An ode to an unloved and under-rated friend

Country Living with Francis Farragher

I’m suffering a little bit from a broken heart these days, not for any lost love from the carnival days of the 1970s, but rather the absence from my life of the highly versatile plastic bag.

Gone are the days when a plastic bag could be found in almost any press in the house . . . now they are like little treasures when occasionally located in unexpected places.

Maybe we did take them for granted a bit too much in their heyday when they were let fly around gardens and footpaths, but now if the car has to be cleaned out or if a few small tools need to be carried out to the farm, there’s not a plastic bag in sight.

Even the other morning when I visited a local hardware store to pick up an assortment of DIY trivia, there was disappointment when I looked for the plastic bag to carry out the bits and pieces.

“No plastic bags here anymore, a paper one will have to do you,” the man behind the counter told me in a matter-of-fact tone, so off I went with my little paper bag in my hand, more like a woman after shopping for an assortment of buttons than a hardened man of the land.

There are heavier ones that can be purchased at supermarket checkouts but they’re not the same as the old white ones with the name of the retail outlet proudly emblazoned across them.

Now there’s a little feeling of guilt if a plastic bag or two has to be bought – I always fear that there are environmental inspectors ready to pounce and punish me for being so politically incorrect.

Mind you, it must be admitted that we were addicted pretty seriously to our plastic bags. When the plastic charge was brought back in 2002, the ‘average customer’ was going through 328 bags in the year but 12 months on after the levy was brought in, this had dropped down to just 14 per year.

The levy, which started out at 15 cent per bag, reached an all-time high in 2008  –  just before our big crash when nearly €27 million was raised with the sales of the plastic bags.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.