bring your own (plastic) bag

I was plesantly surprised when my mother handed over a nice stack of plastic bags to the cashier when checking out at the supermarket.

Of course that was for putting our own stuffs and not intended for the next shopper, and those were the plastic bags from the same supermarket. Try using ShopNSave plastic bags at FairPrice.

You see, it isn't that difficult to keep and reuse plastic bags as long as they are still clean and in one piece. Beats buying those shopping bags right? Even if you don't reuse them at supermarket, you can always use them as trash bag. Makes life easier for the cleaners.

Actually Singapore is quite late when it comes to plastic bag reduction campaign. Hong Kong launched the BYOB (bring your own bag) campaign some 2 decades ago, while places like Taiwan charge you for each plastic bag request. It has sort of become a way of life in Taiwan, even big department stores like Shin Kong Mitsukoshi (新光三越) also don't issue plastic bags to shoppers, while Eslite Bookstore (誠品書店) uses nice paper bags for books. I was impressed.

Plastic bags are not all evil. C'mon, condoms are plastic bags! But... do people reuse that?