JOIN USWhy pay extra for that carry bag?
Made up your mind yet, for non-stop shopping this Diwali and bringing back home, almost the whole store? If yes, then don’t forget to take along shopping bags or else you will end up paying a neat sum to retailers. With shoppers spending more than they ever did to products, what is adding to the bills is the price of the shopping bag!
After all the stuff has been purchased and you’ve snaked your way up in the queue for payment, the chirpy salesgirl on the cash counter asks, “Would you like a carry bag?” When the reply is a “Yes” it is followed by a rhetorical, “It will cost you Rs 5” or “Rs 15. (depending on which store you are in).”
Shayra Sharma, a 24-year old professional says, “Shopping at branded outlets amounts to a bill of Rs 1,000 plus. On top of this, when the cashier asks for an additional Rs 5 for a carry bag, one can’t say ‘no’ because no one wants to haggle for a petty amount.”
But the point is why should one shell out that five or 15 for a carry bag? Aren’t we supposed to get it free since we have made purchases already?
The showrooms don’t allow other bags to be carried inside so each time you shop, you end up buying a bag which is usually non-durable.
Sajeeli Gupta, a 24-year old baker says, “After shopping at a super market, one needs a carry bag to carry sundry things that one has ended up buying but it doesn’t make sense if the cashier asks us to pay Rs 10 to 15 for a paper bag which - being paper, is not durable! Even if they provide us with a poly bag, it is embarrassing to use it anywhere else with the brand’s name printed on it. So ultimately we end up in paying for something that we can’t reuse.”
Reuse may be an issue but payment is a must. Arm-twisting? “It is not, for we don’t want indiscriminate wastage of carry bags,” defends Rajgopalan Kumar, CEO, Retailers Association of India (RAI).
The organisation decided to charge for carry bags after the government stipulated in February last, that carry bags be charged and realised that “The usage by RAI members alone reduced from 2200 mt to 900 mt this year. It is a matter of habit. People are accustomed to getting carry bags free. As retailers, we don’t make money by charging and neither do we want to penalise customers but want to create sensitivity towards using carry bags.”
He is more worried about a bigger problem though. With ban of polythene bags in Delhi come November 22, he states that the impact on ecology will be manifold since usage of paper bags will drastically go up.