We´re hearing so much about the use and the damage plastic bags are causing us and our environment on the news and topical programs at the moment but what are WE as individuals doing about it?

Governments can play a big part like Ireland, they introduced a tax of 15 euro cents per bag 5 years ago and are increasing that to 22 euro cents, the usage has dropped to 21 per head each year for the last 5 years, so why aren´t other countries following their footsteps?

Until then, why aren´t we doing more about it?

I remember when I was little, I went shopping every week with a lady that used to look after me in the holidays while my mum worked and she always would put her big cloth bag in the car with 5 or 6 plastic bags she had saved and used these over and over.

Why are we not doing this?  Me included, I make a concerted effort to save the bags, put them in the cupboard for the next shop or use them for rubbish, but when it comes to going shopping, I forget to take them and end up coming home with more shopping bags, hence a bulging cupboard of plastic bags!!

Maybe if supermarkets charge more for their bags or even sell cloth bags, it might give us an incentive to use the cloth bags that we´ve spent extra money on and reduce the pollution that plastic bags cause.

Fact:  A plastic bag can take up to 1000 years to break down!