At last – Woolworths makes a move to rid South Africa of plastic shopping bags

This year — initially meant to be the auspicious start of a new, spick-and-span decade — has proven so mystifying that some media, including a commentator on this platform, have suggested that there is a one-third chance that we may be living in an actual computer simulation.

Few psychological phenomena, however, can be as odd as humanity’s addiction to plastic — a substance praised as “convenient”, even as it chokes our rivers, strangles wildlife, ends up on our dinner plates, and breaks into micro units so small that global air currents are now dumping it as far afield as the Arctic. Convenient, nè? 

https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2020-07-14-the-age-of-plastemic-tiny-plastic-particles-are-infecting-the-remotest-oceans-and-mountains-via-aerial-transmission/

For us here at Our Burning Planet, a pinnacle of this stupidity emerged when Woolworths stores were found in 2019 to be peddling tiny plastic knifespoon-things with every punnet of Zespri® SunGold kiwifruit. 

They were called “spifes” (a portmanteau for “spoon” and “knife”), Woolworths told me. When asked how it intended a single-use plastic utensil like the spife to reflect its “Good Business Journey”, or how this might add value to lives of die-hard kiwifruit consumers everywhere, the retailer responded with an explanation on how to use a spife (“Cut, scoop, enjoy!”). However, it was quick to point out that the spife was a promotional item, which, coincidentally, had just “ended”. 

In the ensuing months, I received unfailingly polite follow-up emails from the retailer’s marketing department, outlining its “single-use plastic achievements”. 

According to Diane Peterson, Woolworths “sustainability communications consultant”, its green-living coups included “new speciality tomato packaging in a kraft box base with a recyclable clarified polypropylene lid”. Peterson also highlighted a coffee-cup recycling programme; and “diverting over a million 500ml PET bottles from waste streams”. This was apparently achieved by recycling a tsunami of bottles into polyester materials for its winter fashion ranges.

“Nice try, Woolies,” I thought, tapped the “x” on the email and moved to the next story in the queue. These attempts, though undoubtedly worthy, rang somewhat hollow while Woolworths counters across the country still groaned under the weight of plastic shopping bags, just bursting to pop into the next national flower on an acacia near you. (Also, I was struggling to unsee those spifes.)

In August, another email from the diligent Peterson, this time titled, “25 Woolworths stores are now plastic shopping bag-free”. This, and milestones before it, she wrote, resonated with the retailer’s mission to phase out single-use plastic bags. By 2022, she had stressed in an email a month earlier, the idea was to ensure all its packaging was either reusable or recyclable.

“Ah, nice try, Woolies,” I noted under my breath again, recalling visions of interviewing then environment minister Valli Moosa back in 2004 and suggesting that his attempts to make consumers pay for plastic shopping bags did not seem to be working as much of a deterrent. (This was not favourably received.) I hit that x. 

Earlier this month, I was at my local Woolworths check-out, trying to balance all manner of groceries on available limbs and hands after forgetting the reusables at home. (This reporter may also have used the unfolding drama at the till to demonstrate that, no matter how many plastic bags were lurking instore, she was less likely to surrender than an outgoing American despot with an endangered combover budget to defend.)

“You know… ma’am,” the cashier sighed while this fiasco was failing to smooth the transition to the next customer in the small-basket line, “from next week 145 of our stores will be plastic bag-free”.

A day or two later, it was as if Donald “Twittler” Trump himself had bombed my inbox with caps. However, this time, the news — to be fair — could not be more welcome: “145 WOOLWORTHS STORES ARE NOW PLASTIC BAG-FREE.” 

Despite a “challenging year”, Woolworths has continued “rolling out its low-cost reusable bag to 120 additional stores”, Peterson’s latest missive claimed. This, as part of the retailer’s “commitment to phase out single-use plastic shopping bags” and reduce its landfill packaging to zero.  

Being green in a society mostly married to the opposite can be hard; and Woolworths is not out of the plastic woods yet. It has a reputation for fortressing its fresh produce, among others, in non-recyclable plastic packaging.