Following on from yesterday's story of the hip, reusable, Anya Hindmarch shopping bag, (marked with the slogan "I'm not a plastic bag" and made from resuable cotton as part of a campaign to make us all aware of the perils of plastic bags) that had daft** women lining up from 3 in the morning to buy one, according to the editor of this morning's Today programme when the customers paid for the aforementioned  eco-friendly, non-plastic bag many of them walked out of the stores with it in a... plastic bag.

**On the other hand, the bags were selling on Ebay for £200 each, so maybe it wasn't such a daft idea getting up at an unearthly hour to get your hands on one.

---

I'm old enough to remember the days before plastic bags. Shoppers had their own carriers of various kinds. Big canvas bags were popular in our household. They were strong and sturdy enough to take the 10lbs of (loose) spuds plus all the other (unwrapped) veg needed to feed a family of nine. Meat was wrapped in paper. Cakes came in card boxes. No plastic.

Even today I only use the heavy duty reusable shopping bags, not for environmental reasons but because I can't stand ending up with twenty silly bags of shopping to sort out. One problem with the big bags is that when full they can get very heavy and my guess is that women shoppers prefer lots of light bags rather than fewer heavy ones. In my day you would see women trudging home with a heavy bag in each hand, stopping every now and then for a rest. That was before they all had huge cross-country vehicles to go shopping in, and when you still bought your food locally.

One supermarket where you will see people being 'environmentally responsible' is Lidl. The reason? Simple. Lidl charge for their bags and as the average Lidl shopper goes there to save money they usually bring a bag with them or reuse the available cardboard boxes. As long as bags are given away free, shoppers will go on using them, simple as.