"Get with the program guys": Coles shopper not happy with plastic bag overload
A “disgruntled” shopper has expressed anger over the excessive packaging in her Coles online order.
The woman said on a Facebook post that despite having ticked the ‘No bags’ option in her Click & Collect order, her groceries still came in individual plastic bags.
“When there is an option for No Bags for Click & Collect (which I always tick) and then you put every single piece of fruit or vegetable in said plastic bags it kinda defeats the purpose of “no plastic bags”,” she wrote.
“Having one onion or one lemon in a plastic bag is really not necessary and makes me quite furious about the waste and blatant disregard for the climate. Get with the program guys. The general public are becoming way more vigilant about saving our planet. It’s time for you guys to start making some changes too.”
The “disgruntled customer” said she “can quite easily shop at Woolworths or Aldi next door”.
In its response to the woman’s post, Coles said the plastic bags are “necessary for health and safety reasons”.
“We can advise that plastic bags are essential to keep your items together during the shopping process, and are necessary for health and safety reasons with some products,” the response read.
Single-use plastic bag ban was introduced in Coles and Woolworths in June 2018. The change had led to an 80 per cent drop in plastic bag consumption nationwide within three months, according to the National Retail Association.
However, the lack of statistics on the supermarkets’ sales of reusable plastic bags suggests that there is no significant reduction in plastic bag use, according to the University of Melbourne’s behaviour change and environmental sustainability expert Geoffrey Binder.
“I think that we’ll find that certainly when people go shopping there are people who are now taking bags to the supermarket, but does that mean there has been a net decrease in plastic bag use? Probably not,” Binder told Yahoo News Australia.