Shopping cart security tokens

[Cumberland Highpower]

1 hour ago, AlZilla said:

Well, thanks for all that shopping cart and drink cup information.  I could see it working. In my part of the world, our politicians outlawed plastic shopping bags and mandated a 5 cent fee for paper bags. Some people go to all sorts of lengths to avoid "paying" for grocery bags. It's become quite a bone of contention.

Wow that's a bummer.  

I like the idea of less plastic/bags blowing in the wind or gathering up in your backyard creek or parking lot...But hate to see mandates. Should be a consumer choice.

Sometimes when I hear things like this, I feel a little privilege to live in such a backwards place as I do.

What's the 5 cent paper bag fee used for?  

 

Edited December 28, 2024 by Cumberland Highpower

[AlZilla]

6 hours ago, Cumberland Highpower said:

What's the 5 cent paper bag fee used for?  

Nothing. The retailer keeps it to partially cover the cost of the paper sack. It's just a punishment meted out by the enviro-crowd political class for people who refuse to carry their nasty, dirty reusable bags in and out of the grocery store.

To be clear, micro-plastics is the first environmental "crisis" I've ever bought into and I'm completely on board with reducing plastic in the environment. I don't need to be punished into it.

Edited December 28, 2024 by AlZilla

[Klara]

What I find funny is that Germany tried to replace plastic shopping bags by fabric ones (washable, btw, no reason for them to be dirty) when I still lived there, over 25 years ago. When I arrived in France in 2001, supermarkets gave you plastic bags whether you wanted them or not. By now you must pay for them (or pick up the really crappy ones in the vegetable aisle). I don't even know whether that's a government mandate, or whether shops discovered that they can not only make money with shopping bags, but also sell more small garbage bags (because that's what plastic shopping bags became in most households). 

@fredk  I don't get stealing a bridge. If you are willing to work so hard - can't you find an honest job?  Though several years ago our village was cut off from the phone system because someone had stolen the cable...

[fredk]

Here the tax on plastic bags is allegedly used for 'green' or environment projects such as tree planting. But we, the public we, see very little of its supposed beneficial use so I suspect it goes into the general government coffers

But it has reduced the use of the flimsy thin plastic bags by about 95%. We no longer see lots of them hung up in trees or bushes at the road side, and fewer being eaten by cattle and sheep 

[fredk]

Pre-nuclear age metal is highly desirable. At the time scrap iron was very valuable.  The bridge was from the 19th century.  It served only about 10 homes on one side of the river. A gang dismantled it and took it away. Within 1/2 hour of that area you can be in another country - untouchable to the law.

The local police saw it happening but the gang were wearing hi-viz jackets, had signs erected, powerful work lights on as it was night time. Everything indicated that it was on the level. So police ignored it.