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Can I have a bag with that!

BY Rachel | 21 March, 2016 | no comments

Our business is to always put you on the cutting edge of what we think is the best deal. The primary aim is to save you money or make you money. It’s always a matter of shopping around and trying to find what’s best for you at the time. It’s so very true, sadly true actually, that many of us cannot be bothered to go that extra yard to save a small amount of money. We have become a throw-away society insofar as devices and stuff we buy, when they stop working, we buy another.

Years ago, things were made to last. Unfortunately the cost of making things that lasted became too expensive. So, we shut our manufacturing plants that produced quality goods and handed over the making of stuff to countries where the cost of labour was not so high. Cheap labour was great. We were able to buy things that cost a whole lot less…and lasted a whole lot less time as well. The spare parts? Well, many manufacturers elected not to make spare parts because that would add to the cost of the item. It was better to make a really cheap item, state an exorbitant price for spares so that any dummy could see that replacing the broken item with a new one was going to be a far cheaper option.

Enter the plastic bag. Years ago when we went to the corner grocery store, old Mr. Peters would pack all your stuff into a brown paper bag. That bag could be used for rubbish but gee, they lasted so long, you could just about store anything in them. If you threw them away, eventually, they would return to the material from which they were made. Well, not quite, but you get what I mean.

Paper bags were far too expensive. It was better to litter the world with FREE plastic bags that you could get by the hundred at the new supermarket that was built on the site where Mr. Peters used to have his grocery store. Oh, and where the butcher shop, the shoe repairers, the milk bar, candy store and hairdressers use to be too!

We have gone the whole circle haven’t we? We are now back to paper bags, or, at least, bio-degradable bags. Supermarkets charge for the plastic bags and ask you not to use them and we get a business like this popping up to fill a void with a product and a way to advertise that works well with the environment. This bag shop has shown the ingenuity and foresight to see that the current way of doing things was not right for the world. And now, 30 years after all the corner shops have disappeared, swallowed up by megastores and accompanying carparks, we realise that not everything changes for the better.