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Plastic bags in Cyprus and Rwanda

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Stansgran Sat 21-May-16 09:40:36

I've put this in travel because I've just come back from Cyprus and DD from Kigali.
It's illegal in Kigali to use plastic bags and women strap packets of them over their bodies and smuggle them in. In Cyprus they hand them out like nothing on earth and they don't last five minutes. You see the self caterers coming out of the supermarket wit h eight plastic bottles of water wrapped in plastic and put in a plastic bag. Evidently each person uses 90 bags a year. So if you're going to either of these places take your useful bag for life and cool bag which packs flat. The turtles which lay their eggs on Cyprus beaches think the lightweight bags are jelly fish and swallow them . I'm not an Eco warrior but I'm kicking myself for not taking strong bags in my luggage. I forgot we would be going on picnics.

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Pippa000 Sat 21-May-16 12:56:00

Hi from Cyprus. I am known in the local supermarket as 'the bag lady' as I always take my own bags as living half the year in Wales that is the norm. I get equally frustrated with all the plastic bags that are used, the till people just go into automatic mode and put items in bags without thinking. Lidl charge here for plastic bags and this has had some small effect. The biggest supermarket, Alpha Mega, did have hessian bags at the checkout at one time, but I haven't seen any recently. There are a small number of people, usually ex-pats. who do as I do, but getting the locals to change will be a major project. I just wish all supermarkets here would follow Lidl and charge for each bag. Perhaps educating till people and packers would help. As an aside, most of the plastic bags are produced locally so I think there would be a lot of union opposition to any change, this is a very unionised country. Even secondary school students have their own union!!!

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