I made the leap!

My dear hubby mowing the grass with his favourite toy!

I've been reducing my use of plastic shopping bags, just like most people, the ad campaigns are hard to ignore! But every now and then I would do a grocery shop without my reusable sacks, just to get enough plastic bags to use as my rubbish bin liners. They fit my kitchen bin perfectly, make it really easy to lift out the rubbish to put in the big rubbish bin outside and keep everything nice and tidy. Convenience at the max!

But I got thinking about it. Why do I do this? I'm just putting another layer of plastic into landfills and I don't really NEED a liner anyway. I have a compost heap, a wormfarm, chickens and dogs so no food scraps ever go near my bin. I wash my meat wrappings out before they go in the bin so they don't smell and I hardly ever use disposable nappies. So my rubbish is far from offensive.

So a few weeks ago I took the leap and stopped using a bag to line my bin. And it was fine! Truly it was! The first time I needed to empty the bin I just upended the bin into my big sack outside, gave the inner bin a quick squirt with the hose, let it dry and, hey presto, all done! Why, oh why, did I not do this before?

I was listening to Radio New Zealand the other day about one of the large supermarket chains retracting their 5 cent charge per bag due to customer pressure. There was a man from the ?Packaging Association or somesuch who was saying that with the drop in plastic shopping bag use, there has been a corresponding rise in the purchase of bags for rubbish bin liners. Well, I'm happy to say - not by me!!

PS I put the photo of the tractor up, 'cause I didn't think you wanted to see the inside of my rubbish bin!