopefully, a nice glass of Champagne.
Lily is absolutely right.
As a nepo baby herself – daughter of comic and actor Keith Allen – the singer/actress knows all about the pitfalls of inherited privilege.
No child should be treated like a pampered princess until they deserve it – the trappings of wealth should be earned, not expected.
NICOLE’S HEELS WILL BE URBAN MYTH
HERE’S Nicole Kidman enduring the bane of tall women everywhere – stooping to kiss her smaller-skeletoned husband, Keith Urban.
It’s a cruel fact of life that shorter men appear to shrink after they hit 50, while their statuesque wives remain largely unchanged.
My mother, 5ft 10in, has not worn a pair of heels since the day she met my Borrower-like father (5ft 7in and shrinking).
Give it ten years and mark my words: Nicole will be wearing flats on the red carpet.
MARGOT ROBBIE walked red carpets the planet over in an array of saccharine pink to promote Barbie.
Now Zendaya is traipsing around in a flurry of £200,000 tennis-inspired outfits to plug her film Challengers.
Can’t a Hollywood leading man sing for his supper by “method” red-carpeting too?
ARMY NAGS WORTH MORE
THE monarchy is facing an identity crisis like never before.
The slimmed-down family, seemingly at war with itself and with one defecting Prince and another disgraced, rapidly needs to modernise if it is to stay remotely relevant to anyone 30 or under.
So why not start by dispensing with the cruel pomposity of parading uniformed horses around urban streets?
Last week there was pandemonium in London as five terrified horses from the Household Cavalry bolted, hitting buses, cyclists and pedestrians in their wake, with at least two of the animals requiring surgery.
Horses aren’t meant to be confined to barracks and made to mince around for the entertainment of the masses.
Now a whistleblower has claimed these poor animals are left in dark, rat-infested barracks, given dirty water and only allowed to exercise for an hour a day.
The Army has denied the claims.
There were initial concerns for at least two of the horses, although the Army’s PR department has insisted they are alive and well.
Whatever the truth, until we hear from the horse’s mouth that they’re happy . . . surely it’s time to do away with this archaic “tradition”.
MEME OF THE WEEK
