Cardboard boxes nowhere
Tesco is moving in the right direction with this pledge (as Jonny reported) to bribe shoppers with loyalty card points to encourage them to either reuse or not use plastic bags. Although the loyalty card point system can be a powerful incentive for some people (I’ve seen people sign up to ridiculous credit card deals for a measly few hundred points), not everyone will be persuaded by the offer, especially those smart enough not to have a card in the first place.
An Irish style plastic bag tax may be a good place to start, but even that has its failures, namely how quickly the tax effect wears off. Perhaps linking the tax with inflation might help.
One step forward would be to return cardboard boxes to the check outs, a policy that most supermarkets seem to have dropped because hordes of cardboard boxes look untidy, and probably won’t be carrying the supermarkets logo. Its bad PR to see someone stumbling out of Tescos with a box marked “Kellogg’s cornflakes contains 20”. There are certainly legitimate reasons for removing the boxes; legislative pressure has led to most supermarkets replacing them with green reusable “environmental” plastic boxes that get returned to suppliers and refilled. However, many products, especially cereal, still arrive in cardboard boxes. These are squashed and compacted by the shelf stacking monkeys before you can say “recycle”.
But as Jane Barry points out in this article, in 2003 “Waitrose washed and reused 28 million plastic trays but it also recycled 14,000 tonnes of cardboard boxes”. According to the Waitrose site, they recycled 15,000 tonnes of cardboard and plastic last year. Although they don’t separate the two, we can still assume they’ve got a number of boxes they could give out to consumers, if they wished to.
Some supermarkets may still allow you to take boxes (mine doesn’t) but usually you have to ask and persist (even nag) with your request. In the end you’ll be lucky to get one. Returning cardboard boxes to the checkouts means it’s easier for people to pick them up and reuse. That’s got to be cheaper and better for the environment than just recycling them. It’s also clearly better than giving away (or charging for that matter for) plastic bags.