Every time I go to the grocery store I see shoppers grabbing bananas and putting them into a plastic bag. It always amazes me, especially with all the plastic waste that ends up in landfill or the ocean.
Genuinely interested in why this is done. I’m guessing it’s not because people are eating the skins.
Doesn’t it make more sense to just grab the bananas and put them straight in your bag/trolley?
Ok but how many items do you already buy that come with plastic bags that you could use?
After redcycle collapsed, we’ve been storing/using the leftover plastic bags from like cereal, bread, wraps, pre-packaged fruits/vegs, anything that comes with plastic really as our bin liners and we’ve got more plastic bags than we need for our bins.
What the? Cereal bags and bread bags used as bin liners?
I think OP is referring to the fruit and veg bags that are provided on a roll which you have to tear off. How can you possibly use this as bin bag? It's extremely thin and quite small.
Also, wouldn't your other vegetables that actually require a bag (e.g. peas and string beans) give you an ample supply of bags already?
This is such a dumb comment and I'm amazed it has so many up votes.
I use them for lining small bins in the bathrooms.
And how many of these do you go through per week?
I use the plastic around the toilet rolls for that. For the recycle stuff I use paper bags.
I admire Hon Keating and pray for a Banana Republic…..
Oh why do I read this? Yes the majority has been dumbed down!
Because I don't want the bananas touching the dirty plastic basket, or the dirty conveyer belt at checkout, etc. My beautiful wife will end up touching the banana and eating it and it's unreasonable to expect her to peel the banana, wash her hands, then eat the banana. So I put the banana in a sterile plastic bag to protect it before it gets inserted in my wife's mouth. Now someone dirty could have touched the bananas on the rack or maybe the banana picker had hep A or whatever. But what am I going to wash the bananas when I get home, what am I some kind of maniac?
I love this response, pure gold
You guys need to get
Get..? 🍿
Do you happen to eat the banana peal? Just checking.
For a ringing endorsement?
You need to find one that likes 'em dirty!
Why is your wife touching the edible part of the banana with anything but her mouth?
She likes to work the shaft of the banana while eating it.
It bothers me that excessive plastic is used. One minute of convenience means a lifetime of waste.
I appreciate we live in a free country and people can make choices, but it's that kind of mentality that has brought the Earth to the brink. We need to live more sustainably irrespective of your thoughts on climate change.
I await the repechage.
Yeah not just bananas. Getting 10 apples / carrots / heads of broccoli? Ok, bag them to make it easier to carry and sort, free bag to use later too. Getting 2 or 3 or even 4? Just put them in loose and when you get to the conveyer put them in a neat pile for the checkout person. They've been in filth and handled by people probably picking their nose or worse before they get to the shelf, not gonna get much dirtier in the last 50m.
Precisely. Vegetables should be washed at home anyway.
People should invest in a string bag
But the bits of broccoli will go everywhere. In the basket, on the weighing scales, the conveyor belt. You do the clean up too?
Where do you buy this disintegrating broccoli?
if only they come in some easy to peel form that would avoid us needing to touch it with our hands
Two main reasons:
- Free bag for household rubbish (already mentioned)
- To prevent ripening of other fruits in the fridge. Bananas release ethene gas, which makes other fruits ripen and go bad faster (mostly berries, not so much apples and oranges/mandarins).
Putting other fruits to ripen quicky in the same banana bag works too - mangos, avocado, stone fruits if they're taking too long to ripen naturally
Having worked at Colesworth for a lot of my teens, the one that irritated me the most was when someone would buy one item, carry it easily around the store but ask for a plastic bag, then carry the item as they were carrying the item, just the plastic around it and not using the handles on the bag at all.
Some would try to convince me that they needed it because they were going to other stores, to which I’d remind them that only their receipt was proof of purchase.
Just show Colesworth staff your BOQ extra interest and eat as many bananas in the store and use a bag for the peels. Else it could end up as a Bunnings like peel BBQ slippery slide….
the one that irritated me the most was when someone would buy one item, carry it easily around the store but ask for a plastic bag
I often get 4-5 oranges or 4-5 apples, etc each time I go. I use the plastic bags in the fruit area and carry it to the register in the basket. I carried those in the bags a few times back to my place and it was fine until one day, one of the bags ripped and I just watched everything role down the road. When I tried to bend sideways to pick up the runaway I stopped with my foot, the other bag ripped too. I wasn't sure whether to laugh or to cry!
