Plastic Bags Ban

This is pretty much a rant on the frustration of changing peoples minds on the excessive use of plastic bags. By excessive I mean the unnecessary use of plastic bags. We had a family run butchery in Malaysia. After a few years of doing business, the pure wastage that we saw on a daily basis was starting to drive us crazy.

We decided to implement a limited plastic bag policy. A task easier said then done in Asia. After a quick check of our books, we calculated that we gave away an average of 30 kg of plastic bags per week, keep in mind ours was a small mom and pop business. I can not imagine the amount of bags given away by the big businesses. So our new company policy was to to minimize the use of bags in our shop. After informing some of our regulars, we found them to be very supportive. Well it seemed that way at first. Here are some of the reactions from our customers.

A lady walks in with her son of about 8 or 9 years old. She buys some sausages, a few canned goods, one litre of milk and a chocolate bar. She wanted one bag for the sausages, another for the canned goods and third for the milk. When I asked her why she wanted so many bags, her reply was she did not want to put the meat and other goods in the same bag, she also wanted to distribute the weight of the goods so it was easier to carry to her car. I emptied a box and gave her that instead and offered to carry the box to her car. That is the end of the story you would think. But no. her son wanted a small plastic bag to carry the chocolate bar. A truly frustrating customer. Children learn from their parents.

The times that a customer walked in bought one item and wanted a bag are too numerous to count, but this one lady stood at the entrance of our butchery and screamed for 20 minutes that we were trying to cheat her, by not providing a free plastic bag. The funny part of this story is that I had refused to give her a bag for buying a single mars bar. And when she complained, I recommended she go to the shop next door. Her twenty minute tantrum was pointless as she had ultimately not made a purchase.

In Malaysia plastic bags are considered a service and if you do not provide one, customers feel that they have been cheated.

So we decided on making paper bags from old newspapers. It solved our below ten items customer purchases. The newspapers we collected from our family and friends. We had some really nice customers, who became close friends, and when we were really busy they helped us make the paper bags. On any given day you would find us sitting behind the counter with one of our friends having a cup of coffee, hard at work.

In the year 2011 Penang state government Implemented a no free plastic bag rule. We were overjoyed. Although I am sad to say actual enforcement of this policy is pretty lax. Only being strictly enforced in the big supermarkets and hypermarkets.