Bring Your Own Bag Day' to be weekly affair from June 4

Channel NewsAsia 2 Jun 08;

SINGAPORE: Come June 4, the popular 'Bring Your Own Bag Day' (BYOBD) will become a weekly affair. Every Wednesday will be designated 'Bring Your Own Bag Day' at participating retailers, which include major supermarket chains.

In consumer surveys by the National Environment Agency (NEA), 60 per cent of the 1,000 respondents said they support the campaign.

However, only up to 20 per cent brought their own bags. This was because the majority were confused as to which Wednesday of the month was 'Bring Your Own Bag Day'.

So the Singapore Environment Council and NEA have now decided that the BYOBD movement will be put in place on all Wednesdays.

Retailers said they have sold 510,000 reusable bags since the campaign started last April and saved up to 20 per cent in plastic bags.

Home-Fix is the latest retailer to join the BYOBD movement. Other participating retailers include Carrefour, Cold Storage, Giant, NTUC Fairprice, Prime Supermarket, Sheng Siong, Shop N Save, Autobacs, Rehab Mart and Stamford Tyres. - CNA/vm

New target in drive to cut plastic bag usage: Neighbourhood shops
Tessa Wong, Straits Times 3 Jun 08;

ENVIRONMENTALISTS are pushing into a new frontier - neighbourhood shops - in their uphill battle to persuade Singaporeans to use fewer plastic bags.

By the end of this year, the Singapore Environment Council (SEC) will be rolling out a poster campaign in the heartland starring local celebrities.

The advocacy group aims to encourage housing estate residents to cut down their usage of plastic bags. About 2.5 billion plastic bags are used here every year.

Yesterday, SEC executive director Howard Shaw said television spots could also be in the offing.

The campaign is the next stage in the SEC's two-year-old Bring Your Own Bag Day (BYOBD) programme, which it conducts with 11 retailers, including supermarket chains such as NTUC FairPrice and Carrefour.

Every first Wednesday of the month, shoppers are encouraged to use their own bags, buy a reusable one, or donate 10 cents to charity for every plastic bag taken from retailers.

Getting this message through in the wet markets and provision shops of the heartland will be no piece of cake, according to a Straits Time poll.

Yesterday, a survey of 10 shoppers in Bishan and Toa Payoh found that only two use their own bags when shopping.

'Competition in the heartland is fierce,' said Mr Ng Poh Seng, a medicine hall owner.

'If you refuse to give plastic bags or charge for them, the news will spread among the aunties very quickly. The reputation of the shop will be ruined.'

But it may be only a matter of time before the public comes round.

Figures released by the SEC show that more people are embracing BYOBD. About 20 per cent of customers used their own bags this year, a 10-fold increase over 2006 when the programme began.

To raise awareness even further, BYOBD will become a weekly affair, starting tomorrow.

'We hope, ultimately, that every day will be a Bring Your Own Bag Day,' said Mr Shaw.

ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY DARYL TAN AND JASON HAU

Bag-pooling, anyone?
Bring Your Own Bag Day now a weekly affair
Neo Chai Chin, Today Online 3 Jun 08;

GET ready to give your reusable shopping bag a more rigorous workout: From tomorrow, every Wednesday will be Bring Your Own Bag (BYOB) Day.

But even as the push to cut wastage of plastic bags intensifies four-fold, the Singapore Environment Council’s (SEC) executive director Howard Shaw doesn’t see the number of plastic bags saved increasing by the same proportion.

“People need to be reminded as they’re all so busy; even I forget. Perhaps, the fourth ‘R’ (after Reduce, Reuse and Recycle) should be Remember,” he said.

Said Mr Ong Seng Eng, director of the National Environment Agency’s (NEA) resource conservation department: “We want to make BYOB Day more regular. I think the awareness is there already.”

Through surveys, the NEA found that only one-fifth of shoppers take their own bags along on BYOB Day, although thrice as many are supportive of the campaign. By increasing its frequency, Mr Shaw hopes to “mobilise the converted but inactive”.

The SEC hopes to launch a campaign in the heartlands by the end of the year and appoint ambassadors to front the “anti-wastage campaign”.

It is brainstorming for solutions to tackle the use of plastic bags at wet markets. For example, plastic bags used to contain meats tend to be thrown away aftera single use and this is an issueMr Shaw hopes to address.

The SEC will also study the idea of bag-pooling, where consumers pay a deposit to borrow a bag and redeem the amount upon return.

Part of the heartlands campaign will be funded with collections from the BYOB campaign so far: About $80,000 has been pooled through shoppers’ voluntary donations of 10 cents for every plastic bag taken at participating retailers.

With the funds, the SEC has also produced a five-minute training video for frontline staff at participating outlets. The video, which cost about $10,000 to make, will explain the BYOB campaign to staff and get them to ask customers if they need bags for small items and double bags for fragile items, instead of providing the bags as a standard practice.

Noting the “high turnover rate” for frontline staff like cashiers,Mr Shaw said training “can’t take too much time and has to be turnkey and multilingual”. The video will come in two languages and be distributed to participating outlets next week.

NTUC FairPrice, one of the participating retailers, said the extra time taken by its cashiers to explain the BYOB campaign to customers would be worth it. Since launching BYOB Day last July, it has cut the number of bags used by 12 per cent.

Newcomer to the scheme Home-Fix said BYOB was a first step in the company’s efforts to go green. It hopes to promote its range of eco-friendly products such as energy-efficient light bulbs and water-efficient shower heads, said its advertising and promotions manager Lyne Ong.

It’s all in the bags
Could reusable bags turn out to be non-biodegradable?
Letter from Daniel Lim, Today Online 4 Jun 08;

I REFER to the article, “Bag-pooling, anyone?” (June 3). I applaud this move by the supermarkets and many agencies to embrace a more eco-friendly mentality.

However, I’m now a dilemma. I do most of my grocery shopping at supermarkets and carry my groceries home in plastic bags. I try to be eco-friendly, so all these plastic bags are kept aside for future use — I use them for bagging everyday garbage before throwing them into the rubbbish chute. Being civic-minded, I bag my refuse in consideration of the cleaners, as well as to minimise filth and pests infesting our public rubbish bins and chutes.

For this reason, I will continue to ask for plastic bags when I shop for groceries. But in using plastic bags, does that mean that I am an eco-enemy? Perhaps, should :the approach be to focus more on educating consumers on the use of plastic bags?

On another note, we must also be very careful in the production of reusable bags. Like many other consumers, I have so many reusable bags packed away in my storeroom that I do not know what to do with them. Will they one day become non-biodegradable refuse themselves?