So after that, I either double-bag using the fruit bags or get the 15c bag at the register.
to which I’d remind them that only their receipt was proof of purchase.
obviously to use it to carry other items from another store 🙄
You would tell the customer that if they asked for a bag??? Didn't think employees were instructed to teach morals to customers
If I just walked home with a banana in my pocket, someone might mistaken it for a weapon.
Usually I do not put it in my side pockets…..
Omg! Thank you for this post!
I can never figure out why people do this. I use vegetable packing as a 'what not to do' when teaching sustainability at school.
Glad I went to school before teachers started teaching this crap.
It amazes me more that people allow insignificant things that people do to live rent free in their minds to the point of wasting time as soon as they get home to create a new forum thread.
And whilst they are consumed with waste of time shit they then lack the empathy to consider maybe people do this for good reason. Like for example they can handle the bananas from the bag rather than grab them by the bunch which could damage them during transportation or perhaps use the bag as a bin whilst they eat them in the car or outside.
People exist in this world. Just move on with your pleb life OP.
Unfortunately life is far too good and easy, so we have convected slights or misdeeds to focus on rather than actual struggles in modern western countries
As you say, this is then the focus of life rather than trying to help others because telling someone what to do in an outraged manner is much easier than actually helping
I understand where your coming from, it is a somewhat frivolous complaint. But it's human nature, surely you also have frivolous things that really work you up that maybe others don't care for. We are all flawed humans, bagging bananas, throwing the bags into recycling so China can throw the recycling into the ocean. Humans are hypocritical to the core.
"so China can throw the recycling into the ocean"
Right. Not my fault then.
Managing plastic waste is actually a big issue, and the soft plastics used in these bags cannot be recycled in Australia AFAIK. I think it's good that someone has raised this point and made people think about the ways they could possibly be reducing their plastic usage.
What's concerning to me is all the responses where people are try to justifying putting bananas in a plastic bag. The thin bags used for fruit and veg and not useful for much else, so 90% of the time these are going straight into the bin. We are never going to save this planet with this type of thinking and justifying all these dumb habits. 70 years ago we didn't even have plastic bags and people managed to buy their groceries just fine.
Also, people assume that these bags "protect" your food when they are made from petrochemicals. Are we even sure that these can't leach chemicals into your food over time?
They can't be recycled but they can be melted down and turned into green display benches for the 80s at the checkout area.
Spot on.
Suddenly a tiny and flimsy plastic bag is an issue but a gigantic diesel vehicle used to drive to the shop is "OK" …
Pathetic.
I don't buy Bananas
In a bag or sharing a bag with other fruits. I keep bananas in a bag so they ripen faster and then I reuse the bag for other stuff. It's like saying why put pears or other fruits in a bag really.
The bags are good to line the coffee knock box
What if your me OP no trolley and no bag .
Balance the bananas on my head ?
Why pick on poor bananas when most of the other fruits and vegies are in the same situation ?
It can apply to other things too, but bananas are the most obvious. They come in a bunch and are covered by something you don’t eat
Obviously you haven’t had to buy loose bananas.
Please provide a list of other fruit and vegetables come in a bunch and are covered with a thick skin?
The bigger issue is - why are there plastic bags at all?
Any handful of fruit or veggies i don't grab plastic bags for. All goes in the shopping bag together and goes into the fridge…
We take our own plastic bags with us. We take our own reuse bags. You can get pretty good small backpacks as well.
Banana skins are intrinsically dirty.
Either sticky or who knows what pesticide residue.
Potatos come in bags too.
Common sense hygiene should prevail.
Normally I don't, but if I have another use for the small plastic bag I will put bnas in that.
Free bags are free and free is good! An Oz Bargainer would know this.
Can’t go past a free bag to put all my other free plastics bags in before I throw them in the trash
Free plastic bag, used as small bin bag