Since being environmentally friendly is now seen as being the kosher thing to do, one of the local supermarket chains has decided to give a 10-cents rebate for every $10 spent whenever you bring your own bag. It’s definitely an improvement over the free bag giveaways on those bag-free days – I mean, you’re trying to encourage people to reuse bags, yes?
So anyway, it just so happened I was in the vicinity of a store the other day, and I figured I’d see how they’ll actually honour this rebate in practice. After racking up more than twice the required amount, I headed for the checkout counter.
No rebate.
Why? In the mind of one particular cashier, a backpack doesn’t count as a shopping bag.
Ah yes, the great Singapore intellect at work again. I love this country.
I now have the following grocery checkout and transportation experiments lined up:
- Using a handbag.
- Re-using older FairPrice plastic bags.
- Re-using some rival supermarket’s plastic bags.
- Using the FairPrice green bag, but dyed red.
- Putting groceries directly into a wire granny cart.
- Carrying out the groceries by hand.
These should yield some interesting results!
