Proponere
To put forth an idea, theory, or point of view to be considered by others.
Bring your own bag
Rocketboom had a nice piece today on the issues surrounding paper and plastic bags and the environment. I won't spoil the ending, but characterizing shopping bags as 'disposable' is probably not the best idea.
The whole shopping routine, aside from the environmental impact, is incredibly inefficient. I actually enjoy shopping (I'm talking grocery shopping here...typical mall shopping is not really my bag), but I strongly dislike the process of gathering everything into a basket in order to take it all out of the basket to put on a conveyor belt so someone else can put it in some bags and back into the basket so I can load the bags into my car and then unload them into my house and then finally unpack them and put everything where it belongs. I'm not even sure that run on sentence can get across how bored I am by the whole process.
But people are working on this problem! Motorola has an article about a system where users are issued portable scanners and are allowed to scan their own items as they place them in the basket. If you scanned and then put your items directly into bags (that you brought from home, of course!) you could add a bit of efficiency to the process. I've also seen other accounts (that I can't seem to find now) where RFID is being considered to allow instant checkout as your basket gets to the checkout counter. Pair that with auto-debit from my ATM card (with biometric approval so I don't have to remember a PIN) and we're getting closer.
But if we remove the steps where we take all of our goods from the basket, scan them, and put them into bags, we still have issues with loading all those bags from our cart into our cars and then into our houses. How do we solve that?
Ok, wait for it, it's good...
Use bigger bags.
Too simple, you say? Ha! Simple is good!
Is there any reason that shopping bags need to be so tiny? My guess is this: as originally designed to hold groceries, paper bags can only hold so much. Pair that with the facts that they didn't used to have handles, and a lot more food was sold in heavy metal containers, and it's clear that they were kept reasonably small so they could be carried more easily. With plastic bags (and some paper bags) we've added handles, but for some reason we've made the bags even smaller. I wonder why? Does it have something to do with the tensile strength of the incredibly thin plastic membrane the bag is made of? I don't know. Is it because we are too weak as a species to carry much more than can fit in one of those tiny bags? I doubt it.
So, the alternative is to bring your own bag from home and re-use it, which I think is great. Except the bring from home bags 1) aren't readily available (they should be!), and 2) are modeled after traditional grocery bags, hand bags, etc. and don't hold all that much.
So, my solution is this: provide at the grocery store, for a reasonable price, shopping duffel bags. Use RFID or self scanning to allow people to quickly check out (I'm guessing RFID would do a better job reducing theft), and load your groceries, or at least most of them, into one very large container. Obviously exceptions will need to be made for delicate items like eggs, bread, herbs, etc., but you can have a smaller bag for those. So, your shopping experience becomes this:
- Walk around store and put stuff in your bag.
- Walk out (ok, stop for a moment at the fingerprint scanner to pay).
- Put bag in car and go home.
- Pull bag out of car and unload.
Is this better than your refrigerator automatically ordering food for you as you use it and it showing up on your doorstep? I think so because most people like to actually pick their produce, meat, etc. With this method you still get the choices associated with 'manual' shopping, but remove a lot of the manual labor.
Sign me up.
Posted at 02:09PM Jan 19, 2007 by Chris in Personal | Comments[3]
Today's Page Hits: 81
In Ireland, we've had a policy since 2002, that shops have to charge customers 0.15EUR for each plastic bag they use for their shopping.
The result ? Within weeks, everybody started bringing reusable plastic (or stronger and bigger) bags with them when doing their shopping (I've always favoured my LoweAlpine rucksack, much easier to heft luggage on your back, than endure plastic-bag-induced finger welts!)
It used to be, that driving through the Irish countryside, you'd see a great many "witches knickers" - plastic bags caught in trees, blowing in the wind. I'm happy to say, I haven't seen any in quite a while!
Posted by Tim Foster on January 19, 2007 at 03:30 PM PST #
Hi,
In Belgium, in some supermarkets (Delhaize), people can already do self-scanning. Here are the explanations (in French): take a basket (step 1), scan your client card (also used to collect points) (2) and scan everything you buy (also work if one removes something from the basket) (3-4) ; at the checkout counter, you simply give the scanning device to the employee (there are even fully automated checkout counters) (5). Of course, there are some controls.
In all the supermarkets, they are selling reusable bags. They are big and you can see some of them here.
In some supermarkets (Colruyt ones), there are no bags at all: you enter with cardboard boxes (they event provide some products carboard packing at the entrance), you put what you want in it ; at the checking counter, a person will scan each item for you and properly place them into a new cardboard box, into another basket. You leave the supermarket with the box, put it in your car and you are back home!
Finally, regarding the embedding of RFID tags in packaging could indeed reduce theft but, depending on their "life" duration, your garbage can will then reveal your habits to anyone with a RFID scanner in your street ...
Posted by Jean-Etienne Poirrier on January 19, 2007 at 04:08 PM PST #
To be fair, there are a few somewhat progressive grocery stores that have converted regular check out lines to self scanning stations, but you still have to pull everything out of your basket, scan the items, and then bag them. In fact, the bagging process by default has plastic bags suspended over what I think is a scale, which seems to be used to determine if the item you just scanned is really the thing you're bagging based on the weight it adds to the bag. I wonder if the scale would calibrate itself to a reusable canvas bag if you replaced the plastic bag with it? Probably not, I guess.
Not many stores in the US sell reusable bags and that's a shame. The combination of a surcharge for plastic bags and the availability of an alternative would surely help here, too, I'm sure!
In the image of the reusable bags, I wonder if the green one on the bottom right is for carrying cold/frozen foods? It looks like it might be insulated and perhaps has room for an ice pack. That's a fantastic idea!
Interestingly enough, I don't see too many "witches knickers" here, but it could be because we probably have fewer trees! :)
Posted by Chris on January 21, 2007 at 06:12 PM PST #