Madonna King: The great big con in Woolies, Coles’ environmentally friendly shopping bags

We are being hoodwinked; duped by supermarket giants wanting to look good at any cost, but it’s actually just at our cost, writes Madonna King. Vote in our poll.

It’s a great supermarket swindle.

Ban plastic bags, charge 25 cents for an utterly useless paper alternative, and watch shoppers lose their purchases on the way to the car.

Broken eggs and smashed bottles. Cracks in ice-cream containers and runaway fruit and veggies which might have started in a paddock, but will never make the plate.

We are being hoodwinked; duped by retailers wanting to look good at any cost. No, actually, just at our cost.

Plastic pollution has to be reduced. No-one disputes that; trillions of plastic bags continue to be used each year across the globe and the threat to our environment and marine life is heartbreakingly high.

But we need to be smart in how we address it - and we are kidding ourselves if we think the big supermarket chains, like Woolworths and Coles, are either doing their share for the environment or thinking of us, their loyal customers.

Perhaps this con is magnified by the way retailers started treating us early on, with the adoption of self-serve check-outs.

Sunday-Mail columnist Madonna King. Picture David Clark

The old adage - that the customer is always right - raced out the door, as the new machines were carried in.

Alarm after alarm. “Please wait for an attendant’’.

Standing there with the guilt of a Catholic teenager, we are forced to wait for someone to come and deliver judgement.

Did we inadvertently slip something through the scanner, without paying?

Pop through the expensive pears as the cheap-branded ones?

Take a single grape from the bunch in our trolley, while queuing - waiting to volunteer to do the job once done by an employee. We then scan our own groceries, pack them, pay a machine, which spits out a docket without thanks, and head for the car.

But that’s where the rubber hits the road, or on too many occasions, the groceries hit the pavement.

How many times has a paper bag broken at its base, under the weight of a handful of groceries or even fewer that happen to be chilled?

Retailers make a fortune on the sale of paper bags. Perhaps it is in their best interests that they are disposable; a one-trip-to-the-grocery-store bag, that adds 25 cents each to our bill and their profits?

I’d even forgive that, and the paper handles that snap about one-third of the time, if the retailers could convince us they were genuinely doing this as part of a corporate commitment to reduce plastic pollution.

But the evidence of that simply doesn’t stack up.

Do you think supermarket giants are conning with their environmentally friendly bags? Picture: Gaye Gerard

This week I tried to see how one grocery store had reduced their own passion for plastic. And I left empty-handed, unable to find a single clue in more than a dozen aisles.

Within five metres of the store’s entrance, plastic-wrapped cucumbers featured on a stand. And within a couple of strides, bread rolls, raspberries, packs of zucchinis and washed potatoes all featured plastic wrapping.

Venturing a further five metres, a dozen other plastic-wrapped items stood out - from carrots to celery sticks, corn cobs to baby brussels sprouts, cabbage and pumpkin.

And then the apples - pink lady, granny smith, red delicious, royal gala and ambrosia - all packed neatly in 1kg plastic kits. It was the same with pears, whether you were searching for Packham, Corella or Beurre Bosc.

Five metres further on, and customers are offered hot chicken or cold minced chicken, both wrapped tightly in plastic, or tomatoes and mushrooms, spinach leaves and kale and rocket leaves.

Despite making customers feel guilty, our grocery stores have become giant plastic palaces, and that’s before studying the shelves in aisles that carry everything from lunch boxes to prepared meals.

And yet, when you arrive at a checkout, realising the green bag purchased last time is still at home, it’s a choice - the self-serve machines where every move is monitored by camera - or the few lone check-outs that still offer an employee.

Either way, two paper bags immediately add 50 cents to your bill, and that’s before your plastic-laden load is lifted on to the conveyor belt.

“You might need three,’’ the attendant says. “One of them might break.’’

Is every one in on this con?

Or is that a pre-emptive apology from a worker who sees, daily, frustrated customers returning with arms full of groceries and a broken paper bag?