For the first time ever – at a Mumbai supermarket was able to buy 4 different fruits without a single plastic bag ! Requested the store associate to avoid plastic bags. Handed her my Compact Tote . The store didn’t have many customers in the morning . Possibly therefore she accepted. It was clearly a new task. Other store associates gathered around her to see why she was juggling fruits on the weighing machine when they should be neatly packed in individual plastic bags.
Larger/busy super markets (in Mumbai ) don’t have the people or the bandwidth for handling such a request . Often fishing out a reusable bag and insisting on avoiding plastic would evoke expressions akin to witnessing shoplifting or something equally inappropriate.
It appears that retailers are not sensitized to the avoidable waste and environmental problems associated with plastic bags. Seldom does one see store associates try to minimize the number of bags. It’s clearly not a priority or even an issue on which to train store associates.
Supermarkets in Mumbai have the practice of asking (rather insisting) that customers leave their mid-size / large bags at the entry point. Ostensibly to deter shop lifting . So it’s quite unimaginable to be able to enter a Mumbai super market with a bag that’s even partly filled with purchases made elsewhere. In that sense , shopping for veggies and fruits at the local open market is definitely more eco-friendly besides being time efficient.
Supermarkets in India can help create a more sustainable world by encouraging and enabling customers to bring their own reusable bag.To be fair to the retailers there is a cultural issue of customers asking / haggling for extra plastic bags. But, when the supermarkets can enforce draconian procedures of ‘leave your bags at the entry point’ to reduce their losses they can apply some thought to reduce the loss to the wider environment of which they are a part.
Your voice as a customer counts. Pl request the stores your frequent to use eco-friendly ways to pack their products.
This is OUR world . Our ONLY world . Let’s make it sustainable.
No one can do everything. But everyone can do a LOT.
