{"id":7986,"date":"2018-08-05T11:49:41","date_gmt":"2018-08-05T09:49:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/?p=7986"},"modified":"2018-08-05T11:49:41","modified_gmt":"2018-08-05T09:49:41","slug":"flip-flops-and-carrier-bags","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/7986\/","title":{"rendered":"Flip-Flops and Carrier Bags"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>William of Ockham risks legal action over exclusivity rights to bring us <a href=\"http:\/\/www.williamofockham.com\/2018\/07\/22\/plastique-retards\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">this story<\/a>\u00a0about carrier bags:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In Australia, most states\/territories, with the exception of New South Wales, have banned supermarkets from giving away single use plastic bags with shopping.<\/p>\n<p>In response to this, the duopoly of Coles and Woolworths have removed said bags from New South Wales\u2019 stores too. I\u2019m sure this decision was reached for purely environmentally-righteous reasons and not simply because running two different processes and sourcing operations is inefficient.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Only <a href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com.au\/coles-customers-free-reuseable-plastic-bags-2018-7\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">a few days later<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Supermarket giant Coles has buckled to the backlash from its customers over paying 15 cents for reusable plastic bags and will now give them away to shoppers for free indefinitely.<\/p>\n<p>A year ago the retailer announced it would phase out single-use plastic bags in its supermarkets by July 1, but appeared to be caught unprepared for the negative consumer response that followed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So customers find carrier bags useful and prefer them to be free? Who would have thought? The hand-wringing middle classes didn&#8217;t like this though, among them the otherwise sensible Claire Lehmann, founder of <a href=\"https:\/\/quillette.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Quillette<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Somehow no-one has balls anymore. What happened? <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/qZoDKVOWcE\">https:\/\/t.co\/qZoDKVOWcE<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Claire Lehmann (@clairlemon) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/clairlemon\/status\/1024506720318500864?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">August 1, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Whereas I&#8217;d say\u00a0it takes a lot more balls to reject pointless middle class environmental posturing than to go along with it. Good on Coles&#8217; customers! Alas, my celebrations were to be <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/business\/2018\/aug\/02\/coles-reverses-plastic-bag-policy-again-in-frustrating-flip-flop\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">short-lived<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Coles\u00a0has done a double backflip on providing free plastic bags and will recommence charging customers for them after coming under fire from green groups and consumers for giving them away for free.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>In a message to the retailer\u2019s 115,000 staff on Thursday, Durkan said the ban on single-use plastic bags had been a \u201cbig and difficult\u201d change for customers.<\/p>\n<p>While customers had been growing more and more accustomed to bringing reusable bags, many were still finding themselves one or two short at the register.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So in the absence of a law banning free bags in New South Wales, who is driving this campaign against customers&#8217; interests?<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Environmental groups, including a vocal Greenpeace, and like-minded shoppers had heaped criticism on Coles for deciding to go back on its original plan to only temporarily provide reusable bags for free.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Ah yes. As usual, it&#8217;s a loud minority of wealthy middle class do-gooders via multi-million dollar lobby groups masquerading as charities. That Coles sided with them over actual customers says a lot about modern corporate management.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>William of Ockham risks legal action over exclusivity rights to bring us this story\u00a0about carrier bags: In Australia, most states\/territories, with the exception of New South Wales, have banned supermarkets from giving away single use plastic bags with shopping. In &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/7986\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[62,57,80],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7986"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7986"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7986\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7987,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7986\/revisions\/7987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}